Today is trash day in my neighborhood. It got me thinking about how most of us have some sort of routine where we throw out the trash on a regular basis. Some of us have curb side pick up like I do and others have to take it to the dump. But, yet most of us let other forms of trash pile up in our lives without a second thought. Why?

We all do it. We have e-mails in our inbox, posts in our readers, podcasts on the iPod and magazines on our desks all waiting for our attention. We tell ourselves that we will get to them at some point and that throwing them away is bad, but we rarely ever actually get to them.

What other mental trash are we keeping that we can get rid of? Some of it will be doubts in ourselves, feedback we might have gotten from others or failed projects that are hanging around our neck.

The trick is that you need to take a hard look at what you are holding on to and throw away every you don't really need. Sometimes it takes a major shift or move to do this, but there is no reason you can't do it today.

Throw it out and move on. You might miss it a little at first and worry that you shouldn't have, but in the long run it will be well worth it.