Greetings,

As we near the end of the year, we start to think about how we'll spend the next. From our May 2021 edition, here are some tips to help you decide where to expend your time and energy:

On one of my team's recent scrum calls, we were talking about how we, like so many people, are reassessing the things that make up our lives and take up our time. We've seen this same introspection from our clients regarding both their professional and personal endeavors. The pandemic seems to have made us pause and think about how to simplify everything, to focus on the things we care about most. As a colleague said: "it's like we're Marie Kondo-ing our lives." 

If you're not familiar with Marie Kondo, she skyrocketed to mainstream popularity with a best-selling book and later a hit Netflix series on organizing and de-cluttering. Her trademark paradigm "does it spark joy?" helped millions of people around the world decide whether to keep or give away an item in one's closet.

We could use this same principle in our lives. Your time and your energy are finite. Think of them as a physical space - a closet, let's say, to keep our analogy.  Is your metaphorical "closet" stuffed to the brim with activities and commitments that no longer fit or that take space from other things that bring you greater joy?

Ask yourself if that person, activity, or commitment sparks joy. If it doesn't, make a plan to move past it. These things could be work projects you train someone else to handle, events you decline to keep time for family or yourself, or simply activities in which you no longer engage.

The wonderful thing about the "closet" analogy is that we recognize that we control the contents of our physical space. I urge you to exercise that same autonomy and decisiveness in other areas, despite the guilt or discomfort the initial change may bring. Give yourself time to catalog everything that is taking up space and make intentional decisions about what you will keep and what you will let go.

Which activities, goals, and relationships will you prioritize? What will you clean out? I’d love to hear about it.