You’re packing the winter duvet away and re-organising your wardrobe for sunnier days ahead. But have you ever considered a spring clean for your work life, too? Four months into the year, there’s a lot to be said for decluttering our schedules, inboxes (and brains) for the rest of the year ahead - putting in place small shifts that can make a big difference. Here’s how.

Be ruthless with your inbox

Though it might seem daunting, spring cleaning your inbox is also one of the most satisfying jobs you can do. You just need a process.

In her book Get Your Shit Together, Sarah Knight advocates dividing your emails into three categories: those you delete (eg. company-wide newsletters, HR correspondence, things you were unnecessarily copied into), those you file for the future (important but not now) and emails you need to respond to, properly, soon. I’d add ‘those you unsubscribe from’ to that list - every time I get an email from something or someone I don’t want/remember signing up to? I opt out… the goal being that, one day, most of the emails I receive will at least be worth opening.

I also, from time-to-time - usually after a holiday - do a purge of unread emails on the basis that if someone really needs you, they’ll have read your out of office and try again. There’s no reason to keep 10,000 unread messages hanging over you; a negative reminder of all that you haven’t done, instead of focusing positively on what you have.

Streamline, shortlist, be strategic

Oliver Burkeman, author of time-management guide Meditations for Mortals, writes that it’s impossible for us to do everything on our to-do lists. Which, when you think about it, is quite liberating. You only have a finite number of hours in the day, or week, so a good decluttering exercise is to work out ways to prioritise what you can realistically achieve to avoid burnout - something a recent Mental Health UK report warned that 1 in 5 UK workers are at risk from.

His advice? Be strategic: stop wasting time on social media and put limits on how much you use it, break down tasks into 20 minute chunks, write a ‘to-done’ list on which you record what you’ve achieved, instead of feeling overwhelmed by what’s still to do.

Still not streamlined enough? Start practising ‘strategic restraint’, or not spreading yourself too thin or saying ‘yes’ to every opportunity. Oh and spring clean notifications from your life - I’ve turned them off to save my attention from being constantly drawn to something other than the task I’m working on. Trust me, you won’t go back.

Ditch the admin

An estimated 54% of men use AI in their professional and personal lives, compared to just 35% of women - which means we’re missing out on a vital opportunity to outsource the drudgery of admin that can eat into our working lives and hold us back.

At Allbright’s Step Forward Summit 2025, ex-Google Brand Marketing Chief and founder of personal branding firm Glittersphere, Nishma Robb, recommended experimenting with apps such as Fxyer (which connects to your inbox, drafting replies to unread emails and managing your calendar) and Claude, for generating written content, translation, summarising notes or text and answering questions.

But whichever apps you try, the opportunity for gaining back precious time is clear.

"Adopting AI has been a total game-changer for how we run things. It’s not about replacing the creative spark or human touch, but about streamlining the tasks that used to eat up so much time,” says Lemon Fuller, founder and CEO of lingerie brand Lemonade Dolls. “We use AI across the business from drafting product descriptions with ChatGPT to coming up with social media captions that still feel authentic to our voice, and systems such as ‘Brarista’ to assist with digital bra fitting. It’s like having a super-efficient assistant who helps with the heavy lifting – leaving us more time to focus on what really matters. AI has definitely helped declutter our workflow, making us more productive."

Don’t call me…

So many of us are stuck in that pandemic-era pattern of endless video calls, leaving little time to actually be productive or creative.

According to the Microsoft Work Trend Index, 68% of 31,000 people across 31 countries said they didn’t have enough uninterrupted time to focus on their work. That few?

To that end, decluttering meetings from your calendar could be the best decision you make this year. Ask: can I block off time for myself? Can I encourage colleagues to stop scheduling meetings about meetings, and meetings to follow-up on meetings? Can I quickly pick up the phone instead? Can we do a meeting audit, spring cleaning any recurring meetings that are no-longer needed and grouping others together?

And when you are having meetings - be honest - are you fully present? When the CEO of JP Morgan recently asked his staff to stop reading personal messages and emails during work meetings, we probably all felt a pang of recognition. Fewer, but better is the aim.

Stop multitasking

We’ve been sold a myth that multitasking is the answer to being more efficient and productive - as though we can cheat the finite number of hours in our day - but I don’t believe it’s always helpful.

Not to mention that it piles more pressure onto working women, who are told that multitasking is our superpower, presumably so we don’t stop taking on more of those menial, non-promotable tasks that keep office life ticking over but will never get us promoted.

What if, as part of your spring clean, you tried monotasking instead? One thing at a time, done well, with focus. It won’t always be possible and it might feel lazy at first (after all, we all like to appear and feel busy busy busy). But trying to maintain the practice will help your brain break the habit of flitting between things and learn to prioritise tasks - whether by importance, urgency or genuine interest. And promise me one thing: say no to taking the office lunch orders.