Becoming an expert negotiator has a lot more to do with your own confidence, mindset and beliefs than great skill.  One of the key factors in negotiation is negotiating balance in your life.  There are several ways to do that and one of the most important is to keep yourself in balance by clearing the clutter out of your life. 

We’ve often heard advice to clear out the clutter in our lives by getting rid of things we don’t need, keeping our areas clean etc.  What about clearing out the clutter in your mailboxes both online and offline?  I get so many credit card offers that much of my mail is junk mail.  The same banks send me offers almost weekly.  If I don’t check my business mailbox for several days, sometimes I have 2 offers or more from the same bank!  Since I own a business, I get added to a lot of catalog lists for products that I don’t ever use for my company.  Also its election time, so my mailbox is cluttered with mail from various candidates as well. 

How can you reduce the clutter in your offline mailboxes?  Call the companies that send you those offers and ask to be removed from their mailing list of offers or write across the offer application in big bold letters and ask to be removed.  Put it in the postage paid envelope they send you and drop it in the mail. For the companies that send you catalogs you can’t use or don’t want to receive, call and ask to be removed.  It will cut down the clutter for the things you receive and also cut down the time you have to deal with it.

As for your email inbox, if you are like me you may network often.  As I network with people and give them my business card, many times I get added to their email lists without being asked.  I always ask people if I can add them to my list.  With so much spam going around the amount of clutter in our inboxes can be overwhelming.  I immediately unsubscribe to a list of anyone that added me without my permission.  Often times if you enter your email when you purchase something or sign up for a community online, or an event, your email address gets added to all these advertisers email blasts and your inbox gets full.  I use a separate email address to sign up for those types of things, that way if that email gets sold or picked up by other organizations, it won’t be cluttering my main inbox and keeps the clutter down.

Reducing your inbox clutter both online and offline will save you time that you can use to do more productive things.  Start cutting down your clutter today.

GoPINK!