February 20, 2017

Controlling the Clutter with Claire Tompkins

50 minutes

This episode is brought to you by Your Clockwise Week—a personalized weekly structure built around your actual life, not an ideal one. If your week feels full but not fitting, you can learn more at mikevardy.com/yourclockwiseweek.

This episode's guest is Claire Tompkins (a.k.a. the Clutter Coach). Claire works with clients to organize and declutter their homes and offices, to manage their time, and get things done better. She works with artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and more as a professional organizer by creating simple, practical systems for real people.

If you’ve been following the podcast and my other work, you’d know how big a fan of simple I am. That's something that Claire also promotes. Claire and I chatted on this episode about clutter - from physical to digital, workflows, apps, clients, books, and influencers.

Some of the specific areas we discussed were:

Her perception of what clutter is – from the physical ones occupying our spaces, those hidden behind drawers and cupboards, to the ones that occupy our minds and our devices.

An epiphany that motivated her to start decluttering her.

How she starts the process of decluttering, and dealing with clients who identify and define clutter very differently.

One of the methods she uses in task management – to make your tasks into a card game.

Books she is interested in that deal with resistance, willpower, habit-creation, and procrastination.

The process of she uses when working with her clients, including identifying pain points and urgency, sorting clutter and items, and dealing with resistance and the return of clutter.

Getting people to step back and recognize the need to re-organize and declutter, and a very interesting story of how one client did not recognize their own living space immediately after taking a photo of it.

Her preference for paper to-do lists, and the influencers that have inspired her to fit her to-do list within the larger context of how she intends her life to be.

How she observes her clients’ productivity and organization techniques, asking them the logic behind their habits and practices to help them personalize their workflow so they can create a sense of ownership and accountability.

The reason for her shift from productivity to zero in on clutter, the lack of women working in productivity and why she thinks that is the case.

We also discussed how we want to introduce workflows so it becomes easier for people to absorb the importance of productivity practices, the problems we’ve experienced with systems and clients, and the integration of online and offline task management.

Relevant Links

Clutter Coach | Less Overwhelm = More Joy

Podcast 029: Make your tasks into a card game | Clutter Coach

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield | Amazon

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal | Amazon

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg | Amazon

It's About Time!: The Six Styles of Procrastination and How to Overcome Them by Linda Sapadin and Jack Maguire | Amazon

43 Folders

zen habits

Getting Things Done with David Allen | The Productivityist Podcast

The Ivy Lee Method: The Daily Routine Experts Recommend for Peak Productivity | James Clear

The Emergent Task Planner™ | Dave Seah

52 Simple Ways to Get Organized (download) | Clutter Coach

Clutter Coach

Claire Tompkins (@ClaireTompkins) | Twitter

Clutter Coach Claire | Facebook

Thank you for joining me today- and remember to stop guessing and start going.

Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.

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If this episode resonated, I’m exploring ideas like these more deeply in my upcoming book, Productiveness. You can follow along as it takes shape at mikevardy.com/productiveness.

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By Mike Vardy

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