Cleaning Out the Lint Trap

 Face it.  Lint is one of the last things we think about on a daily basis.  You may shove your hand in your jeans pocket and pull out a mysterious wad of mangled paper and fuzz, maybe even wonder if it was an important note that went through the wash, but whether you sock it back in your pocket or toss it, lint just doesn't matter.  It's annoying on black pants or in your navel, but it doesn't hamper your quality of life.  Until the dryer doesn't shut off.

I thought it rather odd that my clothes had been drying for about six hours the other day and after pulling my scorched jeans from the heat, I decided it was worth taking a closer look at the problem.  Turns out, if you don't clean the lint trap on your Maytag, the lint travels up the vent stack and starts to accumulate.  Eventually, this forms a lint clot on the vent grate and it jams the air flow up better than a guy swallowing too big a bite of a porterhouse.  If left on too long, the intense heat can actually cause a fire and do some major damage to your home.

So after playing appliance man, hopping on my roof, and clearing the fuzz clot, I decided to be a little more conscientious about cleaning out the lint trap before I burned my homestead down.  Which made me think: What are the lint traps in my business that I have been neglecting?

Maybe it's the stack of personal, hand-written thank-you notes I've been meaning to get to.  Could be the log-jam of unorganized e-mails collecting in my inbox.  It just might be visiting those realtors' offices that I used to do business with.  I've certainly accumulated a pile of program guideline changes I've been meaning to look over.  Whatever the case may be, the little things add up and start constricting the flow of your business.  They can even potentially cause fires that could've been avoided.

So take a look at things you've been meaning to do in your business today.  And as the zippers and buttons and wet clothes of your work clank around in the dryer of your mind, remember to ask yourself, what's in my lint trap?