Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show where I help you start and grow your podcast, answering
any questions along the way. Today, guys, is a great topic that we've not talked about
in a long time. If you've seen one of my Instagram reels recently, you've seen me talk a little
bit about the cone of cleanliness. And that's right, today we're talking about the cone
of cleanliness and what that means for you, what that means for your creativity, things
like that. So the cone of cleanliness is not necessarily if you are doing just an audio
podcast, but if you are doing a video podcast, the cone of cleanliness comes into play a
a lot because essentially what it is and if you're watching this on YouTube or Instagram,
you're seeing that I have just a spot in front of my camera that's fairly clean. I have a
few decorative items, but for the most part, it's fairly clean. However, if you were to
look around my studio, there's literally stuff everywhere. There is stuff. There's boxes
sitting around. There's cups. There's extra equipment. There's a couple backpacks. There's
that's sitting around kind of cluttering up my space
and it hinders your creativity.
It limits you.
While you don't see that on screen, I see that here in studio
and there's benefits to cleaning up.
So today we're going to talk a little bit about the benefits
of cleaning up your space for productivity,
both physical, your physical space that you're sitting in,
as well as your digital space, too, because your digital space
matters and your digital space will hinder your creativity also.
So let's get into this topic right now.
So what are some of the the benefits of cleaning up your space
for your productivity?
So it's going to reduce your distractions.
A clutter free environment helps you focus better on the tasks
without visual noise or competing for your your attention.
If you've got less in your peripheral, you're going to have reduced distractions.
You're going to be when you're trying to be creative.
There's less things that are pulling you away and pulling your attention away
and and begging for you to go spend time with other items.
It's also going to improve your mental clarity to an organized space,
promotes clear thinking and reduces mental overwhelm,
making it easier to prioritize and make decisions.
So it's going to help your mental clarity,
especially when you're trying to come up with topics for your podcast,
topics for your your social media topics for
all of the different things that you're going to be producing.
A better clean space is going to allow you to to have that mental clarity
and just be better off in the long run and help you to be more creative.
It's also going to create time savings for you, too,
because when everything has its place, you spend less time
searching for items and more time being productive.
So again, it's going to save you time because you're not going to have to go.
Where was that adapter that I had?
You're going to know where it's at when you need it,
because it's going to be better organized.
It's going to be just a better overall experience for you.
And it's going to help you also lower your stress levels, too,
because a cleaner workspace creates a cleaner atmosphere, reducing anxiety,
helping you feel more in control.
It's going to make your space feel like a place that you want to be
as a place as opposed to a place where you're just kind of feeling overwhelmed
and so much stuff is kind of just taking over your space.
So it's going to lower your stress levels and enhance your creativity, too,
because an orderly environment provides mental space
for creative thinking and problem solving.
I don't know about you, but but when I go into a place
where everything is organized, where I can lay my thoughts out,
I have if I have a whiteboard, I can write my thoughts down on the whiteboard
and it's going to be easy for me to come up with topics and ideas
and just be generally overall more creative than when I come into a space that's.
Crowded and lots of things that I got to move before I actually become creative.
It's also going to increase your motivation to starting your day
in a clean, organized space can boost your energy and willingness to tackle large tasks.
So it's going to help you actually be more motivated to produce the work.
So that's your physical thing.
Now, the benefits of keeping your digital space clean for productivity is faster
file access. So if you're keeping your your computer, then again, these days,
especially those of us who are creating content, whether that be podcasts or
YouTube streams or whatever, are doing a lot on our computers, right?
We are doing everything on the computers.
We are doing everything that that computers are really the way of life right now.
Everything that we do is based on a computer.
So it's going to help you have faster file access, organized folders
and clean desktop mean you can locate different documents and files
and applications quickly without wasting time searching.
I know for me on a Mac, I don't have hardly anything on my taskbar
when it's not running.
I don't have shortcuts to programs and things like that.
I go in and I hit command space and I type what I want to find and open up.
So if I want to type and open up Zoom, I hit command space Zoom and it comes up.
I don't have a shortcut for Zoom on my desktop.
Same thing with Ecamm, same thing with anything that I'm using a lot of,
I don't keep a whole lot in my start bar.
And same thing with the desktop, I don't like having folders
and files on my desktop because it just feels cluttered.
Now, I know on a Mac, you can hide that unless you're clicking on the desktop
and that that helps.
But for me, I don't keep anything on my desktop.
I barely keep things on my desktop.
The things that are on my desktop are things I literally access
every time I'm on my computer.
And it is, I think, one or two things in transit.
Sometimes I put things there, but then I delete them as soon as they're done
because I don't want to keep things on my desktop
that have nothing to do with my everyday life.
It also is going to improve your computer performance.
If you remove unnecessary files, you're going to clear like
including your cash and uninstalling unused programs.
It helps your computer run faster and more efficiently.
Now, computers these days are super powerful.
They are super, super strong.
You know, you can get a fairly decent computer for a small price,
but it still helps you to to your computer to run faster
if it doesn't have to process all of that stuff.
It doesn't have to keep all of that stuff.
It doesn't have to have all the applications, the programs, the stuff
that you're not actually using day to day.
And we'll go through some of the topics down further.
We'll talk a little bit later in this episode about how to get rid of stuff,
both both physically and digitally to help reduce the clutter.
It's also going to help reduce your mental clutter, too,
because a digital workspace that's clean is going to have fewer,
fewer open tabs, less bookmarks, streamlined applications.
It's going to help you not to be overloaded mentally, too.
I know when I have tabs open and I don't do so much in my browser,
I tend to close the browser down every so often.
So I keep all of that stuff clear.
But on my on my phone, you shouldn't even see my phone.
Like I have tabs upon tabs upon tabs, open things that I may actually go back
to eventually. But I should not do that.
I should close that out.
It's going to help you also focus, too, because when your desktop has less items
and notifications popping up, it's going to distract you less.
And so it's going to help you concentrate on your task at hand,
whether that's producing podcasts or producing digital content or videos
or whatever you're producing, less is more.
It's also going to help with easier backup and recovery to if you
those of us who create things like this is our project, this is our artwork,
this is our our files are what are what our art is.
And and so you need to have backup and recovery
in case your machine crashes, but a better organized
desktop and better organized file structure is going to help
you to be able to find the things that you actually need to back up and restore
when it comes down to time to actually do that.
Now, it's also going to lower your stress, too, because keeping everything
digitally reduces the frustration and anxiety when working under deadlines.
So again, it's going to be easier to find things.
It's going to be better off in there.
And it's also going to extend your your lifespan of your machine to
regular maintenance and cleanup can help your computer last longer
by preventing system slowdowns and crashes.
And we all know computers are not cheap these days, especially really good ones.
Max, they're not cheap.
And so I know about you, but I want to keep my machine running.
It's top physical thing.
Top that it can do for the longest that it can do.
Now, here are some practical ways that we can clean up our physical space.
Now, remember, we are talking about physical and digital space here, both
your physical space where you're sitting,
your desktop, your room, your your your tabletop,
whatever it is that you have your computer in your mics and things on.
But we're also talking about organizing your your digital life to you.
So first, we're going to talk about practical ways to clean up
your physical space.
These are some things that you can take immediately.
Now, the one minute rule, meaning that if something takes
less than one minute to put away, do it immediately rather than letting it pile
up. So if I'm done using an XLR cable.
and it's sits normally across the room in a box.
Go put it away right now.
Don't let it accumulate to the end of the day, the week, the month.
Do it now.
I know for me, when things start to get more cluttered
and more cluttered and more cluttered, it's hard to want to organize them
because I know it's going to take all day to do.
The second thing that we can do to help keep our physical space
is clear flat surfaces.
Start with your desk counters, tables, removing anything that doesn't belong
isn't used the daily. If you're not using it actively on your desktop, get rid of it
on your on your on your space. If it's flat, don't let things pile up. The other thing
you can do is use the four box method, meaning keeping items that you use regularly in a
box. Donate have a box for donating and selling good condition, but you know, used a little
bit. Trash broken things, unusable, get rid of them, relocate. It belongs in another room.
It belongs somewhere else. So can I keep those? You can keep those four boxes in your in your
space and help you organize things again. Those four boxes are keep, donate or sell
trash or relocate. I know a lot of times computer equipment that's hard to get rid of a hard
to sell because you might use it later. So but those things will help. You can also use
an organization system, designate homes for everything.
Everything should have a specific place, label containers and drawers if needed.
I know it always helps me when I go into the kitchen at our church.
The kitchen at our church has everything labeled.
Literally everything.
There's a drawer. It says knives, spoons, plastic spoons, soup bowls.
Like there's a place for everything
in in our our church kitchen.
And the thing that should be the same thing for you and your studio.
Place everything, make everything have a home, make it neat and
and label it if you need to make sure it goes back to that same spot.
Vertical storage can help to use shelves and pegboards
and vertical organizers, maximize the space and keep your surfaces clear
because when your surfaces are clear, things feel less cluttered.
Another way that you can organize this cable management, use cable
clips, ties, boxes, organization, accords and chargers,
things like that that's going to make your space feel clean.
I know for me, that's this is probably the one of my hardest things that I do.
I just run cables wherever I need to get the data, the power, the whatever to.
And I don't actually ever really organize them.
I've got cables running everywhere.
Again, you can't see that if you're watching the video
because I have that cone of cleanliness.
But. I need to get better at my cable management
because that will help clean your space up and make it feel more.
Like a place that you can be creative.
Get drawer dividers, use organization
drawers that have little dividers, places that you can put things in
that have a space, so I have a little plastic cubby over here.
It's got three drawers in it, and I have different cables for different things.
I have all of the little
Mike mounts the things that screw in for different size
containers and things like that are different size mic microphones
as well as some USB cables.
I just have a drawer for all all of that.
That's keeping it kind of kind of maintained and an open.
Now, some of the maintenance habits that you can do to kind of keep your
things maintained is are the are the following
a daily 10 minute tidy at the end of the day.
Do a quick cleanup, reset your space for tomorrow.
It can only take 10 minutes.
So if you normally are done by five o'clock p.m.,
stop what you're doing at 450
and go and clean up 10 minutes.
It only takes 10 minutes.
Another thing you can do is have a one in one out rule,
meaning that if you bring something new into your space, remove something old.
This is critical because it's really easy to bring something into your space
you need to find a place for it and it's you don't have a place for it.
And and and now what do you do?
Well, you just have more and more and more stuff.
No one in one out.
You bring something in, you get rid of something.
And some of the things for that week that I'm going to talk about here
in a few minutes are going to help you actually do some of that
decluttering and getting rid of of some of the things that you no longer need.
And then the last thing is do a weekly purge set aside
some time each week to remove items that you no longer need.
We are all guilty of it, keeping things that we may use one day.
Every week, take a few minutes,
look around your space and say, What am I going to use?
Am I really going to use that Ziploc bag of Keurig cups
that has been sitting on my shelf for three years now?
No, probably not.
So go walk over and take it and throw it in the trash.
Start small, begin with one drawer, one corner,
then try tackling, then trying to tackle everything at once.
You're gonna, like I said earlier,
you're gonna feel overwhelmed if you're trying to do
everything and everything is so much work.
Start small, start with that little drawer, organize that.
Maybe even take some time away and then come back.
Celebrate your win, celebrate the fact
that you took that corner, that drawer, that space,
that little space and cleaned it up.
Now work bigger and bigger and bigger until all of your stuff is clean.
All of your office is clean.
All of your your studio is clean.
Limit decorations, keep only meaningful things that bring you joy or motivation.
So I have a few items that are decorations in the back here
that kind of just decorate my my video visual.
But I also have some things like a arcade game
a newspaper box and some other stuff in my studio that isn't it's decorative, but it
could be clutter. It's not really serving any purpose in my studio except for to clutter.
So get rid of that. Create zones doesn't it specific areas for activities, work, storage,
items. So the reason you do this is because when you're when you're coming into your area,
your work, your brain knows what it's there for. It knows that when you're in your studio,
it needs to be creative because you're going to be creating content. It's ready to go. It's ready
to fire because you've created the zones for that specific studios for your specific creativity.
Also use the 90 90 rule. If you haven't used something in 90 days and won't use it in the
the next 90 days, consider getting rid of it.
Put it in one of your four boxes
that we talked about earlier.
In the keep, donate, trash, relocate.
If you're not gonna use it in 90 days,
and you're not gonna use it in the next 90 days,
get rid of it.
Now, that's the physical space.
We've talked about the physical space
and practical ways that you can get rid of things
in your physical space.
Let's talk a little bit about digital space.
Cleaning up your desktop.
move your in your files into organized folders,
put them in documents, put them in aim for a minimal
or empty desktop with only essential shortcuts.
Like I was saying, my desktop only has one shortcut on it
and its folder to run a script to make that stoplight
in the back and do a do its thing.
That's all I've got on my desktop.
Everything else is in documents.
And I keep things in there organized by different things.
So I have a folder for podcasts.
in that folder is each of my podcasts.
There's also a folder for podcast clients
because I do podcast editing.
So I have a folder for each client that's in there
and each of their podcasts.
Within those folders I have things like artwork
and I have a folder for raw audio,
like things like their jingles and things like that.
Then I have an episodes folder
where each episode has its own space to keep organized.
Keep your things organized.
One of the things you can do to really stay organized
is to delete duplicate files.
I know for me, when I'm when I'm editing podcasts,
I end up having to end up with lots of files
sometimes that are duplicates that I don't necessarily need.
When I export from my roadcaster, I have files that are not
necessarily duplicates, but blank.
I have files that are recorded for each and every mic channel.
And even if I'm not using them.
So one of the things I can do to clean up is get rid of those files
because I'm never going to use them.
The other thing is you can archive old folders, get things off of your computer.
By doing that, you're going to want to also create a backup.
A couple of different places you can do that in the cloud.
You can do that on a physical hard drive.
You can do both. In fact, you should do both.
But go through once a month.
Get rid of all of your episode files in your podcast
like the folder.
So for me, I have a lot of episodes in my podcast folder
for podcast answers.
One of the things that I could do is hook up an external drive,
move all of those off, also put them up to the cloud.
So that way I have those files if I need them again later.
Another thing you can do to clean up your digital life
is empty your downloads folder.
Raise your hand if you're if you're guilty of this.
My downloads folder has everything that I've ever downloaded in it
because I might need it again, right?
No, you're not going to do it.
Empty it. If you need to keep it, keep it,
but go and organize it and put it in the places where you're going to need it.
Not. Oh, well, I know I downloaded a file for this podcast at one point,
but I don't know where it's at.
It's there in that podcast folder.
It's in the downloads folder.
Get rid of it.
Empty your downloads folder and use it just for downloads that week.
Get rid of it at the end of the week.
Uninstall your unused applications and programs.
If you haven't used them in the last six months
and you're probably not going to use them, get rid of them.
It's just taking up space.
Limit your startup programs.
I know a lot of times and I see this a lot mostly on Windows,
but when you start a machine up apps open,
do they need to be open?
Do you need to have Zoom open?
Do you need to have Notion open?
Do you need to have Evernote open?
Do you need to have Spotify open
every time the machine opens, that takes forever for your machine to start up.
Then, guys, everything that's in your startup folder
for your computer is going to start up at boot time.
And that takes a lot of time and space in your computer slows down
because you can't open all of those things at once.
It has to prioritize it so it opens things that slows it down.
Those of you who have cloud storage, get rid of some of the unnecessary files
from drive Dropbox, OneDrive, et cetera.
Get rid of it. Organize things just like you would on your computer.
Get rid of things you don't actually need.
Do a weekly digital cleanup schedule 15 minutes each week to get rid of
and maintain your organization that you've created.
And then take it one step further and monthly do a deep dive,
a deep clean once a month, do a thorough review of your files, apps and storage.
Do you need them? No. Get rid of them.
And make sure you're doing a naming convention,
so you know exactly where things are at.
Guys.
This is a huge thing,
and I would encourage you to to take some time.
Now is the perfect time to do this.
This is Christmas.
This is time to relax and spend some time.
You have a few extra minutes.
Take that time.
Go out.
Do the things I talked about here.
Organize it.
I challenge you this week.
Do these things.
implements one of the things that I've talked about here.
Just one.
But start cleaning up, you're going to find yourself a more creative creator.
You're going to be more apt to do this thing creation,
whether it be podcasts or videos or live streams.
If your space is clean.
So go out and do that.
Guys, this is going to be the last episode
until the beginning of the new year.
Next year is Christmas.
I want to wish you guys all a Merry Christmas.
I've yeah, I've enjoyed each and every one of you.
Thank you for for listening.
But this is going to be the last episode until after Christmas.
I'm taking a little bit of a break and I'll be back after Christmas.
But stay tuned.
I will be back. Don't worry.
If you've gotten any value out of this podcast episode,
consider giving back some value.
If we were meeting at a coffee shop and I went over all the tips
that I went over today, would you pick up the tab?
If so, consider giving me a few bucks.
Whatever you feel the value of the content was you received from me, go to
podcastanswers.com/support and give back a few bucks.
I appreciate it. It helps keep me encouraged and keep me going as well as
just allows me to support this podcast.
So guys, have a safe week and good luck cleaning up your space.
I will see you in the new year.
Merry Christmas. Have a great week.