As many of you know, I am in the process of moving to a new home about 1600 km away from my present location on the east coast of Canada. My new home is almost twice the size of my present place, and certainly more than twice as expensive :>( to buy, but it is only a three minute drive from my brother and business partner Rick’s home. Maybe now we will be able to get in some decent golf time. Well, less than decent I guess if I am playing.
Alas, all good things must come to an end, and I have found that an occasional move albeit a pain in the keyster can breath a newness and excitement into your life rich with promise and new possibility.
Having said that, I, like so many, have a basement full of boxes, many from my last move 7 years ago, and even more so, there are many that I have no idea what is in them, and thus have to endure the agonizing process of opening them all and doing the “keep or throw away” decision.
This is where once again I learn the difference between “HARD” and “DIFFICULT”. How so? Well, it is not physically HARD to throw out a non-descript cardboard box, but it can be emotionally DIFFICULT to do so when you know it contains your kids’ first crafts or “I Love You Daddy…” type things, even in the face of the other 20 boxes of similar archived kids creations.
So, my wife and I do our best to salvage the important keepsakes, and painfully label many others for the dump.
I have to conclude that whatever doesn’t move you forward, can only be holding you back. Whether it is junk in the basement being sorted for a move, or hundreds of programs, software and marketing videos, it all needs a periodic “shakedown”, and chance to see what will move us forward in our lives and careers, and an opportunity to reveal the ones that may actually hold us back.
Think about that for a minute. If the goal is to build a business, a business that provide a reward in the form of money and self-satisfaction of some type, be it a sense of independence, or the chance to help others to succeed, then do you really need that “200 downloads of incredibly and amazingly useful software that had you bought them separately would have cost $20,000,000″?
Chance are, you don’t need those 200 software programs, never did, and save for all the Ron Popeil sales savvy in the world, you will never need it in a gazillion years.
It occupies a space in a folder, on a pc, requires organizing, documenting, filing, saving, and back-up. You see it, and it tries to distract you to looking at its content every time you are on your PC. Those distractions may take your focus off of something of much more importance, so are they worth keeping?
OK, maybe not the best example, but the fact is, it might be junk not worth looking after anymore. If you haven’t used any of the software in a year, you can probably get rid of it. Mind you, if we applied the rule in that form to our lives every time,, it would likely cause marriages to fail thet were perhaps teetering a bit :>)
So, to sum up this somewhat meandering banter, use the analogy of the basement, but use it with care. We all know that it is exactly one day after we throw out the “amazing tool that scrambles eggs while they are still in the shell” that we actually need the darn thing!
Happy PC & basement cleaning, if it doesn’t move you forward, get rid of it!
