When I’m cleaning the house, I’m usually tempted to do a relatively good job, but not a deep clean, a pull-out-all-the-stops clean. Enough to make it look decent for a week or so.

But then, once in a blue moon I do a proper clean, a proper wipe, a proper dust or a proper vacuum, the kind that we used to call spring cleaning when something gets its annual out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new clean.

There’s no such thing of course. Spring cleaning is something we have to do all year around, or at least once a season, or once a quarter, as we’d say in the business.

Speaking of business, it’s the same thing. We do an annual purging of the CRM system, our email inbox, or our sales pipeline. We should do it all the time, and certainly once a quarter, so it doesn’t mount up into something seemingly unsurmountable. Tidy as you go, and clean as you go too.

The trouble is, it’s a constant struggle to maintain this discipline in the face of the other business – and cleaning – mantra. Just enough is often good enough, and good enough means simply better than the alternative.