An Amazing Mind

Clutter is very sneaky. It grows slowly, and therefore usually passes under the radar. And before you know it, it’s draining your mental energy and concentration.

Mental clutter is often worse than physical clutter. You don’t even realize it’s there, but it drains you just as much. Getting rid of mental clutter will truly “free your mind”.

Physical clutter

This is simply stuff you never or rarely use. It can be old magazines, books, clothes and a number of other things.

If you can’t find an important document because it’s lost among heaps of old magazines, useless printouts and things you meant to read but never did, you probably need some decluttering. If you can’t find your toothbrush because it’s lost among dirty clothes, moldy bread and gardening equipment, you REALLY need some decluttering.

Getting rid of physical clutter is pretty easy once you get going. The first few steps, though, are really tough. You need to break the emotional bonds to your useless stuff.

We usually form emotional bonds to things because we invested in them. This investment can be time or energy, although it’s usually money. At first I also found it very hard to throw out things I had paid for (but never used anymore). It’s almost like an inner voice was shouting at me - look at you! Children in Africa are starving and you’re throwing out expensive junk! Shame on you!

To quote Dr. Paul:

Your Sunk Costs are the resources you have poured into the WRONG PATH in life over the weeks, months and years. As a human, you will feel a need to recover those costs and in many cases, CONTINUE TO PURSUE THIS WRONG PATH just because you have invested so much in it.

Being invested in something is a very powerful feeling. I got an interesting reader comment regarding this on my article Why Linux doesn’t spread (regarding the free office suite OpenOffice):

Had this same issue with OpenOffice.org, all the converts I told the URL to so they could download it has bought Microsoft Office within 2 weeks because they “didn’t like OOo”.

So, I instead started selling OOo (as is the right with the GPL from what I understand) as half the cost of MS Office, burnt onto nice shiny CD-Roms with glossy inlays and well presented. ALL people who have currently bought it are still using it, this has been going on for 7 months now

You can see the failed logic in that. In both cases the people have a copy of OpenOffice. In both cases they would have to pay the exact same amount of money to replace it with Microsoft Office. Yet if they paid something for OpenOffice in the past, they decide to keep it, simply because they have become invested.

Getting rid of physical clutter

The most common place to have clutter is you desk. I used to have a cluttered desk myself. Whenever I’d come to the computer, I would just waste my time browsing the web, doing nothing useful. Only when I really needed to do something productive, I would clean some of the clutter. Apparently, I subconsciously knew it’s impossible to do any work while having a highly cluttered desk. Once I decluttered my desk, I actually started doing useful thing at my computer. This blog would be an example.

If you can’t decide on how to declutter your desk, I would suggest the following. Clear away everything and only put something back if you need it. That way you could easily see what you rarely use (since it would stay off the desk).

But removing physical clutter isn’t just about moving stuff from where it shouldn’t be (your desk). The larger part of decluttering is throwing out things you don’t use. If they’re hiding on a shelf or in a drawer, they drain your mental energy, without you even realizing it.

The first step in getting rid of physical clutter is realizing the past doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you paid three thousand dollars for a blue-LED blinking buddha doll. All that matters is the future usefulness (in the doll’s case, the usefulness is how much you enjoy looking at it). If you don’t use something, throw it out (or optionally sell it).

Start small

If you’ve never decluttered in the past, you need to start off with baby steps. The best place I found to start is your sock drawer.

Do you see any single socks? Throw them out.

Simplicio: But what if another sock to a pair turns up in future washing?

Salviati: Just throw it out too. It’s not worth it to keep seven or eight single socks just in case one or two get completed to a pair.

Once you’ve throws out the single socks, start throwing out underwear you don’t wear any longer. After that come old T-shirts, then magazines and books and anything else. Once you start decluttering your life, sky is the limit.

Mental clutter

Mental clutter is much more sneaky and subtle than physical clutter. But it drains your energy just as much. It’s not tangible, yet it’s just as real as physical clutter.

Is mental clutter real?

Imagine you’re in the US, traveling south. You reach the border with Mexico, and find you have lost your passport. You decide to cross the border to Mexico without a passport, and get caught.

A border of a country is like mental clutter. It’s not something tangible you can put your hand on. You don’t see a dotted line down on the ground, separating the two countries. Yet if you try crossing it without a passport, something very real will happen. Similarly, even though you can’t see mental clutter, it drains your energy and willpower in a very real way.

Common places for mental clutter

I found that almost everyone has clutter in the following places. That’s especially true if you haven’t cleaned out the clutter in some time.

1. Computer desktop and start menu

One of my friends has to delete icons off his desktop… because he’s ran out of new space for them! That’s one extreme. I would be pretty close to the other extreme. Right now, I have only 5 things on my desktop. A link to my home folder, two eBooks I’m in the middle of reading, one text file with notes for an article I’m writing and the folder with my blog posts.

I keep everything else off my desktop. I launch Firefox and my e-mail client with keyboard shortcuts, and I keep the most important programs in my quick-launch bar (there’s only 4 of them).

Another place that gets cluttered is the start menu. If you’re like my past self, if you go to the “All programs” tab, you’ll get a huge thing that spans across the whole screen. (by the way, nowadays I’m using Ubuntu linux, and the start menu there is much better organized. No more worries with that huge “all programs” monstrosity)

Cleaning up your desktop and start menu, and uninstalling useless programs does a good deal for reducing your mental clutter.

2. In your head

Yet the biggest source of mental clutter is keeping things in your head that should be kept somewhere else. Those of you practicing GTD (Getting Things Done) know what I’m talking about. I’m a recent adopter, and the peace of mind is amazing.

The reason your mind gets cluttered if you don’t write things down is that it’s trying to make sure you don’t forget. Unfortunately your mind doesn’t know when you will need the information. If it did, it would remind you that you need new batteries when you’re in a supermarket. Instead, it reminds you when you’re at home and notice your remote is dead.

Most people won’t go as far as to adopt full-blown GTD. That’s ok. Here are three things to do that will hugely reduce your mental clutter:

a) Always carry around a pen and a notepad

I often have some of my best ideas while traveling somewhere. A notepad lets you capture the ideas. That way you don’t worry that you might forget. If you get a great idea without a notepad, there are two possible bad outcomes. Either you will forget. Or you will keep focused on not forgetting the great idea, and in the process completely stop enjoying the present moment.

Also, if you don’t capture your idea in a notepad, it will keep recurring. If you capture it, you will free up mental space for new ideas.

QUOTE You should never have to think the same thought twice. /QUOTE

b) Write down the big rocks each week

The term big rocks comes from Leo Babauta’s article at Zenhabits. Basically it refers to the most important tasks. If you write down the few most important tasks for the week ahead, and then do them, you will be incredibly more productive.

The interesting thing is that this separates the important from the merely urgent. Returning a movie might be urgent, but not important. Just do the important thing, then return the movie a day late and pay the $5 fine. Your life will thank you.

c) Write down the next concrete, physical step

This means keeping a To-Do list. It will keep things of your mind. You won’t have to worry Interestingly, most people don’t know how to make a good To-Do list.

A good To-Do list consists of concrete, physical actions.

Let me show you an example. A bad To-Do list would read “study”. This is not specific enough. Instead of writing “study”, you might want to write “Read through my chemistry notes on saccharides and try answering one past exam question.”

This is concrete, physical, and it includes a specific end. Generally, open-ended tasks are not for your to-do list.

Sure you can write down your projects somewhere. Like “have a succesful blog”. But your To-Do list should contain only concrete, physical actions.

A final word

Simplicio: That sounds interesting. But I don’t think I’m up to the effort of cleaning up all the clutter.

Salviati: You don’t have to clean up all the clutter at once. Start with small steps. Just move all the desktop shortcuts you rarely use in a separate folder.

Simplicio: But I’m too tired to clean up my clutter. I barely have enough energy to work, yet alone clean up clutter.

Salviati: You’ve got that the wrong way around. Decluttering leaves you with more energy, not less.

The same is true about exercising, but I’ll tackle that in another blog post.

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Random happenings from the past week

Scientists have found that expensive placebo works better than a cheap one. Some of my readers might think - duh. But most of the public aren’t aware of the effect I discuss in my article on why Linux doesn’t spread. People simply think expensive is better than cheap. And since placebo is all about perception, it makes sense expensive placebo works better than a cheap one.