Amanda Jefferson explores the impact of physical and digital clutter on both your life and your clients’ lives—and provides key practices to help minimize it.

Amanda Jefferson is not affiliated with Hartford Funds

Julie, if there’s one thing you and I agree on, it’s the thrill of a new idea around productivity. I mean, I’ve said for years, even prior to meeting you and you coming Dart for funds, I was just a productivity junkie, starting with Stephen Covey and then David Allen and others. But boy, I just. Any time we can get insight on how to clean the clutter and make ourselves more focused, I’m a fan.

Absolutely. You know, that brings me so much joy. A to do list organization crossing off the to do list, anything to gain a few minutes in the day. That is absolutely what makes me tick. So our guest today was something that I have been looking forward to for a very long time.

Well, and even think about you think about so many of the ideas that we get sometimes come from books or articles that we read, so on, so forth. But I love when we get the chance to talk to someone who’s actually in the business of helping individuals declutter and focus, right? Because it’s kind of like it takes it from three theoretical down to real life. And I loved hearing some of the examples and thoughts that Amanda Jefferson had to share with us today.

Absolutely. I think you’re right. Oftentimes we hear big picture, you should do this. You could do that. But it’s like, well, what are the actual steps that I could take in order to implement this in my life? And I think that’s what she does such a great job of doing.

So in this episode today about how to declutter and what clutter actually does to us mentally and physically. You know, it’s a reaffirmation of some things, but I learned a few new things and I’m excited for our audience to hear as well. So I wanted to tell everybody a little bit about Amanda Jefferson and why we had her on the podcast today.

Absolutely. Amanda Jefferson is the owner of Indigo Organizing, the creator of the Done With You digital organizing coaching program and the Get It Done Club, one of the world’s first Con Mori consultants, a TEDx speaker and the co-host of the Good Enough ish podcast. Amanda has been featured in Real Simple, Harper’s Bazaar, The Wall Street Journal and Better Homes and Garden, among others. She was recently named a top 50 woman speaker of 2024 by renowned speaker and author Jess Ekstrom, known affectionately as The Tech Whisperer. Amanda helps busy people declutter their digital lives and talks to audiences about how to quiet the noisy shoulds of society.

So joining us now is Amanda has a few tips for us on decluttering our lives and the importance of keeping clutter out of our minds and out of our bodies.

Hi, I’m John.

And I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Funds Human Centric Investing podcast.

Every other week, we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go.

Amanda, welcome to the Human Centric Investing Podcast. We are so excited to have you here with us today.

I am thrilled to be here. We’ve been talking about this for a long time, so it’s exciting that the day is here.

So, Amanda, I got to tell you, I’m glad that our video production team has gone with a fairly narrow camera angle because today’s episode is on clutter. And I don’t want to expose you to any more of my background, if you know what I’m talking about. But I do want to understand your specialty is organization. And you talk obviously a lot about clutter. So for those of us that tend to get some clutter down, then what’s the overall impact that clutter has on our lives? And how do you think about clutter in general, whether it’s physical, digital, any kind of clutter?

The impact is huge. I mean, I think our environment sort of mirrors what’s happening inside of our brains. So when there’s just stuff everywhere and it’s chaotic and when you can’t make sense of it and it all feels overwhelming, that’s what happens inside of our brain. So there’s a lot of data out there that talks about this. So, for example, they say the average American spends 55 minutes a day just looking for things. Like. And that’s a that’s 12 days a year. That’s like longer than a vacation or, you know, they say, you know, housework would be eliminated 40% just by paring down the amount of things that we have. And UCLA did a study that even showed that in women in particular, there’s a relationship between the our cortisol levels, our stress hormone and the number of objects that are in our home. So that’s why we’re like, can you pull a dumpster up out front, just throw everything in there that will immediately reduce my cortisol levels. So it’s huge. And I think it’s gotten even more intense kind of in the last couple of decades when it’s just been so much easier to get stuff. And I think we’re kind of reaching a time in our society where we’re done. We don’t want as much stuff anymore. We want to kind of go back to simple living.

The people that rent storage units would disagree with you, Amanda. They would want you to keep collecting more and more stuff.

I know. And that’s like a multi-billion dollar industry because people have so much stuff.

They really do. It’s funny, Amanda, that you should say that because I’ve always said the best day of my life is the day that we go to the dump and get rid of things. It’s just it truly brings me so much joy. It’s like a weight lifted. So that’s really interesting, those statistics. But I guess when someone is overwhelmed with the clutter, where do they start? I know that I tend to start with the list lists tend to call me, but in your expertise, where does someone start when they’re looking in all these rooms and there’s stacks and piles and just things everywhere? How does one start the decluttering process when it maybe sometimes feels insurmountable?

Yeah. So I was trained by Marie Kondo, which I know Julie, you’re a big fan. So I was trained by Marie Kondo in 2016, the first class ever of certified KonMari consultants here in the United States. And I you know, the world of professional organizing has existed for a really long time. And there’s always these tips of declutter for ten minutes a day or get rid of it if you haven’t worn it in a year. But when Marie Kondo came onto the scene, it was kind of the first time that I really felt like there was this really structured plan in place. And as someone that had never been a professional organizer or had never attempted to do my own home sort of top to bottom or help other people, I loved that it was just such a roadmap. So what, Marie, basically, if you have to boil down her entire method into kind of two different things one, you tidy by category. So the question, where do you start? There’s five categories. It’s clothing, books, paper kimono, which is the Japanese word for like everything else. Think like kitchen, bath, basement, garage, and then sentimental. So that’s kind of the first principle. That’s your roadmap. That’s exactly where you start and the order that you go in. And then the second piece of that is this really ruthless question Does it spark joy? And that’s not anything that anybody had really asked before or talked about. And so I was actually just ruthlessly cleaning my office this morning, going through all these books just covered in dust. And a lot of them felt like shoulds like, I should read this. I should, I should. But if you really ask yourself, does it spark joy? No, it doesn’t. And so it makes it a lot easier to kind of send it on its way.

Amanda, How about if I’m a financial professional and I’ve got stacks of paperwork that none of it brings me joy, but I can’t throw it out there. You should a should have financial professional be thinking in terms of categories, in terms of the work that they do or whether it’s paperwork, their office, anything like that. Like if I were hiring you to come into my office, how how might I begin to think about organizing just my practice before I even got into my home?

Right. Well, it’s interesting because that was Marie Kondo’s first client. She was working in sales or something and went into a CEO’s office and he’s talking and talking. And she was like, I’m sorry, I cannot concentrate because your office is such a mess. Can I can I clean it? And so she did hers. And then he talked to his friends and she did all of theirs and everything. So I think for financial professionals who spend so much time in their office, that idea of joy, like surrounding yourself with things that you love. Right. So like, I have, you know, artwork in here that I love. Behind me, I have a little bouquet of flowers. I have one of my favorite poems that’s framed behind me, Matisse, who’s one of my favorite artists. This that I’m pointing to right here is my dad’s old pencil sharpener that I used to sharpen my pencil with when I was, you know, a ten year old in his office. So those are all things that bring me joy. So I think approaching your office as how can I incorporate more joy here and make it more pleasant for my clients to come in and experience it and then asking those ruthless question. I’m sure financial professionals have a ton of books and like you said, a ton of papers, but do they really need those books? Do they really need those papers? Could they digitize? Could they work with an assistant or something like that to kind of eliminate those papers? So just making your space feel like it’s a place that you actually want to spend time and it just doesn’t feel either boring or too, you know, sterile. It actually has you in it.

It’s interesting you say that, Amanda, because some of the work that Julie and I have done with various the research organizations that we work, work with have said that they call them artifacts, the artifacts in your workspace that may remind clients when they sit down about the town’s history or something about the types of clients that you work with, if they’re professionals of some type or medical or whatever, that having some of those artifacts that you probably find interesting or at least would spur a conversation about. That’s interesting. What is that and why do you have that in your office? You know, sometimes spur those creative conversations that we’re oftentimes seeking to have.

Exactly, because I think especially with financial professionals, people really need to trust you so that no like and trust factor is so important. And so what can you do in your office or in your zoom background or anything to kind of differentiate yourself and kind of make yourself more of a person to this potential client or current client?

I think that makes so much sense. Amanda, you mentioned something about digitizing, and I think that that’s an interesting segue way to, you know, obviously there’s so much physical, so many physical items, papers, books, etc.. But what about the digital clutter? Obviously, we have so many documents, so many emails. At what point have you or have you worked with individuals on thinking about their spaces digitally and how to declutter their digital life? Could you tell us a little bit about that and maybe the work that you’ve done there? Because I know there are days when my physical space is very clean, but my inbox is truly stressing me out and weighing me down, and it’s actually starting to take the joy out of my life. And it sometimes feels like a never ending nightmare.

A never ending, not a good thing. That’s a very unlikely in.

Your joy, Julie.

And a lot of joy in that never ending nightmare. You know, I so I did the physical work with in people’s physical spaces for about seven years. But last year and last year, I transitioned almost 100% to helping people with their digital digital clutter because it’s such an elephant in the room. It’s such a never ending nightmare and it just keeps coming. And when we talk about our digital stuff, we’re talking about in the tens and the hundreds of thousands in terms of the number of emails that people have, the number of photos that people have. And the tech is always changing and people can’t keep up. So it’s an example of just where you experience a lot of friction in your daily life, a lot of small business. I work with a lot of small business owners and you know, they spend half of their day resetting passwords, doing putting in the code, then forgetting the password that they just reset. They can’t find the file. I work with clients a lot on helping them actually understand how their tech works.

Because I think that is where we have to start. I can tell you, set aside an hour a day to get through your email, but if you don’t actually understand kind of how the tech works, then it can make it a really, really big chore. So I feel like, you know, we get handed these like $2,000 supercomputers than like a pretty white box, like good luck. And nobody actually tells you, if you use a two finger tap or if you swipe this way or if you do that, you know. So that’s kind of where I start with people. And it’s not a generational issue. It’s not, you know, the 70 year olds, it’s 20 year olds, 30 year olds, four year olds, five year olds that are totally in a like overwhelmed. They’re in the never ending nightmare right there with you. Julie.

You and I, I know, chatted a while back and on my personal email about was the never ending nightmare that we were chatting about was the Gmail and you were talking about ruthlessly unsubscribing. And that was something that I don’t know why it never occurred to me. Right. All of the you know, maybe you sign up once for the 10% off coupon, which is something that I always love. Right. Your first order, save that 10% or get the free shipping. But then it never occurred to me to unsubscribe. And so day in and day out, you’re getting these emails and so they just add up and add up and add up and it just seems like they stack up. And so things like that. And I think you’re right that all of a sudden it becomes this epiphany Why am I not cleaning this up and just doing that little trick that you taught me? It immediately shrunk my inbox. And I’m sure you have many other tricks that you can share with individuals on just immediately managing their inbox. But that was immediately life changing for me, so I wanted to share that.

Yeah, I like to work in metaphors when it comes to our tech because sometimes I think it kind of helps people understand things a little bit better. So I think of us as sort of like goalie’s, you know, soccer goalies. And what’s happening with our emails right now is like, we’re just frozen. We’re like a soccer goalie that’s frozen in the middle of the goal and our emails and it’s just like the score is 1002 zero and the balls are just coming in and coming in and we’re just frozen because how can you possibly compete against 2000 balls? Right? So I work with them on basically like, let, let me figure out how to get you moving so that we can you can get these, you know, balls out of your and also not have a thousand coming your way. So how can we get a more of a defense in front of you where we’re setting up things in your Gmail? Like maybe you’ve tried to unsubscribe from this thing a thousand times and it keeps coming. You can set a filter that deletes it upon arrival or, you know, things like that. Or I have a Gmail course where I walk people through all of these little hacks, like setting up priority inbox where you can actually completely change the way that your Gmail looks so that it can divided into these really, really nice little categories. So there’s just so many things that you can do that people don’t even know about that can empower you as that goalie so that you’re not just standing there frozen and the score is 1000 to 0 and you have no idea what to do.

So, Amanda, when it comes to kind of organizing your digital clutter, do you is there a do usually have like a template that you work with or do you encourage each individual to kind of think about their workflow and kind of set up their own? I guess maybe a better question is how adept at people are people at setting up their own organizational structures? How do you encourage them to think when they’re approaching not the trash emails but the emails they need to do something with, but they keep accumulating as well.

Right. So it really it does have to be kind of a case by case basis, which is why I offer the one on one service with people and then I offer, you know, just like how to do your Gmail, which people can kind of learn on demand on their own. But the thing is, everybody just has different tech. You know, you might have like a PC and an iPhone or an iPhone and a mac and, you know, or you have an Android and a mac. And so everything is really different. And I think that’s what people really struggle with today is because all of these things are different companies and none of them want to play nice with each other. So my job is to kind of help them figure out, okay, what tech do you have and how can we make them play nice? And usually what we do is we work on what I call the big four. So it’s emails, it’s files, it’s passwords and it’s photos. So I’ll say to them, okay, what’s giving you the most pain? And let’s start there. And as soon as I can kind of help them create some sort of structure for like email, for example, let’s create an action needed folder so that every single time you get an email that needs action, you put it in there and you don’t let that folder get full for two days before you empty it out. Right? Little things like that. Once we get that structure in place, they’re kind of off to the running. And I fired myself and they don’t need me anymore. It’s just getting them in that big for the structure, and then they’re good to go.

I think that makes sense and that’s really good to have those buckets because I think for most people, one of those categories is going to speak to them immediately. And that’s such a great jumping off point because otherwise it can feel a little bit overwhelming to be facing all four categories at once. And then that’s when maybe people say, you know what? I don’t have time to do all of this. I’m not going to make any decisions. But I think choosing one of those categories that maybe speaks to you most and then starting there makes so much sense. One other question that I’m sure a lot of our financial professionals that are listening are having. You know, a lot of their clients that are in the sandwich generation are probably facing, you know, not only having these challenges for themselves, but also helping their parents with these issues and also probably their their adult children. Right. So they’re getting this from both ends. How do you.

suggest that they think about all of this? Right. I mean, you know, there’s just so much stuff and maybe helping aging parents start to go through some of the physical and digital things and sort of prepare for that next stage of life and making sure that they’re not leaving behind a mess for others. You know, obviously, we’ve got multi generations of things. Any guidance there for financial professionals as they’re working with clients, especially multiple generations, and kind of helping them prepare for the future?

Yeah, I, I actually just recently discovered a company that I may be getting certified in that’s called Trustworthy that I’m really excited to learn a lot more about, which is all about helping people get all of these important documents all in one place. Power of attorney, living trust. You know, all of that passwords, all of that sort of thing in the meantime, so that that’s a service that people can get that I think is really excellent. Another thing that you can do, though, is just so when my dad was sick and he ultimately passed, I was so glad that I took the time to do things like so, you know, I have Dropbox, which is a cloud service. And so I made sure that I had in there his trust and his power of attorney and all of those things. I also I use a password management tool called one password. So I made sure that all of his passwords were all in there, including, you know, the name of his childhood best friend or whatever, whatever those security questions were. I also made a list of all of his accounts and the account number and all of that and made sure that I was listed. So it was a lot of work to do all of this, but I was so glad that I did it on the front end. And then just like hot tip. You can actually fax from your phone, which came in handy when I was having to fax death certificates and powers of attorney. There’s an app called Genius Fax where you can actually just scan a document right into your phone and vaxart, which also really came in handy. So I think to sum it up, it’s really getting all the most important documents in a place that you can easily find them in their digital, making sure that you have access to their passwords and their account numbers, and then just using cool tools like genius acts that are available so that you’re not, you know, trying to find a fax machine in 2024 somewhere.

Amanda, does your consultation expand into, say, task lists and task list tools and things like that? Is that is that really relevant for many of the clients that you work with or is that outside of the organization mindset?

It’s absolutely included because it’s really about I help people kind of declutter their spaces and also declutter their minds. So a lot of times, you know, it really is about what app might be best for me to use or is an app plus a planner. And really talking through a lot of my clients have ADHD. And so kind of understanding the apps out there that are a little bit more ADHD friendly and just making it. Yeah, just we have all like a thousand things swirling around in our head. So helping people figure out where can they deposit that information.

And how do you deal with FOMO? If you think that the app you’re using is the latest, greatest, best app? Do you counsel folks on how to deal with that, or should we always be chasing the the golden goose, if you will?

It’s so funny because there’s not you know, there’s no perfect app. And one of the my favorite people that I follow is a woman named Gretchen Rubin. And she has something that she calls the Four Tendencies, which is kind of it’s a way of understanding yourself and how you get things done. And so one of the tendencies is oblige her, which is me, which means like I need external accountability to get anything done. One of the tendencies is upholder, meaning like I can say I’m going to work out every day and you actually work out. But then another tendency is questionnaire, which is the one that. Always has FOMO. That’s like, I bet there is a better app out there. And so there are constantly they have 100 planners, they have 100 apps and they’re constantly switching. And I have a little bit of that in me too. I have ADHD and people with ADHD are always looking for that next dopamine hit. And for nerds like me, a dopamine hit is a productivity app. So but sometimes you just have to just lean in to what you have and try to make it work the best. But it’s hard because the tech is always getting cooler. My favorite app that I’m using right now is an app called Sun Sama, and it’s so great because it’s very, very visual. So you just have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday you can drag and drop between the days. You can actually list out how much time you think each task is going to take. And so it’ll say caution your task. It’s going to take 12 hours today. The math is at math thing and you can kind of rearrange things and you can beat the timer, which is also a real a great productivity hack to try to kind of beat the timer and get it done faster than you thought that you would. So that’s my favorite app right now, but who knows in three months. But my favorite app might be.

Amanda, do you have an example of a success story of someone going through this process and sort of how how it changed their life? And I know that sounds dramatic, but I do feel like this really is life changing because I feel like I’ve in bits and pieces gone through it. I know what a weight lifted it is. So I would love for you to share maybe an anecdote or two with our listeners about how this truly can change lives. Because I’m such a believer, I guess.

Yeah, I think, you know, on the digital front, for example, I have a client that I’m working with right now who was launching a group program, and there’s 12 different women in this group. It’s a leadership development group. And in the old days she was sending an email to every single one of them, asking them, Fill out this questionnaire, do this, do that. And I helped her set up a whole automation on a coaching platform where basically it would all happen in her sleep. And everybody was going through this whole automation all by themselves without her having to send a single email. And she saved hours, hours of her time. And she is, you know, a very senior executive coach with her own company. And so instead of sending people emails and agreements and Google forms and different things, she was just letting this system, this automation, just do it all for her. And she was kind of in shock. So it’s really, really fun to put these tools and sort of act from my zone of genius of let me teach you how tech can actually make your life easier and be your friend so that you can live in your zone of genius of being an amazing executive coach. And so, you know, she just sent me a thank you note this week saying we moved mountains together, which was really, really beautiful.

Well, I think there’s a lot of people out there, Amanda, that when we feel like we can’t get our arms around things, it leads to frustration and also leads to apathy and avoidance. Like I just I don’t even want to walk into the office. I think some of the tips that you’ve shared today entirely helpful around getting our arms around our own practices and our own thought processes. But also I think there’s a lot of value in what you said in suggesting some of these things maybe to our clients. I know Julie and I often presented at a presentation we had called Five Ways Technology Will Change the Way You Age. And I’m going to tell you, password managers came up constantly and a number of people that don’t even know they exist or what they do. I just think that tip alone is one thing that we could use to help, at least to suggest that somebody look into what they are and what they do. And I agree what you said that once we understand the basic gist of what we want technology to do, there may be many different tools, but they all kind of basically do the same things. But I think what’s hard for us, and I think Julie will agree, is it’s sometimes hard to take the time to invest in actually learning what those technologies do. And that’s the way we have to look at it. It’s an investment of your time, which will pay off in productivity later. Julie, any comments from from your standpoint?

Absolutely. And I think, again, I go back to it just feels so overwhelming sometimes. And you think, I don’t even know where to start. My day is busy, so I’m just going to ignore it. And I think it’s breaking it down into bite sized pieces like Amanda has done. I think that’s what’s key and that’s what inspired me. Like I said, just that simple unsubscribe from the emails and we can all do that, right? I can. I just started one at a time and over the course of a month it changed my inbox. I can see the results. And then I thought, okay, what’s next? I’m going to create some rules in Gmail, which I’ve always done on my work side, but I had never done on the personal side, and it was amazing how I could apply that. And all of a sudden I was like, okay, this Gmail box is really starting to really be in good order. And it never had been. And so I think that that’s what was so inspiring to me was breaking it down into bite sized pieces where it just was feeling so overwhelming. And I had just been putting it to the side for years. So thank you, Amanda, for inspiring me and truly helping me make a lot of progress in a short amount of time.

That sounds amazing. It sounds like you went from a thousand shots on goal to like ten shots on goal, that you’re like, I got this, I can handle this.

It’s becoming much less of a never ending nightmare. I can tell you that for sure.

Well, Amanda, before we let you go today, we’d like to run you through one of our organizational exercises, which is helping our listeners learn a little bit more about Amanda as a person. We call it our lightning round of questions. And if your game, Julie and I have a number of questions to run by and we’re just looking for kind of your top of the head response, how you would respond. And I think since we are the Human Centric Investing podcast, it just helps our listeners get to know you a little bit better as a human. So if it’s okay, I’ll ask Julie to lead off with our first question.

I’m ready.

Okay. On a scale of 1 to 10, how good of a driver are you?

Ten. I’m an excellent driver.

Nice. I love.

It. Excellent answer. What’s your favorite city in the United States?

Favorite city in the United States. God. Maybe. Maybe. Philadelphia,

That’s music to my ears. Born and raised in Philly.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, it’s right where I live, so. I love Philly. Yeah.

What’s your favorite holiday?

I’m a little bit of a Scrooge when it comes to Holiday Eves. I would probably say. Easter. It’s around my birthday. It’s spring. It feels kind of easy. We don’t have to go crazy with the decorating and the gifts.

All right, Amanda. Along the lines of your specialty, are you a paper to do list person or a digital to do list person?

Both. Both Equally, I would say. I have my planner right here, and I have my app right here.

Perfect. What’s the best age?

My current age. 47. Like that.

Would you rather. Would you rather binge watch a TV show or watch a movie?

Binge watch a TV show.

Any any recommendations of late?

I just watch that one. Have you seen it? Nobody wants this.

Yes.

No. I have not seen it.

Julie, you and I talk all about it, too. That was such a good binge Watch.

It was. It was perfect. Well, Amanda, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today on the Human Centric Investing podcast. And for our listeners, if you’re interested in learning how Amanda can help you declutter and organize your life, feel free to visit her website at Indigo organizing.com. You can also hear more tips and insights from her on her podcast, Good Enough ish, which you can find anywhere you get your podcasts. Thank you again for sharing all of your insights and action items with us today. We so appreciate it.

It’s been so much fun. Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for listening to the Hartford Fund’s Human Centric Investing podcast. If you’d like to tune in for more episodes, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds.