Mission Wealth’s INSPIREDtalk with Andrew Mellen: Un-Stuff Your Life

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[Music] talk unstuff your life with the person known as the most organized man in America Andrew Mellon my name is Seth Streeter the co-founder and CEO of mission wealth today’s program will last 60 Minutes including q a and it will be recorded and you’ll have access to the playback link that you can review later and share with others we have received many questions for today’s program you can also put in live questions in the Q a box at the bottom of your screen and we will group them together and do our best to have Andrew address as many of your questions as possible clearly we are a group that’s ready to get organized today since 1996 Andrew Mellon the author of the best-selling book unstuff your life has helped over 150 000 businesses and people simplify their lives and free up valuable time for what matters most he’s worked with clients such as American Express Goldman Sachs Bank of America and the New York Mets and he’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal New York Times real simple Oprah and time magazines and he’s been a speaker on the tedx stage so it’s a new year and the ideal time

for us to improve how we manage our stuff and get organized so thank you so much Andrew for guiding us on this important Journey it’s my pleasure Seth thanks so much for that introduction and hello everybody I’m so delighted to get to spend this time with you when we start every program that I do we will take three breaths together uh if you don’t know me and chances are many of you don’t know me I’m not a particularly woo-woo kind of person and at the same time the brain science tells us that as few as three breaths will reset our central nervous system so that’s an amazing hack that you can have in your toolbox for any time your day is not going the way that you want it to instead of doubling down on the anxiety or the frustration the contraction if you can expand a little bit and literally just take three concentrated focused breaths you will reboot your central nervous system so nine o’clock in the morning nine o’clock at night at any point it’s available to you it’s factory installed you don’t have to pay for it and as long as you are breathing and alive it’s it’s right at your fingertips literally so we’re

gonna do that together I I breathe on a kind of five in hold for one and then exhale on a count of five and if you need to you can shake it out I’m going to always helps me just kind of settle into my chair and this means that we’re all doing the same thing at the exact same time sets us up for a greater sense of intention and success and here we go

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excellent now we’re all in sync together wherever we are in the world we’re all together in this exact same moment aligned Magic I’m going to give you 15 seconds on the clock to set your intention for today if you just want to learn more about getting organized or simplifying your life I feel pretty confident that in the hour that we’re together that will happen if you’d like to take away something more specific than that I’m going to give you these 15 seconds to just set that intention for yourself like I want to learn how to stop double uh booking myself or I want to learn how to never lose my mobile phone again or I want to learn how to let go of things that I’ve inherited from people that I love the people but I don’t love the stuff whatever it might be specific goal means I can meet you there clock is running foreign

[Music] exact 15 seconds isn’t that amazing if that was making your skin crawl if you were getting a little antsy and you have a story running like I don’t have enough time to start this if you can get agitated or upset in 15 seconds imagine what you could actually leverage those 15 seconds to do in your life it’s again it’s a little teachable moment I’m also going to share with you I have an agenda for today I have a zero tolerance for meetings without agendas I will not go to them I’m fortunate I work for myself so I don’t have to and everybody on my team knows don’t show up for meeting with me without an agenda or I will postpone the meeting it I don’t know what we’ll be doing we might be doing something super useful and successful we might be wasting time I can’t take that chance so I won’t meet if I don’t know what we’re going to be focusing on and so this is a way of me walking my talk and also for those of you who are a little type A and like to know where we’re going before we get there this helps you see where we’re going so you can sit sit back and relax I’m a very safe driver I’ve never had a moving

violation and this is also not my first trip down this road so you can sit back and relax you’re in good hands and we’ll cover everything that we need to cover and we’ll have plenty of time for your questions when we get there now I’m going to share with you a few costs of disorganization not necessarily to freak you out but to really ground this in the math because when we think about both time management and organization they are rooted in math the solutions to your problems are rooted in math story and we’ll talk about story some you know the the unconscious narrative that is running our lizard brains that is not what we want to be leveraging when we’re trying to simplify our lives and unstuff Our Lives get organized and even more importantly than than getting organized is staying organized and so again I just want to I want to ground this in some statistics and some math so we understand that this is not um this is not fungible and it’s not amorphous it’s it’s very concrete the first statistic I’m going to share with you is that 80 of the paper and information you’re holding on to you

will never use again and this could be the first time that story crops up for you you could be thinking oh Andrew you don’t know me I’m an amazing researcher the the documents and the things that I have downloaded and that I’ve saved will definitely come in handy Someday I’m not exactly sure when but this is good stuff I am the exception to your rule and this is what I want to lovingly say to you I’ve been doing this work for over 26 years I I’ve worked in every country on the planet uh and in those 26 years I’ve yet to meet the exception to this rule so you might be exceptional in any number of ways and I’ve had clients that are Nobel Peace Prize winners so you might be exceptional in any number of ways when it comes to this statistic I feel very confident that you are in fact my rule and not the exception the average adult tells 200 lies a day which is my absolute favorite statistic and again this might kick up something of like oh my God you’re challenging my Integrity I’m not challenging your integrity two-thirds of them will probably never come out of your mouth it will just be things that you’re telling

yourself and I will share a short example with you the other day I was working out with my trainer over zoom we’re not in the same room and I’m I’m lifting weights I’m lifting barbells and while I’m lifting weights and he’s coaching me I’m having these conversations with myself about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with literally picking up heavy objects pushing them towards each other and then bringing them back down our mind just makes up stuff all day and as I said a good two-thirds of them will probably never come out of your mouth but a third of them might and they will seem as innocuous as saying hey Seth I’m so sorry to bother you total lie if I was sorry to be bothering Seth I wouldn’t be bothering him so there’s another way to get Seth’s attention which would be to say hey Seth I need your attention for a moment I’m sure you had a plan for what was going to happen over the next hour and that’s about to change you’ll have some feelings we’ll make some time to process through them and I still need to have happen what I need to have happen I didn’t fake apologize for

interrupting him I acknowledge that my actions have consequences and I st and I told the truth so you’ll start to see how these 200 lies play themselves out and it can become a game for you and certainly anybody that you work with that you live with uh that you interact with to start to recognize where you are fudging the truth and often we will do it and then we will tell another 200 one of our 200 lies behind it we will say you know well I’m just trying to be a nice person or I’m trying to take care of somebody’s feelings understand that it’s not our job to manage other people’s feelings we hope that they’re adults if they’re children then you have a certain sense of stewardship for their well-being but still not necessarily taking care of their feelings if you tell your four-year-old that they can’t do something they’ll have some feelings about it your job is not to mollify those feelings but to make room for them to be upset and still hold fast to what you’ve shared with them so when we’re doing this with adults we don’t have to really worry about taking care of people’s feelings we can just tell them

the truth and trust that they can synthesize it themselves the last statistic I’m going to share with you is that the average adult will waste one year of their life looking for lost or misplaced items first of all this is one of the places where I would say please don’t be average don’t be above average in the sense of uh wasting more time be perhaps less than average and waste less time and of course nobody regardless of how Frugal or responsible you are would waste a year of your life looking for your mobile phone or looking for your keys or looking for your wallet after a day or two you’d probably contact your credit card companies and the Secretary of State to get a new driver’s license and your cards replaced you’d call a locksmith and get new keys cut you would um go to the mobile phone store and get a new phone I call this nickel and diming ourselves out of a year of our life because it’s five minutes here it’s 10 minutes there and we will tell ourselves one of our 200 lies I’m going to make up that lost time here’s the thing about time you can’t make it up once you’ve spent it you can

bank money you cannot Bank time so if you tell yourself I’m going to get up extra early tomorrow morning it’s 3 30 for everybody in your time zone it’s not 3 30 for you and four o’clock for them so you you haven’t gotten an edge on them we we often tell a lot of these lies around our relationship to the clock in time clutter is nothing more than deferred decisions so if you look around your home or your office or if because of covid your home is your office now if you look around and you see piles of things stacks of things you might uh be thinking well they they all have a relationship to each other but this is what I want you to know the first thing that you set down in and of itself was maybe not clutter it was just a thing you set it down and you said I’ll get back to that later that was one of your 200 lies then you set something else down on top of it and you said hey this is like that this is actually good time management I’m going to make a tidy pile maybe or less than tidy pile of things that have something in common and then again no time now but later when I have more free time another one of your

200 lies I will deal with all of these things this is actually a good strategy and I will make piles of things that have something in common and then later I will deal with them that’s what causes clutter and here’s the fix because we know that 80 of the stuff that you’re holding on to you’ll never use again you could easily throw it into the recycle bin and and probably be done with most of it and this is how powerful story is again story could be cropping up in the back of your brain saying oh my God that sounds tremendously freeing Andrew but what if there’s something really important in that pile now you’re about to tell yourself another one of your 200 lies I swear I will only touch them one more time and then I will make those decisions that I didn’t make look you you know what your time is worth you can spend all of your time drilling through those piles trying to find a precious gem and look if the deed to your home is in there if the title to your car is in there if your living will is in there your great grandmother’s antique engagement ring by all means go find it if what is in that

stack of junk mail is also a recipe for lemongrass creme brulee that you ripped out of a Martha Stewart Living four years ago thinking this will be a delicious special dessert for a dinner party that you’ve never thrown and you’re still holding on to it you move it from pile to pile thinking someday Someday I’m gonna make that dessert and it’s gonna blow everybody’s mind that recipe could go in the garbage in the recycle bin and it would not negatively impact your life and in fact probably in 30 seconds you could find that recipe on Epicurious or someplace else online so only you know what your time is worth but if you’re going to tell yourself another one of your lies and drill down into that pile just be mindful that when you get to the end of it if you don’t find anything that’s useful and was worth the investment of your time I want you to learn from that before you go into the next pile right uh forewarned is for armed now when you start to get organized and you start to pull like you open up the junk drawer or you open up the closet where you’ve been throwing dead technology things will get bigger before they get

better I I can’t change that for you but again for armed is for warned I I want you to know that so that you’re not surprised when you open up the closet and suddenly you as you spread things out you discover oh my God that little stack of printers I have four dead printers I have 37 toner cartridges I have 19 USB cables where did all of this stuff come from it how did it fit in that closet that’s crazy it’s the same amount of things it’s just when you lay them out they seem to take up more space they don’t actually take up more space so it’s they haven’t morphed it’s not like that closet in um uh um that uh Bank in uh the Harry Potter series when they go in uh the Deathly Hallows and uh they’re looking for one of the horror cruxes and they’re in there it’s bellatrix’s locker and suddenly you touch something and it multiplies three or four or 12 times this is not what’s happening with your things first of all that’s a fictional book and a movie it and it’s not actually happening it just feels like it so be prepared for it we’ve had this conversation it shouldn’t be shocking when you start to break

things apart and you discover oh my God this takes up so much more space when it when it was than when it was all shoved into the closet underlying everything is our mindset so we need to look at how we think about feel about and interact with stuff to make changes anything that I share with you will be uh secondary in its impact compared to you and how you think about how you feel about and how you interact with stuff that is going to have the most impact and influence over your relationship with these objects these inanimate objects Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sun day you don’t have a calendar with us someday on it neither do I none of us do if you are scheduling things for some day you might as well just schedule them for never because someday is never going to arrive never later there are two kinds of laters there’s a uh a later which is 4 P.M on Friday that’s a real later not now stop bothering me is like the stepchild of someday it’s just another way of procrastinating or deferring a decision so be mindful when you are invoking later and someday that you’re actually

just kicking the ball down the the road and you’re gonna eventually have to pay for that procrastination and that delay it’s important to recognize that you value what you choose so if you choose not to make a choice believe me there’s no judgment or shame or anything coming from me when I share this with you but it’s important that you recognize that no choice is a choice by abdicating your responsibility and surrendering your agency to affect the outcome you’re still choosing to do that you’re not the victim of circumstances if you’ve got a couple of things that you could be doing and you say well I don’t want to do this because that doesn’t look like fun and I don’t want to do this because that doesn’t look like fun either and you tell yourself well I’m just going to wait until one of them becomes Obsolete and then by default I’ll just do the one that’s left and then tell myself one of my 200 lies that’s like I always get the short end of the stick how come everybody else gets to do the stuff that they love to do and I’m always left with the drags well you chose to be left with the dregs

because you procrastinated long enough for this to be the only viable thing that was left that was all you it didn’t happen to you you made it happen and again no judgment or shame around that but this everything that I’m sharing with you is really about uh stopping the shame conversation and stepping up into responsibility and then making different choices if you don’t if you’re unhappy with the outcomes that you’ve been getting making different choices through taking uh proactive responsibility along with talking about value it’s important to recognize that value isn’t guaranteed just because you have a very expensive painting on a wall or some precious gems or precious metals there’s no guarantee that those will be worth what you paid for them or more down the road so uh in in my ecosphere it takes two people for something to have value you as the person who has it and the other person who agrees with you who’s willing to write you a check for the amount of money that you think something is worth without that you have an object and a story so we tend to trade in Fine Art precious metals precious gems uh

fine antiques with clear provenance uh real estate but we have seen all of these things fluctuate in value so if you are sitting on something thinking uh this is my retirement or this is going to send a kid to college or um whatever it is that you are thinking without the other person in the equation you have an object and a story so my recommendation is figure out an action plan to liquidate that as soon as possible or or if it the point is to continue to pass it down uh how that’s going to impact the future Generations do they want your precious items or do will they just find them burdensome and and in fact view them through the lens of there’s a whole bunch of money tied up in this thing that I don’t want how do I harvest that money out of it and now they’ve got a problem to solve so now if you want a simple life you need to make simple choices and um so uh Seth I believe that the chat function is open so I’m going to ask you folks in a second to use the chat function just for this little bit of conversation and uh I’m going to ask you to think of one thing in your life we’re not there yet but one thing in your life

that you brought into your life thinking it was going to make your life simpler that actually complicated and I’m going to give you the example of this clam shell so that you understand what I’m talking about the clamshell comes with the promise of triple wash lettuce organic lettuce and compostable plastic right it’s not compostable in our backyards if you don’t have an industrial compost pile you’re not going to be able to melt this corn plastic with your greens and Browns in your garden it’s not going to happen so even though it promises to make our lives simpler and I’ve also found sand in the bottom of these clam shells so I have to wash the lettuce even though it says it’s triple washed so I’m washing something that’s said it was washed and in addition I have a piece of plastic that now needs to be rinsed out and recycled and taken out to the curb so the promise is simple the delivery is actually complicated versus buying something at the Green Market where I know it’s dirty I I have no expectation that it’s going to be clean I know I have to wash it but when I’m finished with this this does go in my compost

pile so this promises to be simple but is complicated This Promise is to be simple and is simple so now I want you to think I’m going to give you just one minute on the clock and think about um one thing that you’ve brought into your life thinking it was going to make your life more convenient more uh more efficient that actually complicated it could be an app you’ve downloaded to your phone it could be the bread machine that you bought thinking I’m gonna make fresh bread for my family this is a great thing to do you did it once it’s been sitting in the garage for the last four years I don’t care what it is but I’m going to give you one minute on the clock to just share this exercise with each other

all right

and there’s no judgment I mean feel free to share everybody’s going to have one so you don’t have to be self-conscious about what yours was and you got about 30 seconds left

chocolate fountain machine I’m loving these These are great books for old photos file cabinet Robot vacuum right excellent perfect the weights Astrid says a smart TV excellent these are wonderful Fitbit watch perfect the dishwasher amazing and instant pot oh the trunk organizer perfect yep these are excellent all right and we’re at time thank you all very much for playing along I appreciate it now when I talk about story uh I’m talking about that thing that’s running back here right so I don’t know how many of you are old enough to remember Dragnet this was an LA detective series in the uh 60s and this character’s name was Joe Friday the actor’s name was Jack Webb the character’s name was Joe Friday and he would show up on people’s doorsteps and he would say just the facts ma’am just the facts that’s how he was going to solve the crime he didn’t want the story you know he didn’t want all of the uh Superfluous narrative around the facts he just wanted to boil it down to the absolute facts so whether you and if you don’t remember Dragnet you can certainly catch it on Hulu or YouTube it was a

great TV show was not on long you know if that doesn’t resonate with you there’s certainly Luther um a more current detective or even the 21st century version of Sherlock Holmes don’t get attached to this to the detective what I’m suggesting we do is channel our own inner version of sleuth so we are hunting out the facts only and not the story the story is going to trip you up but the facts won’t and now I’m going to share with you some trademark technology so wherever you are I don’t think we can see you this is a webinar not a not a meeting but go ahead and put your fingers like this and then I want you to repeat after me again even though I won’t be able to hear you and uh this is the organizational triangle this is trademark technology I’m not joking about the registered trademark this actually is trademarked uh with the United States government and I want you to repeat after me one home for everything like with like something in something out we’ll do that one more time because this is all you need to know about getting and staying organized I boiled it down to three simple rules

and and it just doesn’t get easier one home for everything like with like something in something out excellent and now I will explain to you what this looks like one home for everything first of all one home for everything in life with like are how we get organized something in something out is how we stay organized and so one home for everything means everything has one home only one home not gonna debate it with you where you keep your keys can be different from where I keep my keys your keys have a home my keys have a home if you carry a bag with you your key should have a home in the bag not at the bottom of the bag along with whatever else is there you know old candy wrappers and possibly some lipstick or you know some chewing gum whatever you know the bag is not gender specific but if you’re dropping things on the bottom of a bag that’s not the home for it it should be on a hook or something inside the bag so you can easily find them everything has one home only one home it can only ever be one of two places you will find anything in 30 seconds or less if you apply this rule like with like means all like objects

live together not most of them so we don’t keep most of the tools in the garage but we keep the Phillips head screwdriver in the junk drawer in the kitchen because we have a story that says you know these knobs always come a little loose I don’t want to go all the way out to the garage to have to get that screwdriver it just makes it this is a good time management hack I’m going to keep this Phillips head screwdriver in this junk drawer and then when I need it it’s right at my fingertips the the problem of course is that you don’t remember that you still probably go out to the toolbox to look for it as you’re digging through the toolbox you’re thinking wow I have a pipe cutter uh I have all these weird tools did I not have a Phillips head screwdriver where could it be you might even end up going out to the hardware store and buying another one and then three weeks later you’re digging through the junk drawer among the leftover bread twist ties possibly some Hardware from some Ikea furniture that somebody put together that you you know they always throw extra in the box and you think well I should keep it I

mean it came with the with the furniture why would I let it go and maybe some uh carryout menus and whatever else you shove in that miscellaneous junk drawer you’ll find the screwdriver and you’ll think God who put the screwdriver here then you’ll remember oh I put it here because this was I now I remember why I did this you think oh now I will never forget it another one of your 200 lies you throw it back in the drawer three weeks later you’ve forgotten that it’s there again so like with like and one home for everything is going to cure 85 of your disorganization when you apply those two rules and those are the only two things you need to do to get organized because once everything has a home and all of its siblings are there everything is where it needs to be at that point all we’re doing is maintaining order in our home we are living with stuff equilibrium that’s what I call it and so when something comes in something’s going out if you have a you know an 8 000 square foot house you’ve got a thousand squid square foot walk-in closet you you have 150 pairs of shoes I am not going to tell you that’s too many

pairs of shoes if you have room for 150 pairs of shoes I will celebrate your 150 pairs of shoes what I will remind you though is when you buy the 150 first pair because you only have 150 Cubbies for all of your shoes it must be because you’re ready to retire one of the first pairs of shoes it’s very simple particularly if you ever tell yourself the story which may be one of your 200 lies I just don’t have enough time you know to do X Y or Z but then at another moment you will tell yourself well you know I’ve just got five minutes before this appointment gets I need to kill five minutes so I’m just gonna flip through this catalog or I’m gonna run into that store and maybe there’s something I can pick up if you don’t have enough time to do the things that are actually important to you you definitely don’t have time to be murdering it and uh if you already have enough of everything that serves you what I don’t care how cheap it is what a bargain it is it’s not a bargain if you don’t need it you have no business augmenting and creating more clutter for yourself if everything is already doing everything that it

needs to do and you’re not missing anything you can always upgrade you can replace things but why would you keep accumulating things there’s no need for it particularly if you aren’t able to get to all of those high value activities that matter to you like showing up on time for your kids soccer game or making a meeting or seeing a play when we can go to the theater or watching a movie on on television during covid whatever it is that you aren’t able to get to now because you don’t have enough time why would you spend it accumulating things it’s the lowest common denominator of activity now when it comes to getting and staying organized these are your best friends a timer and a stopwatch timer is so that we start to move into math-based goals rather than narrative goals from this point forward I would prefer if you never said I am going to work on this until I’m finished because I don’t think any of us know what finished looks like until it actually happens but what we all know what looks like is 15 minutes so if you say I’m going to work on this for 15 minutes and set a timer we know exactly what you set yourself up

to do and when you’re Complete because the task wasn’t based on any other goal then staying focused and getting something done in that quantity of time so when the timer goes off you were Successful Failure breeds failure success breeds success if the last time you tried to do something you were unsuccessful the next time you attempt it you’re already feeling defeated whereas if the the next time you try something you are successful the time after that when you try it you’re already feeling empowered and buoyant like oh my God I didn’t think I was going to last 15 minutes in that closet suddenly I’m on fire I’m gonna set the timer for another 15 minutes or maybe even 30 minutes and you see how it builds momentum and keeps you moving forward the stopwatch is to time everything that you have a story about and no math so you might have a story that it takes you 15 minutes to get ready in the morning does it really have you timed yourself does it take 15 minutes does it take 12 minutes does it take 30 minutes on a day that you’re washing your hair and you know needing to press a garment

if you will time yourself for seven days this is a noble experiment this is not a gotcha experiment so the idea is not to humiliate yourself but just to discover how long things actually take and so my suggestion to you is spend one week seven days timing everything that you do that is a recurring task the one-off tasks are somewhat interesting you know anecdotally but they’re not so useful when we’re trying to come up with math based Solutions but knowing how long does it take you to brush your teeth in the morning how long does it take you to bathe how long does it take you to get dressed how long does it take you to make breakfast or coffee or coffee and breakfast how long does it take you to get the kids set up with food how long does it take you to get the kids set up for school how much time do you have to spend with the kids in school if they’re homeschooling either due to covid or because you’re homeschooling them how long does it take you to do a load of wash load the dishwasher etc etc once you have all of this data you’re going to discover it’s going to blow your mind you’re going to discover how you’re

actually spending your time and how long things actually take rather than what you think they do as a rule we tend to either overestimate or underestimate how long things take so this is going to poke a hole in a bunch of those 200 lies and again it’s not to uh it’s not to catch you in a lie as much as it is to empower you to make different strategic choices once you have that data now when we think about stuff and many of you had these questions and when we get to the Q a we’ll get to it right about ancestors and honoring ancestors and this image is an image of an Oban uh ceremony which is a Japanese ceremony where we honor the dead um I’d say we even though I’m not Japanese I’ve participated in Oban ceremonies uh at a Zen Monastery that I used to uh spend time at so uh there are many ways that we can honor our ancestors that don’t require us to fetishize objects so it’s important to remember that your dad is not the clock your grandmother is not the teacup and no gift is a burden nothing freely given should ever weigh you down if it comes with strings you now have my permission to cut those strings

yeah and if in the past you have been prone to giving things to people with strings attached to them I’m going to lovingly suggest that you stop that a gift is something given voluntarily without payment in return to show favor towards someone honor an occasion or make a gesture of assistance gifts are not lessons they’re not punishment they’re not motivational tools they’re not blackmail so if you have a tendency to give people things hoping that this is going to speed them along their self-improvement path I’m I’m going to suggest that you stop that uh enough said also when it comes to objects it’s important to remember that the sandwich was special not the bag it came in so if you’re somebody who likes to keep the boxes that things came in whether they’re collectibles or not like the computer box or the printer box uh certain things require the boxes in a secondary Market or they increase the value of the object on the secondary Market when you go to sell them like a Rolex watch uh having the fob and the tag and the Box and all of those materials are better if you’re going to sell the box if you’re

going to sell the watch on the secondary Market at a later date if you have a collectible bobble heads those boxes will be valuable when you go to liquidate your collection the box that your Apple computer came in or your Dell tablet came in is not a collectible and it doesn’t have any inherent value when you’re letting it go when you’re when you’re um when you’re holding on to it so you can let it go and uh and again I so I just button this up by saying it’s the sandwich not the bag it came in you you focus on the object itself not its wrapping paper we’re going to talk about several of you had questions about email so in my ecosphere we have the seven deadly time thieves and those are uh interruptions over committing poor planning uh multitasking email meetings and procrastination those are the seven deadlys I’ll tell you them one more time interruptions over committing poor planning multitasking emails meetings and procrastination we we in this setting we’re not going to go over all of them it’s just many of you had asked about email so I’m sharing one of them with you and these are my top three tips for

managing email the first one is check email only when you can read it and reply to it and I’m going to help you understand the logic behind that at best you are wasting the time reading it because you will need to reread it when you have time to reply to it right so that’s best case scenario worst case scenario is you read the email now you’re agitated or upset by the contents of the email but you don’t have time to reply to it so you’ve set yourself off you’ve knocked yourself off your game you can’t concentrate and focus on what you’re supposed to be doing because you’re either composing the snarky response in your head or you’re just so upset and agitated that you can’t focus so that’s the worst case scenario it’s why this is my number one tip when it comes to managing your email the the next one is don’t read and reply constantly throughout the day unless you have a customer service job where you must be responsive to your clients as soon as they write to you most people can answer email once an hour in their professional setting or if not in your professional setting twice or three

times a day max I am not a brain surgeon if you are sending me an email thinking that I’m going to respond immediately you are misguided the best thing to do would be to probably text me or call me you would want to do something that would get my attention because I’m not in my inbox and the last rule that I’ll share with you is if you haven’t yet automated your email application or client we used to call them email clients in the olden days in the tech world right now we call them email apps uh if you haven’t automated those by setting up rules or filters and the terms are interchangeable they just depend on which platform you’re on in a Mac world we call them rules I think in Outlook we also call them rules in Gmail might call them filters so it doesn’t matter where you are but you can configure them at any email program from AOL to Gmail will allow you to set up these rules or filters and what they let you do is pre-sort emails before they land in your inbox into any number of subfolders that you would create and you can sort them by sender specific email addresses or the domain right so in

Seth’s case it could be any email from anybody at Mission wealth could go into a folder called Mission wealth it doesn’t need to necessarily be from Seth Streeter at Mission wealth it could be subject it could be any subject that contains the words your annual report or annual report it could so you can see how you can create uh what I like to think of as Nets to capture certain emails and direct them into subfolders don’t worry that you’re going to miss an important message because any one of the subfolders that has a new message in it will have a circle with a numeric indicator in it telling you there’s a new message in there so if you scan those and you don’t see any new messages you don’t have to worry that you’re missing something important because it was redirected from your inbox into a subfolder tremendous Time Saver now when everything is precious nothing is precious I’m going to share this story with you before we move into the questions and this is uh when I was working with a private client uh on Long Island we were cleaning out her grandmother’s house we found two things in the

grandmother’s house that were silver one was a ball of aluminum foil under the kitchen sink because Grandma had grown up during the Great Depression the other was a sterling silver tea set now if we just stayed on the surface right two silver objects both belonging to Grandma we have to keep them both of course we don’t even if you needed some aluminum foil you could go to the Dollar Store and get another roll of aluminum foil hopefully we will avoid the kind of depression that grandma lived through and we won’t need that ball of aluminum foil so we threw it in the recycle bin the sterling silver tea set we sold at auction for 22 000 dollars when everything is precious you’re living in a museum which is unlikely regardless of of how beautiful your things are probably everything isn’t of equal value and weight and if nothing is precious you’re probably living in a dump and that’s probably not true either so we have to be able to distinguish between trash and treasure as we’re making these critical decisions about what stays and what goes it typically isn’t complicated it’s just sometimes we

glaze over and don’t want to become as specific and focused as we need to be to make those kinds of critical decisions we just want to defer the decision and fall backwards instead of leaning in and staying Mindful and present and aware about the choices that we’re making it’s actually not very complicated um with that I’m going to share with you that I’ve got a bonus for those of you who are we had many questions about paper and so I’ve got the perfect filing system label guide that I’m going to make available to Seth that then he can get out to all of the folks that registered for this this uh webinar and that’s my gift to you and now we’re going to open it up for some questions Seth do you want to uh do you wanna do you have any questions you want to ask me or should I just go through the questions you’ve already given me first why don’t you start with the questions that I gave you first and we’ll start there okay perfect so these are some questions that we got in advance from folks um the first one was what’s the best way to engage the whole family on stuffing and I would say uh identify a common

problem uh we seem to lose a lot of time as a family getting out of the door or getting ready in the morning does everybody agree that’s the first step if everybody doesn’t agree if if we don’t have consensus we can’t proceed we need a common problem to come up with a common solution otherwise it becomes you dictating to your family we have a problem I’ve decided we have a problem and I’ve decided what the fix is you all need to get with the program there you will get zero buy-in you will get a bunch of resistance and uh you will not it will not be a sustainable solution so the first goal is identify the common problem then work on the common solution which is a cousin of how do you get your spouse to let go of stuff how long you’ve been married is my question to you you if you’ve been married more than three weeks you should not be surprised that your CL that your spouse has stuff focus on loving your spouse not on their stuff annoying you that’s the that’s this recipe for a happy marriage and if it’s that big of a deal uh you can try that thing with with your spouse and say hey it seems like we have a lot of

things in the house that don’t necessarily serve us and are not supporting us and doing what we want to do would you agree if they say no no I think we’re I think we have plenty I think we have plenty of room and I love all the stuff that’s around us then you have a problem they don’t have a problem and your choice is either a happy marriage or living alone with less stuff and I’m not being facetious I mean it really is I have friends uh who she’s an arc architect and he is an engineer he’s super tidy she is a hot mess she built him a house in their backyard so that he could live on the same piece of property and be in complete control of his environment they have sleepovers in each other’s homes but he can come visit her in the main house they can have a meal together and hang out and then when he’s fed up with all of the mess he can go back to his house it worked for them you know stieglitz and O’Keefe lived in Santa Fe and New York City they found a way to make their relationship work I don’t think that was clutter based I think that was interests and and geography based but still you see there

are no rules about what a relationship looks like if you’re that’s one of your 200 lies that we must live together and he has to get his uh act together how do you declutter with three young kids I would encourage you to gamify it you should teach them the organizational triangle and then you should set a timer and say uh whoever gets the most stuff put away in the next 15 minutes wins or whatever a fruit roll-up or whatever you want to give them a gift card a trip to a place that they like to go to it doesn’t really matter what the reward is but it needs to be something that they would all want to compete for the other thing that I will tell you about kids is you might like Lids kids don’t so if you want them to put their toys back in a basket don’t put a lid on it you’re not going to live in an L day Courthouse unless you have a housekeeper who wants to follow behind your kids and put things away for you if you want your kids to put things away don’t create obstacles every lid is a barrier to them putting things where you want them to go so get attractive baskets that they can see the content in and then they can put

the stuffed animals with the stuffed animals the art supplies with the art supplies the Legos with the Legos it’s very easy and they will enjoy it once you teach it to them and explain it to them they’ll get on board I’ve done this with many many clients and they’re small kids I like getting statements in the mail so I review it when I receive it do you think getting it electronically is better uh I think storing it electronically is better than storing it in paper you can certainly get the paper version and still download the digital version and file it I reconcile off when I my bookkeeper now reconciles my bank statements but when I was reconciling them I would either print them up or get them in the mail I mean some of the banks now start charging you uh to not be uh paperless and so I didn’t really want to give them the dollar for the statement so I would download it and print it up and then check things off as I was reconciling and then shred it my bookkeeper does that now so I don’t know whether she prints it or she doesn’t print it but I just saved the digital versions now so I think you can have the

paper version I wouldn’t store the paper version I would store the digital version how do I best manage my email inbox I think I’ve told you Momo regarding information overload so let’s be clear right now it’s 12 50 Eastern 9 50 Pacific there’s a sale happening someplace in the world somebody’s having a bar mitzvah somebody’s having a wedding somebody’s having a funeral uh there’s a concert happening someplace there’s a soccer match happening someplace all of these things are happening and we are not attending any of them the quality of our life is not being negatively impacted by being right where we are in this moment I think fomo is all about our ability to stay focused it is this a glass half empty mindset that you have or a glass half full saying no to something is saying yes to something we value more focus on that stop worrying about what you’re missing and pay attention to what’s actually happening how do I deal with heirlooms I think we’ve talked about that uh and there’s several heirloomy questions so I mean how do I deal with heirlooms is a rather broad question right are we talking

about uh approach are we talking about uh 14th Century Buffet are we talking about uh an old Master uh painting collection are we talking about you know a collection of yadro the the heirlooms will determine how you’re going to deal with them and the number one thing I would say is if they are intended for future Generations I would check in if they are adults I would check in with them and say these are things that are currently in my possession that will eventually become yours do you want them yes or no it is a yes or no question you need to hear their answer if they say I love you I don’t love the stuff you’re that is not your uh prompt to start arguing with them but don’t you know how important this was great great grandma carried this all the way on her back from Ireland or you know Germany whatever that’s you ask them a question they told you take it at face value and then you can together with them strategize okay if we’re going to liquidate these things how are we going to go about doing that and that ties into this is like the challenges of decluttering with an eye toward leading our children less to deal

with clean up after yourself don’t leave a mess for your children it it’s only a challenge if you make it a challenge make decisions what do they need what do you need what do they want what do you want it only becomes complicated or a challenge if you uh if you make it that it it it’s a it’s an easy problem to solve unless you stay stay stuck in the story uh what’s my approach to downsizing items I think I’ve just explained it to you I think uh having everything that serves you in whatever phase of life you’re in is fine it’s always better to do your given while you’re living so you’re knowing where it’s going it would be much better instead of people waiting for you to die to get X Y or Z wouldn’t you rather let them have it now so you can enjoy their enjoyment of having it while you’re here to witness it instead of them having to deal with it while they’re also dealing with the grief while you’re gone much better to be proactive than passive um I think we’ve just talked about this one uh so the patterns that lead us to accumulate stuff is all about remaining unconscious it’s unconscious

grasping at things thinking that they are going to increase the quality of our life in an unconsidered way so just bring your awareness to like what do we need to feel comfortable what do we need to feel supported what do we need to feel like we live in a beautiful home how many footstools do you need how many sofas do you need how many uh upholstered chairs do you need coffee tables television sets iPads it’s not hard to figure these things out if you know what’s important to you uh I am now a caregiver for my spouse and sometimes gets stressed by having to do everything I’m very sorry and there’s no spin on that when I say that I I have several clients that are dealing with this this is what is happening the fact that you are doing everything is completely legitimate and it is what’s happening it won’t be like this forever but if you are This Is The New Normal and so I think some of the discomfort comes expecting it to resolve itself on a timeline that is unpredictable the more you can breathe and if you don’t have a meditation practice I would encourage you to create one the more you

can just breathe and be with whatever is happening while it is happening the less fraught it will feel it’s intense nothing that I can say is going to make it less intense but it doesn’t need to be um like actively aggressive and hurtful it just is what is happening I’ve always had trouble separating physical possessions from memories first of all note that this person is speaking in an absolute like I’ve always right it’s a clue to one of your 200 lies if something is always or never chances are it’s a 200 live because few things are all or nothing right so I’ve always had trouble separating physical possessions from memories they bring back especially family items you have chosen to blur the lines this object in and of itself is a bell right I can tell you the story that this belonged to my great-grandmother she carried it over from Russia and uh this was how she used to ring for the servants every morning to bring her breakfast that may or may not be true none of it really matters it’s either a bell that I use because I love it and it has function it doesn’t matter where it came from the only thing that comes with a

story is an American Girl doll they come with a little booklet inside the box everything else has a story that we’ve accumulated you can stop telling that story anytime you choose to what are my thoughts on minimalism I do not care for Dogma in any form so forced uh you know sort of asceticism does not appeal to me I’m an essentialist I love beautiful things and I want to have just enough beautiful things that serve me I don’t feel the need to aggressively reduce the amount of things that I have because some person probably uh you know a tech uh Refugee who’s got a six or a seven figure settlement as he left uh his practice is now telling me that minimalism is the way to live my life right I’m not a Zen monk I don’t need to have just a begging Bowl in a robe and a spoon that isn’t my path in life so I can have all of the things that serve me none of them that don’t that’s how I feel about minimalism and the last one that I have here is how have your approaches changed since covid they actually haven’t it just requires even more attention to detail and being present because now that home and work

have sometimes uh been uh piled on top of each other the separation that used to create some Breathing Room commute time that used to create some Breathing Room those transitions Between Worlds has been collapsed so it just requires us to be even more uh mindful aware of how we are moving through time and space so that we don’t create more clutter more disarray that our behavior isn’t bumping into other people and that’s what I would say thank you so much Andrew I I wanted to ask just three more questions and then we can close uh we have a couple questions around photos what are your best practices on how to deal with our old photos oh well again this is a big question right because the there is no cookie cutter solution to photographs uh the question that I’ll ask you is what’s the end game for the photos do people want the photographs after you leave do they want them is it worth your time putting them in photo albums in my world I believe uh your kids your grandkids your grandkids for sure are digital natives it’s unlikely they’re going to curl up in the window box with a cup of tea and a photo album

looking at a bunch of dead people they don’t know so my suggestion is digitize the images and put them on digital frames get them into circulation in the family and among people who care in a way that people can actually interact with them and then from there it gets more nuanced but we don’t have time to for all that all those steps so got it okay second to last question is I’m very curious about all the items that count as stuff that are not physical items so what are the top stuffs that you see clients dealing with that aren’t physical items but they’re keeping them from doing what they love the most well that’s mental clutter right mental or emotional clutter and they’re again for as many people as there are there are flavors of mental clutter I know I have many clients who um lack for nothing material in the world and still constantly create fictional obstacles to their happiness uh for whatever reason I’m not a therapist you know so I I can’t necessarily uh shrink like why X is doing this versus why that person is doing that what I can tell you is uh once everything has a home and all like

objects are together it will be really clear once everything’s functional in your life ah look I just make stuff up to keep myself trapped in this Loop of of ineffective inefficient behavior and I want to be happy so I’m going to start to make different choices that get me closer to happiness and it becomes very clear when everything is in its home that you’re the problem not the stuff at all and what’s our last question last question is what are the biggest no-brainer categories to begin unstuffing two areas that we could start with yeah and actually I’m gonna I’m gonna bend your question because it’s not there is no area to begin in uh as far as a category goes this is how I want you to think about it the fork in the road is either low hanging fruit a quick win or the thing that is most compacted for you and a big win neither is preferable it all depends on how much stamina energy and momentum you have if you are feeling a little puny and tentative and you’re you know you’re trapped in a lot of story I say go for a quick win and that could be as simple as assigning a home for your keys your

wallet your mobile phone uh picking up junk mail and throwing it in the recycle bin clearing off surfaces of things that definitely don’t belong there that’s a fast win and that will get you in gear and you will be able to build momentum there if you’re feeling strong like a clutter Warrior go for the pla you go for the sad scary Corner in the basement go to the place where the most stuff is that every time you see it causes you the biggest heart take because you’ll get the biggest win there once you Vanquish that either way set the timer and 15 minutes to three hours 15 minutes on the short end three hours on the long end and just get to work and you will make progress and as I said before failure breeds failure success breeds success once you start moving the dial it will become easier and easier to move the dial beyond that great well you went through those questions really impressively thank you so much Andrew you’ve given us so many tangible ways that you know we can improve our relationship with stuff and get some valuable time back for what matters most those of you who would like

to dive in deeper and kind of continue this and you can go to andrewmelon.com and in the future he’ll be doing some uh five day challenges so it’ll kind of help us put our feet to the fire we will also be emailing you all a blog post with Andrew’s top tips and we’ll also be giving you a recording link so you can watch us again and review it and you can maybe share it with some of your friends and loved ones and we also will be sending you a brief survey so we really would appreciate your feedback I’m happy to announce that our next inspired talk will be a Dan buettner the best-selling author of the blue zones he’ll be sharing lessons on longevity and how we can live longer more fulfilling lives uh this event will be on April 7th if you’re interested in other inspired living programs including our small group conversation circles and our larger group wisdom shares please feel free to reach out to your Mission Health advisor you can also go to missionwealth.com and look under inspired living it’s our aim to really add value to your finances and to your overall health and happiness so at this

time thank you again for joining us and thank you again Andrew for a wonderful conversation and you may disconnect bye everybody thanks [Music]