Posts tagged Game
Challenge Yourself to Clear the Clutter
Aug 20th
Is clutter taking up space in your rooms and in your life? Is it time to get busy clearing things out and getting things cleaned up and organized? How can you do this without becoming overwhelmed at the shear volume of it? I am in this situation with having to clear out fifteen years of clutter and accumulation in order to get ready for a move. When I think about it I am prone to feel like it is just too much to face. I don’t even know where to start. Every room and surface has things I need to go through and make decisions about. I have decided the only way to cope with it is to chunk it down into small bites and make a game out of it. Here is what I am doing.
I am now looking at each chunk as a store that I can go into and choose to have anything I want absolutely free. As I approach each “store” I take everything out and look at it in terms of what I do want. I have found that if I look at it in term of what I no longer want I am over whelmed by the number of things that are there. Besides deciding what I don’t want I have to deal with that pile of “in-betweens” the stuff I am not sure I want to keep or not. To get around this I go into the “store” and look for the things I do want. I select them and put them away. Then I have a pile I do not want. If I still have some of those “in-betweens” that I am on the fence about I put them in a box and label and date the box. In six months I will go back through the box and get rid of the stuff I have not used in that time.
Another trick I use is to think of the stuff I am giving away as a gift to someone else. I try to think of the usefulness and joy they will give to someone who would select them from my “store” shelves. The cool thing is that they will be free for those people who select them. What a great feeling that is. I get to imagine other people enjoying my stuff.
Hopefully these little techniques will be helpful to you. They have helped me get over the overwhelm of facing a large amount of things to go through and they have actually made it kind of fun to get on with the sorting out and organizing.
The end of busy
Jul 15th
“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.” ~Lao Tzu
Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on twitter or identica.
Stop being busy and your job is half done.
Think about how busy we are, and how it has become a way of bragging: I’m so busy, I must be important.
“I have a million things to do! I never have time for anything! I can’t slow down — I’m too busy.” This is thought to be a good thing in a society where we must be productive, active, occupied.
But it’s a fool’s game. Busy is simply noise, action without meaning, lots of little unimportant things rather than a few important ones.
Stop being busy. Just decide to stop, today.
Now you’re halfway done. You’ve decided to slow down, and to focus on what’s important. All of a sudden, your schedule clears up, and your to-to list shrinks down to almost nothing.
Now you just have one or two things to do, instead of a million. You clear distractions, and focus.
But how can you stop being busy? It’s a simple change of mindset: you say, I’m not going to be busy anymore. Even if you have little control over your schedule, you can decide that you’ll slow down, and pick the important things to work on, and if necessary, talk to your boss about doing this. If you control your schedule, you can drop all the busywork, and just pick the high-impact tasks.
It might seem impossible, but once you decide to put an End to Busy, you have taken the biggest step.
You can now make time for work you’re passionate about, for work that matters. You can make time for solitude, for creating. You can make time for contemplation, for yourself.
Stop being busy, and your job is half done.
“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.” ~Jane Austen
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