My home office as it looked a few months ago. Click to see it in all of its horror.
A couple of days ago, I decided that I probably needed to (re-)organize all my stuff. Things were piling up again and nothing seemed to be in the right place anymore. I had books piled on other books on my desk, pieces of paper where I’d taken important notes here and there, clothes, empty boxes, receipts, magazines and plenty of other things.
My first instinct was, as I said, to organize everything. After all, the books belong in the book shelves, the magazines in their own folders, the receipts need to be cataloged, the clothes put into the closet and so on. It wasn’t until I picked up one of the magazines that I took a good look at the front cover. “May 2009″, it claimed, talking about the fantastic advances going on in computing at the time. I looked at the cover again and asked myself: “Will this ever be news again? Will this ever be as interesting to read as it was the first time? Will I ever need to refer back to this magazine?”
The answer was, of course, “no”, so I threw the magazine into the garbage can, where it should have been put long before.
Next up, I grabbed a receipt for a book that had also joined the rest of the detritus on my desk. It was for a book I bought in June. Will I ever need the receipt?
Nope, into the garbage can it goes!
Before I knew, I discovered that I needed to empty the garbage can in the home office, something I usually only do once every two weeks. It didn’t take long for the garbage can to fill up a second time, either. Old magazines, receipts, notes, bills and even clothing that I never actually wear all wound up being sorted into the same garbage can. I know I should probably have recycled, but I was on a roll and just needed to get things out of the way. I’ll sort my trash properly next time.
When I finally finished cleaning out the room, it seemed almost empty. By eliminating before I started organizing, I had suddenly made my job so much easier. It got me thinking; if I could do this to my desk, why can’t I do this in other areas of my life? Instead of organizing my schedule and trying to fit everything in, why not just eliminate the things that didn’t have to be there?
What I’ve now done is create two lists of things and events. They are:
- Things that cost money (bills, consumables, habits, clothes, everything)
- Things that cost time (work, hobbies, friends, reading, bathing, everything)
These lists will then be sorted in order of relevance and importance to me. Things that don’t need to be there will simply be removed from the lists as I decide to restructure my life. I won’t tell you exactly what’s on these lists, but I will post the results of this experiment as I’m done with it.
To follow this experiment and the many more that will follow, I have added a page to this weblog where people can quickly see what is happening. The page can be found here: http://www.lonelysavage.com/experimentation
