Whenever I walk into someone’s office, I see piles of business cards – that person’s own cards as well as collected cards from all sorts of business events, client meetings, or simply chance encounters. As business people, we accumulate those mementos of connections with other business people, of course, but what do we do with them afterwards? How can we make use of them properly?

Here are some tips to stay on top of your collection.

Have you ever been convinced that somebody adds to the stuff sitting quietly on the carpet, right there in the corner of your living room? The good news is: you are probably right about the stuff accumulating. The bad news is, however, that you have most likely put the new stuff there yourself.

There is something about clutter that attracts more clutter. The reason for this, and I believe that is the honest truth, that once you have ‘temporarily’ placed that pile of magazines on the floor, you have declared that space to be a storage space. You may not have done that consciously, but somewhere deep down you have reached a consensus with yourself that THIS is a spot to put things down. And since you strongly believe that, it is so.

Most of us are likely to have a digital trail as long as their arm. Social media is just the beginning of it all, though: just think about online shopping, newspaper and magazine subscriptions, the utilities, bank account management, loyalty cards, bus tickets, access to shared folders or image repositories, … look around and you’ll find that pretty much everything we do is somehow managed online these days.

I’m not saying that is a bad thing, sharing stuff and having access to your information is paramount these days, in almost any conceivable situation. However, there are dangers involved with being entangled in the world wide web to a high degree. Therefore, most of those digital connections require setting up an account and creating a password. And that is where the trouble usually starts.

The question is easy enough to ask, but it’s a very hard one to answer. Below you'll find some thoughts on the subjects of

• perception,
• obligation,
• procrastination,
• habit, and
• fear.
  

There are - of course - many more reasons that could be behind an accumulation of objects or mental obstacles. These five, however, are the ones I feel strongly about, and I have made this particular choice because those five teach us something about decluttering: while the reasons for each of us might be completely different, more often than not a similar approach to solving the issue can be taken.

Now that we have experienced the mad dash towards the last possible date to submit a tax return form, why not think ahead this time and actually start collecting the data necessary to do this somewhat before the deadline starts to loom over our heads?

There are a number of things you can do to not only make your accountant’s life less of a living hell, and at the same time alleviating the stress you experience if you have to search for information that pertains to something as long as 1.5 years ago? Well, there are practical solutions to the ongoing records like expenses and income that you really should follow to simplify things. Of course, none of the three tips below may not apply to you, but I’m sure you’ll be able to transfer some of them into your own practice.

I have previously written about the effect physical clutter has on the mind and how we perceive not just the clutter, but everything else around us. Once there is clutter in our homes, it will invariable attract more clutter. And although we might not realise it, our unconscious self will be aware of that accumulation of things that do not belong, and it will start to feel like they are closing in on us.

How does this work? Well, we humans are very good at becoming accustomed to the way things are. From a biological point of view, we recognise normal situations without change as harmless, while change is something we perceive as potentially dangerous. Both those concepts apply to clutter in various ways.

Spring cleaning at work is a necessary and useful thing: be it archiving, a proper cleaning of the premises or a simple reshuffle or update of the furniture. That is not all, however, that should be happening during a business spring cleaning: for most of us it is also a perfect occasion to take a step back and look at what we do and how we do it from a different perspective.

This change of perspective is exactly the reason for taking experts from different fields of activity on board. However, there are things you can do yourself to pave the way for change before you call in the experts…

When we first realise that clutter is starting to take over our homes or – worse yet – has already taken over, we usually go into denial and ignore it for another while. But a time comes when things get so out of hand that nothing but a thorough cleansing will suffice to take care of the accumulated clutter. At this point, usually panic sets in: “how could I let it get this far?”, “this takes forever!”, “I’ll never get this done in time for [fill in notable upcoming event in your life]” are typical considerations that usually come bubbling up at those moments.