I've been cleaning out the garage this weekend. In the past few months I've replaced a car, purchased a new mountain bike, moved all my old wine (some of which is sadly over the hill) out of storage and back home where it can be drunk, and worked on a number of small projects that have caused me to accumulate a lot of junk. Since my garage and my office are really one space with a half-wall and some bookcases between them, this has gotten quite annoying.

As with any major cleanup effort, it started with total destruction. Move everything off the shelves, move everything out of the closet space under the stairs, move everything that isn't delicate or a book off the bookcases, and leave a pile on the floor.

Then what do you do?

With many business problems, it's tough to figure out where to start. Prioritizing the tasks, the items, and the junk seems almost impossible. Some of the stuff is important, some isn't, some takes consideration, and some will need to be put away in a location to be determined. If you try to think about it too much, you end up like my "buddy" Casey Serin: overwhelmed with the choices and unable to get anything going.

Readers of this blog know that I have some training in wilderness emergency medicine, search and rescue and general emergency response. All of these have a simple approach to dealing with an overwhelming situation that is equally useful when cleaning a garage or deciding what to do next in a highly-stressful business situaiton.

Start where you stand.

There's really no better solution. If you're dealing with 100 wounded people all around you, you have no way to know who needs the most critical care without looking at every one of them. There's no way to guess, no way to know until you check each one. If you start anywhere other than just where you are, you'll just waste time and won't (on average) do any better at getting to the most critical folks first. So you start where you stand. Assess the situation, give everybody a quick once-over (triage) and then, as needed, go back.

That's how I approach business situations. Focus on the next thing in front of you. Get it done or at least take a good enough look to assess how critical it is. Then on to the next item. Do it carefully, systematically, and ensure that you do go back to the things you decided could be skipped right away. It doesn't matter if I'm figuring out a project plan, considering my next trade, or assessing any other problem, you've got to start somewhere and there's usually very little point in debating the starting point.

That's how I started the garage. With one screwdriver on the floor next to me. I put it into a drawer in the tool chest. Yes, I may need to reorganize the tool chest later, but that could wait. Then some antenna wire on the floor. Put it into a garbage pile. Next item, and next.

Right now, I have much of the big work done, a large garbage pile and a couple of smaller piles to be sorted through with greater attention and consideration. Those will be done by the end of today. I'll still have to re-organize some of the shelves as well as the afformentioned tool chest, but those are seperate smaller projects. Everything that needs to be on the shelves is, and all the tools are nicely put away.

And all because I decided to start, not debate. And for lack of any better idea, I started where I stood.

-btc