When to create new homes

- In Time Management Fundamentals, I talk about the difference between gathering points and homes. A gathering point is where unprocessed stuff, incomplete stuff, gathers, such as your physical inbox. A home, though, is like a filing cabinet or a drawer where you put those pens. It's a designated final resting point for your stuff. If you follow Time Management Fundamentals and set things up properly as you go, odds are you're going to maintain nice, clean homes for a while.

Though over the course of several years you may start to find that your homes are overfull. As a general rule, you never want your homes to be more than 7/8 full. That's a pretty particular fraction. What I mean by that is it's almost full but not completely full. If things are starting to spill out into other drawers, that's a sign that your home needs an update. First, consider if you can create a long-term home versus a short-term home.

What do I mean by that? I have a drawer in my office full of video cables. I do a lot of stuff with video. It's pretty big and it's pretty full. The reality is, I only need to get to maybe 1/3 of those cords at most. The other 2/3 of the cords are older versions of video cables that I may use someday but probably will never use in the coming year. I need to hold onto them just in case the need arises, but they don't need to take up space in my office.

If you have a home like this, create a new version of it. Create a second one that's long-term, that you're going to store some place that's out of the way in the basement, in the garage, in the storage facility, whatever it is, so that you still have those items if you feel you might need them. But, they're not taking up space in your immediate workspace. Then go through that drawer, such as my home of video cables, and put the cables in one of three places.

One I'll designate for short-term, two for long-term, and three, garbage. Throw it out if you know you're never ever going to need that thing again. When should you do this? The answer is a little bit here, a little bit there. I don't recommend a full audit of your entire office space just to reduce homes. Instead, when you see a home that's overfull like my video cable drawer, schedule time on your calendar, perhaps in the next couple of weeks, to go through it.

Create an action for yourself to separate those drawers. That gives you enough time to buy a new storage device and then go through it. Then repeat this process as needed, but only doing maybe one or two home updates per month at most. This way you can stay productive and focused on what's most valuable but give your time management system a little tuneup from time to time.