Ep 137: Decluttering Your Creative Systems Before The New Year
Why December Decluttering Beats January Goal-Setting
SUMMARY
Everyone's talking about what to add to their plate in January—new goals, new systems, new habits. But what if the secret to your best creative year isn't about adding more, but ruthlessly removing what's been draining your energy all year long?
Most creative teams start the year buried under last year's unfinished business while trying to add new goals to the pile. The typical pattern goes like this: survive December's holiday chaos, then magically expect January 1st to be a fresh start with new systems and goals. By January 15th, nothing has actually changed because the old mess is still there. And by February, it's back to chaos—but now with guilt about abandoning your goals so soon.
Here's why this doesn't work for creative teams: you can't build new systems on top of broken foundations and expect good results. Your team is already carrying the cognitive load from incomplete projects of 2025, every "someday" task from water cooler conversations, and all the digital clutter that's accumulated. This builds decision fatigue, so even with ambitious goals posted on the wall, you're exhausted by mid-January because you didn't shed the weight of 2025 first.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ Addition without subtraction is just accumulation. You can't build new systems on top of broken foundations. Subtract first in December, then add in January when you have the capacity for it.
⚡️ Your calendar should serve your priorities, not control them. Every recurring meeting should justify its existence against your current reality, not historical circumstances.
⚡️ It's okay to give yourself permission not to move on good ideas. If it's not the right time or you don't have the right resources, archive it with intention and review it quarterly.
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "If it doesn't actively serve your team, then it's actively draining them."
💬 "You advise clients to focus and prioritize things. But is your agency actually practicing what it preaches?"
💬 "The best time to declutter isn't January 1st when you're trying to build momentum. It's now in December when you can create space before the rush of the new year starts."
EPISODE RESOURCES
Books Mentioned:
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (Yes, it applies to business systems too!)
Free Resources:
Visit dustinpead.com/free to download frameworks and templates, including:
DO vs DUE Framework
12-Month Outlook Planning Tool
Implementation guides and worksheets
TRANSCRIPT
You know what I've learned after years of helping creatives build better systems? The one area even the most organized creatives still wing it? Their money. And I get it. You don't start your business to become an accountant or a bookkeeper, right? You started it to create amazing work. But here's the reality. Financial chaos will kill your creativity faster than any other kind of overwhelm. And that's why I love what the core group does.
They're not your typical accountants. They only work with creatives like us and they understand that you need systems that work with your brain, not against it. Their profit first approach flips everything you think you know about business finances. Instead of paying everyone else first and hoping that there's something left for you, you pay yourself first and build your business around that. They've got three service levels depending on where you're at in your journey from basic tax support, all the way up to full CFO partnership, which is what I use and it's amazing. Stop letting money stress, steal your creative energy. Check out coregroupus.com and finally get the financial systems your creative business deserves.
Everyone's talking about what to add to their plate in January. New goals, new systems, new habits, but what if the secret to your best creative year isn't about adding more, but ruthlessly removing what's been draining your energy all year long? Let's get into it.
Taking creatives from chaos to clarity. Welcome to Creativity Made Easy, the podcast for creative professionals who want to scale their business without sacrificing their sanity. I'm your host Dustin Pead, Creative Consultant, and I help creative professionals know themselves, their processes, and their team so that they can move from chaos to clarity. So whether you're a freelancer, agency owner, or leading a creative team in a department, this show is absolutely about building systems that free your creativity instead of constraining it.
Now I've talked about rituals and rhythms on this podcast before, and I don't really do rituals because they're harder to change, but rhythms kind of ebb and flow with me as my life ebbs and flows as well and my business too. So every December I have a rhythm that's become a little bit of a year end rhythm. And before I even think about planning for the new year or goals, I have to first deal with what I'm carrying from this year into the new year. I don't want to enter into the new year with things that don't need to carry over.
So right now as I'm recording this, I'm looking at my own systems, right? Is my Asana bloated with some day projects that's been there since February? Is my Google Drive loaded with outdated documents? Is my calendar bloated, right? These are things that I'm asking myself because the best time to declutter isn't January 1st when you're trying to build momentum. It's now in December when you can create space before the rush of the new year starts. So that way we can start the new year lighter, not heavier with all of this must pressure that we've carried from 2025 into 2026.
It's kind of an addition without subtraction is just accumulation, right? If we add something without taking away something, it's just accumulation. And it piles on and piles on and piles on. And this is how most agencies or creatives end up with what we call like system or process overwhelm, tech overwhelm. There's too many things going on. Too much. They've built up layers and layers and layers of tape on these things that they've patched together over the years. And it weighs on them and their team as they try to trudge forward and they can't gain momentum that way.
So this episode is just as much for you as it is for me. So the conversation that I have with me and my team every December, we're gonna do this together because even the people teaching systems need to practice what they preach. And so now is the time for me and for you.
So we've talked about the problem with adding things in January, right? Most creative teams start the year buried under last year's unfinished business while they're trying to add new year and new goals to the pile, right? A typical new year pattern for agency owners goes something like this. In December, it's just survive the holiday chaos. Then January 1 comes and magically poof, it's a fresh start, new systems, new goals, new everything. And then by January 15th, they realized that nothing actually changed because the old mess is still there, right? We tidied up our glasses, but the room is still a mess. And so by February, it's back to chaos. But now you have the guilt in addition to the chaos, now you have the guilt about abandoning your goals so soon into the new year.
So here's why this doesn't work for creative teams. You can't build new systems on top of broken foundations. Let me say that again. You can't build new systems on top of broken foundations and expect good results from it. Your team is already carrying this cognitive load right in their brains from the incomplete projects of 2025 and every single someday task that you've had in conversation around the water cooler or over slack or text message or phone calls or drive time thoughts as you're processing things out loud. All of those things start to cloud up and then you also add on all the digital clutter, right? And all of these things, they actually build decision fatigue and so you get into the new year and you like put on the wall, this is what we're going to do, this is what we're going to be about, it's going to be the best year ever. But by January 15th you're exhausted because you didn't shed any of the weight of 2025 first.
So what we wanna do in December is we wanna subtract first and add second. Subtract what you need to subtract now during the month of December so that when you get to January and you're adding things on, you have the capacity to add those things on. You have the cognitive space to add those things on. So you create the space before you fill it. Otherwise, if you take a full glass of water and you try to add more water to it, it makes a giant mess. And that's what many of us are doing as we carry these new ideas, these new goals, these new systems into the new year.
Greg McKeown in his book Essentialism, which I recommend to every person really, much less business owner or creative to read, he says this, he says, if it isn't a clear yes, then it's a clear no. So when you're thinking through your systems, if you have a system that doesn't serve you or your team, and it's not clear that it's serving you or your team, then it's a clear no. It's gotta go, right? So if it's a clear yes, you can say, look, I can see the writing on the wall. I have the statistics, I have the data to back it up, I have the trends that I can see were more profitable, were more productive, yada, yada, yada. Those things are great. It's a clear yes. But if you can't say 100 percent clarity yes, then it's a clear no to go. If it doesn't actively serve your team, then it's actively draining them.
All right, so let's go through a little bit of a year end assessment here of the clutter that can build up. So I'm asking myself these questions this month. You ask you and your team these questions this month as well. So first, let's look at tools and platforms, the things we use every day. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm holding this digital pen because I use my Remarkable every single day. But what tools and platforms are you paying for, but not using? And I know that sounds ridiculous, like why would I pay for it if I'm not using it? We all have this, it's why there are companies out there who have dedicated paid apps to scrape your bank account, notice what you're paying for on a regular basis so that you can be like, I thought I canceled that gym membership like two years ago, why am I still paying for that? Right? It's a big problem in today's society because we're a subscription, digital subscription, swipe and forget about it type of society.
The same is true for your business. So what software tools are you paying for but not using? What integrations, right, created more complexity than clarity? Maybe you're like, hey, we're going to integrate this new app into our Slack workspace, or we're going to bring in this AI bot into this situation, this process. Did it create more complexity than clarity? And really don't just answer that for yourself. If you have other people that interact with it as well, ask them, hey, does this tool, does this platform, does this provide you with more clarity or does it just make it more complex?
Next thing to ask with your tools and your platforms is what are the helpful automations that actually needs some manual intervention. Maybe you automated a bunch of things. We talk all the time about the focus funnel that we can eliminate, automate, delegate, right, procrastinate. Maybe there's things that you automated throughout the year that you're like, you know what, that was cool in theory that we could automate that, but it actually just needs a little bit more manual touch on it because we're having to do more in the back end to fix the automatic thing that we set up earlier in the year, right? So all these things accumulate over time and December is time to clean house. Don't wait for January. Don't wait for spring cleaning. Do it now so that you're ready to launch into the new year with clarity.
All right, the second category is your calendar. Your calendar is like a huge source of like energy to suck, right? Meetings and recurring events. So scrape your calendar. I literally just did this with my virtual assistant and we looked over everything on my calendar from the last three months. Which meetings are still there that actually, which meetings are there that actually still serve their original purpose, right? Check that first. Then you're look for which ones were created for a specific project that ended months ago, right? You have these recurring meetings that you set up, which is a great thing so that you don't forget to follow up on things that you wanna follow, part of the future me method, right? But which ones are like outdated? Like, hey, we finished that project month ago, that contract is over, that client's not here anymore. We moved on to a different project, so we really don't need that anymore. So identify those things on your calendar.
And then ask yourself, are there update meetings in your calendar that could easily be a weekly email or a weekly Slack message or a weekly quick video message from your phone sent out or oh a quick weekly loom video that you could send to the team? Or do you really need that full 30 minute calendar meeting that's on there? Or could it just be something video wise that you could send out? So scrape that calendar as much as possible.
The other category you want to look at is different projects and initiatives, right? What's in progress right now that's actually in purgatory, right? We see in progress and we're going, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're moving, we're rolling, rolling, but is it really or is it time for it to let it die? And so look through those projects for that. What type of projects do you have someday written on, right? I know for me and several of my clients, we have different pieces, whether it be in our phone notes or a specific project that we've put into Asana or a project management system or a Slack channel or something like that, which we'll talk about here in a second, where we've kind of listed out some someday projects.
But what projects are on that someday list will realistically never happen. You got to get ruthless about this. It's same mindset of spring cleaning in your home when you're going through and you're going like, do I pitch this? Do I donate this? Do we put this on the garage sale? You have to get a little bit more thick skin on it as you go. And some of these someday projects realistically will never happen. Also with your projects and initiatives, what client work is dragging on beyond reasonable completion. Hey, we've beaten this horse to death. This has gone about as far as it needs to go. I'd like to kind of wrap a bow on this before we get into the new year with a fresh perspective.
Another category that you need to consider when you're auditing all of these things during the month of December is your communication channels, right? Number one, Slack channels that are active versus abandoned. I actually just had recently, and maybe you experienced this too, that Slack just kind of did like an update and I lost a bunch. I lost quote unquote lost a bunch of channels and conversation threads that I'm like, where did that go? Where did that go? Where did that go? I got so used to seeing them when I opened up that Slack workspace. What Slack did is like, hey, you haven't, it's kind of quiet in here. Like you haven't said anything in this channel for a long, long time. So it's still here, but it's not going to populate on your side profile to be able to see these channels all the time that are unnecessary. So it did that decluttering for us.
So now's an opportunity to go, there channels that Slack took away recently that you're like, you know what, we really don't need that Slack channel. So we can go ahead and abandon that and we can go ahead and communicate that abandonment as well. Hey everybody, just quick Slack, we used to have this channel, we're not gonna have it anymore, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's why. Boom, done. Clean out the mess.
Second one, email. I have a client who lives and dies by inbox zero and he's taught me a lot and me and my virtual assistant, we try to keep my inbox at zero as well. My personal one struggles with that quite a bit, but my professional inboxes do a really good job of that and she helps me with that. But which email threads need to be archived or actioned? Are email threads archived or actioned. So do you need to take action on this email thread or can you archive it? You don't need to delete it if you're like, know, what if I need to reference it? What if I need to search it? Then you can archive it, put it in a folder, get it out of your inbox. And if it needs action, then take the action, add it to your project manager system, bring it up in your next meeting. That's when your calendar that we already talked about, go through those things.
Thirdly, when it comes to communication channels, what notification settings are creating interruption chaos? Are there times throughout the day that you get pinged that are distracting you from doing the thing that you're set focus on doing in that moment? So revisit your notification settings. Throughout the year we go, yeah, ping me, yeah, ping me, yeah, ping me, yeah, ping me. By the time we get to December, it's ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, you can't get anything done. So revisit your notification settings for yourself and your team on all of your devices.
So these are the honest assessment questions that you need to ask yourself during this December rhythm every year, right? It's not about what takes time. It's about what takes energy, right? Time is one thing. Yes, calendar is good thing, but it's about what takes the energy away from you so that as you move into January, you don't have things lingering from three months ago. Those are energy drains, right? There's that tool that might be useful someday. That's an energy drain. There's a project that's almost done, but it's been lingering around for too long. That's an energy drain. There's a client relationship that's been problematic all year long. That's an energy drain.
So look back at the last quarter. You don't even have to audit the whole last year. Just look at the last three months and be fresh in your brain and identify those top five energy drains, as well as all the other categories that we've talked about so far. Your communication channels, your projects and initiatives, your meetings and recurring events and your tools and your platforms.
So as you're going through these things, if you're like us when we do spring cleaning or we clean out our closet, my wife always says, is it a trash, treasure, maybe there's a third one I don't remember, but basically is it like trash, treasure, or transfer? That's what she says when we're going through our clothes. Is this clothes, is this clothing item complete trash? Like are there holes in it and no one would ever wear it in a world of any kind? Then it's trash, right? Is it something that's still wearable, but you don't like to wear it, you don't wear it, whatever, then it's a transfer. Let somebody else have it. Give it to the poor and the homeless. Put it in the garage sale. Donate it to Goodwill. Those are transfer items, right? And then there are the treasure items where we're like, no, I still wear this often and I'm going to keep it.
So in the same way, we have categories for these things that clutter our creativity and our agencies and our workspaces, if you will, every year. And so when we're doing this, going through these categories every single December, I want you to think about these kind of four buckets that you can put them in.
Bucket number one is dead weight, right? This is dead weight. This is projects that are never going to launch. This is tools that you haven't used in six months. It's processes that were replaced but never removed. It's documentation for systems that no longer exist. You're going to delete those. So if it's dead weight, you delete it immediately. There's no ceremony. There's no maybe someday. Just get rid of it.
The second bucket is incomplete business. So as first one's dead weight, delete it immediately. Second one, second bucket that could fall in is incomplete business. We won't want to carry over incomplete business into the new year because it just becomes another week, another day. And we're kind of bringing all of that baggage along with us into a new year in which we have a whole bunch of new hopes and new goals and new dreams. So this is projects that are at 90 percent that just need that final push. This is client deliverables that are just waiting on one last approval. This is internal initiatives that stalled out, but they actually could be valuable. So you have a decision to make here. Just finishing this project, does it take less energy than carrying it into next year? So go ahead and finish it up. You either do it by December 31st or archive it with a clear, hey, we're not doing this decision, which goes back into our first bucket of dead weight. So do everything you can to wrap a bow on all the business. It's good not only for your brain, but for your finances as a business as well before you move into January 1st.
Third bucket. I love this one so much. Hey, you know what? Great idea. Wrong time. Great idea, wrong time. This is when you archive it with intention. These are frameworks that you want to develop someday. I have a huge list of those. These are client opportunities that really aren't the right fit for where you are at and where they're at right now. This is team initiatives that require resources that you just don't have right now. So what you do with these with this bucket is you're going to move them to a designated future consideration space, one space, not many, one space. And quarterly, you're going to review these things into the new year. You're going to remind yourself every quarter, hey, go back and look at that future consideration list. Anything that we want to still keep in here. Do we want to trash it, transfer it, or do we want to continue treasuring it into something that actually comes into reality? So give your permission to not move on some good ideas. It's OK. It just not it might not be the right time, the right fit. You may not have the right resources for it in this moment. So great idea, wrong time, archive it with intention.
The fourth bucket is complete active misalignment. And on these, you're going to reevaluate or eliminate completely. This is clients that drain you more than they contribute, right? This is services that you offer, but you just don't want to offer them anymore. This is team structures that made sense six months ago, but they don't make sense anymore. This is systems that worked for a team of five, but now you're a team of 12, or maybe you're down to a team of one or two and that doesn't make sense anymore. So it's an honest assessment. Does this align with where we're going? And if no, you gotta plan the exit and you gotta get rid of it. You gotta reevaluate or eliminate it.
All right, so for agency owners or for the business owner, you teach your team all the time to manage scope creep with clients, but you, are you managing the scope creep in your own operations? You advise clients to focus and prioritize things. But is your agency actually practicing what it preaches? December is the right time. It's when you get to be honest about the gap between the vision that you have for the new year and the actual reality of your current circumstances. So get with your leadership team, get with your team, get with your contractors, whoever you need to bring them in this month and start going through those categories and start putting them in the four buckets so that you know what you need to do.
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to do a quick 15 minute project management purge, right? We're just going to set a timer for 15 minutes and we're going to go through all of our project management stuff, whether they're on Post-it notes or a notebook or a Remarkable or Asana or Monday or Trello or whatever they're on. We're going to go through those and we're going to go through all the someday projects. We're going to delete anything that hasn't been touched in over three months. And we're going to be ruthless. If you haven't prioritized it by now, you're just not going to prioritize it.
Second thing, I want you to go through your calendar, go through all these recurring meetings, do an audit of it, review every recurring meeting on your calendar and ask, does this still serve its original purpose? And if not, cancel or modify it. I almost guarantee you're going to find a couple of them in there that you don't need. And when you if you just deleted two recurring meetings, then you're gonna give yourself back probably an average about two hours every single week. Imagine what you could do with that.
Now you're gonna go through your tech stack. You're gonna pull up your subscription expenses. You're gonna identify any software that you haven't logged into this quarter. You're gonna cancel at least one tool before the end of the month and you're gonna redirect that budget to tools that actually serve you.
Now you might think this is a lot to go through, right? Just do one 15 minute project management surge this week. Tomorrow, I want you to do one, just go through your calendar, look at all the recurring meetings in your calendar and ask, does this still serve its original purpose? And then I want you to start the very next day, I want you to pull up all your subscription expenses and identify the software that you haven't logged into so that you can get rid of those. So ask your team, hey team, is there something that we're doing or using that you no longer do or use? Right, get that list, start there if you need to. You don't have to carry this all on your own, but what it's gonna do is it's gonna allow you before you move into 2026 to get rid of all those constraints before you plan what to add in January, you're gonna set those clear constraints and we're only gonna take on X new initiatives this year, right? And you're actually gonna stick to it so that when you get to December next year, it's a little bit lighter and you're able to move faster.
So check out Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McCowen. Also check out The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo. Yes, it's for business systems too. Always you can check out DustinPead.com for frameworks and resources. If any of this resonates with you or your company, I would love to speak with you. Go on my contact page and click on my calendar, hop on my calendar so we can talk about leading your team through this decluttering process if you need help.
Look, we've been conditioned to think that January is about adding, but what if your best year starts with subtracting before you add? What if the secret to sustainable growth is creating space for that growth first? This is the work that I'm doing right alongside you right now. So join us in this revolution, make this a regular December rhythm.
You can connect with me on social media at Dustin Pead. Don't want to hear what you're eliminating before the new year. Shoot me a DM, comment on a post, whatever it takes on what has made your no longer doing list. I would love to see those so we can celebrate together.
Next week, we're going to be back with a brand new episode, episode 138. We're going to walk, I've been talking to you about this for a few weeks, but I had some other things come up that I wanted to get through first. But we're finally gonna walk through that 12 month outlook before we get into the new year. So this week we're focusing on what to get rid of so that we can make space and plan that 12 month outlook. Next week on next week's episode 138 Creativity Made Easy podcast. Have a great week.