Chris Blackwell’s Domain

I’m finally back from vacation today. Well actually I got back yesterday but I needed a day just to unwind. I also needed a day to read over all the news and articles that got built up in my Google Reader over the week, or so I thought. I had flagged over 30 articles to read later during the week. When Sunday came, I deleted all but a few of them, and you know what, I didn’t miss a thing. Sure, I may not have read the latest technique to market your blog and focus on your niche more, but how many different ways do I need to read about that?

I thought that every day I had to read every article posted on Problogger, Zen Habbits, Daily Blog Tips, or Dosh Dosh. I ended up deleting all of the articles from them that had built-up over my week away. By seeing how many articles I normally read in a week, I got a pretty good idea of how many I read in a day. I must read about 10 - 15 articles a day during the weekdays. How much productivity is lost in reading all those articles? Sure, they all might have a great tip here, or an idea there, but taking away all that extra time will cost me money in the end. Where was that tip?

While I do think it can be good to read other blogs, and learn about new marketing techniques or strategies, I also think that you should keep in perspective how much time you are spending and how many articles of the same content rewritten in a different way. My week off was just that, a week off. No Twitter, no Blog Catalog, no email, no instant messaging, and a significant reduction in the amount I read via RSS. Give yourself a break and try it out. You’ll be surprised at what your NOT missing.

Have you ever watched the television show Clean Sweep on TLC? Well, the host of that television show, Peter Walsh, has take his experience and turned it into the bestselling book It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff. The book teaches you how to cleanup your house and live a more clutter free lifestyle. I love the clutter free lifestyle and try very hard to keep my house clutter free, but this book opened my eyes to some things even I was doing wrong.

The book itself is broken down into a very easy to follow structure. Part one of the book starts with some case studies telling us how clutter can take control of your life. Then he goes into explaining why you have to remove the clutter from your life, and how you can live a better life clutter free. Part two of the book moves into his six step process for removing all the “stuff” from your house. This six step process is the bulk of the book and is very logically put together. Peter does a great job of breaking down each step and how you need to go about it, even in different scenarios and situations.

Conclusions

This is a very good book for anyone who loves living clutter free, likes to increase their productivity, and generally wants to live a better life. I highly recommend picking this book up, and maybe even a few extra copies for some disorganized friends or family members.