The Edge of Optimization

“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Just work hard to get ahead.” Long has this been the American dream and the ideals to which we aspire. Then as you move forward in life, you have likely realized it is easier said than done. Everyone wants to get ahead, so you probably want to do more in less time and do it better – to impact your bottom line.

How can you really get an edge? Kitti Andrews, of Declutter Your Brain, also known as The Optimization Queen, has some ideas. It’s these ideas that she says are helping entrepreneurs skyrocket their productivity. “I help entrepreneurs to organize their space and streamline their thoughts so they can focus on attracting and serving premium clients.”

Kitti says that her entrepreneurial experiences have helped her learn to connect with any personality. Also, she knows the passion that comes with doing what you love. Her career path has allowed Ms. Andrews to dial into this niche of working with entrepreneurs because she knows the productivity needs and the importance of having a clear mind and being able to focus. Kitti says “I help people with the habits to be their best and get out of their own way.”

Being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle, but it’s not for everyone. Ms. Andrews says that she has been a serial entrepreneur since the age of 18. Her resume includes working as a professional driver, makeup artist, and caterer. In fact, she is still well-known in many circles for her delicious baked goods. Kitti has done modeling both for print and runway and has also been featured on a record album cover. “I love the freedom of being an entrepreneur, and in all my experience, I have learned from the downside as much as the good times. It’s not for everyone, but I know the shortcuts to success.”

Impacting Profitability

Most people don’t stop to think about clutter and the far-reaching effects it has on life; it just seems like a small nuisance. But this label clutter points to a much greater issue and has extreme consequences both in quality of life and income potential.

Ms. Andrews elaborates, “Clutter is the general name for all the chaos that surrounds our lives and detracts from our efforts, acting as an obstacle to getting more done so we can get more out of life. This would apply to productivity, work-life balance, and general life satisfaction.” Put that way, and seeing the link between productivity and profitability, it begins to seem much more impactful, and a crucial part of any business plan. After all, it’s generally accepted that excellence breeds leaders in business.

No Time for Failure

While Andrews doesn’t just work with entrepreneurs, it is usually the highly professional, results-oriented, eye-on-the-bottom-line overachievers who seek out her skills to level up and scale their businesses. She says, “When you have a great mission, you have no time for bad habits or failure. There are so many universal tools or strategies that apply in optimizing productivity. There’s also a vast array of universal reasons why someone would want to utilize these skills.” In fact, Kitti has been a savior of not only businesses but marriages, too. It’s all part of a day’s work for this entrepreneur’s entrepreneur as she guides people toward optimization.

More Dollars Makes Sense

According to Ms. Andrews, her methods have a profound effect on productive profitability. “The immediate effects,” she says, “are with the quality of life, however, all this work transfers into dollars: the new habits continue to compound into profitability as a person is able to be more focused and more productive.” Often, entrepreneurs have many other people who depend on them so it’s important for them to be stable and successful. Kitti elaborates, “The foundation of success is figuring out your WHY and it’s this purpose that propels everyone to make changes, adopt better habits, and enact ways to enhance their productivity.”

Optimize All Five

Ms. Andrew’s overall strategy is to start by diagnosing where the issues are. Having a highly customizable plan seems to be a key part of her popularity.

She credits this to the fact that her five-pillar system addresses the whole person.

The five pillars that Andrews helps you to organize and optimize are: 

·      Head

·      Habits

·      Home

·      Heart

·      Health

According to Ms. Andrews, it’s all connected, and she helps everyone to begin in one area and see the dominoes fall as they make progress in their new habits. One of her key pieces of advice is, “Focus on smaller tasks and areas so you can do them better and do them with excellence. Building confidence is key to getting out of overwhelm.”

Organize to Monetize

Surely it can’t be that difficult to just have good habits, right? One of the factors that Andrews hears as a barrier to success for people is the guilt and shame that comes with a chaotic and disorganized work environment, compounded by the fact that it’s usually not just “one thing”. Kitti says, “Entrepreneurs know that they need to be organized, systematized and stay on track to optimize everything that they do but often entrepreneurs have been diagnosed with ADHD, or just have a lot of the symptoms.” She continues, “It is very common that entrepreneurs are prone to distraction and to boredom which is why they wish to work for themselves.”

Ms. Andrew’s focus has changed and shifted over time, but always with a common thread of helping people to be their best. Built upon the slogan “Clear the Clutter, Calm the Chaos” her work has turned into a full-scale profitability-impacting practice. Kitti’s “Productivity Practices” focus on streamlining the digital clutter, physical chaos, and mental clutter that plagues people in their everyday life and business.

Barriers to Productivity?

So, which one is worse? According to Kitti’s experience, 10 out of 10 say that mental clutter and chaos are worse than a chaotic physical environment. Maybe it’s because you can never escape your mind the way you can walk out of the room or leave your office and go to lunch. While Andrews is not a mental health professional, her skills are very specialized, and she seems to get the results that leaders are seeking.

This mental chaos is closely linked to the digital clutter we deal with on an ever-increasing basis. It’s no surprise when she shares, “Digging in and creating better habits to move the needle has become increasingly valuable now that so many people are working from home. It’s as if the pillars of Head, Habits, Home, Heart, and Health that I help people with are feeling aligned more closely now, and it’s caused a realization of the need for order.”

Handheld Rabbit Hole

In this digital age, there are even more aspects of life to declutter, and she says that the digital chaos most people find suffocating them falls under the pillars of Head and Habits. Chances are, you do more with your cell phone now than ever before— including becoming distracted.

Going down the rabbit hole of distraction is what kills productivity for a lot of entrepreneurs. What Ms. Andrews does is help people to focus on doing the right things that really bring results to their business. Whether the ADHD label fits or not doesn’t really matter because as she points out, “Entrepreneurs have the most craziness and chaos trying to do it all and be it all, usually without a safety net. To make matters worse, all the distractions in the palm of our hands have us struggling with basic focus.”

Building Success

Andrews teaches consistency in habits. In fact, she has demonstrated this consistency herself in over 725 consecutive Facebook Lives and counting. She offers a daily tip and encouragement for anyone who wants to change how success looks in their life. Her big tip for us? Andrews says, “Just begin with one app on your phone, or a small 2-foot area to clean and organize.” Why such a small goal? Pointing to the paralyzing challenge of overcoming overwhelm, Ms. Andrews says, “To put it simply, so you know that you can.”