compliments of
FutureVisionsSM
creating sustainable results in growth and performance
You’re a person with a lot to do:
Clutter solves the problem of boredom and makes you feel
needed, like a busy person with important things to do. Before you laugh,
think about it for a moment. Imagine you’re in a beautiful room, empty of
any furniture but a comfortable chair, and a coffee table with a telephone
and a good book resting on it.
Nothing else. You’ve caught up on every single obligation
you had, and now everything is spacious and sunny. Now, in your fantasy, you
can catch up on all that reading you wanted to do. Doesn’t that sound great?
You’d love an opportunity like this, wouldn’t you?
No, you wouldn’t, or you’d live in a room like that. You
probably couldn’t read more than ten minutes in that room before you started
to feel uncomfortable. Why? Because a room like that is completed. It
doesn’t need anybody. Sitting there you’d feel as though you were trapped in
a photo from a home decorating magazine.
But, throw a pile of newspapers on the floor and a
scissors and some file folders, a pen and a notepad - and everything
changes. Pile a few unfinished projects along the wall so you know you’ll
always feel there’s something you need to do, and you’ll feel better.
Guilty, maybe, because you know you probably won’t complete these projects.
But better.
In your fantasies you imagine that you’d love to have all
the clutter gone so you could relax, but in fact, nobody really wants to
relax. Not for very long, anyway. Everybody needs something to do.
The problem is that everybody needs something important
to do, and deep in your heart you sense that reading those magazines or
repairing that chair isn’t it. You should be finding something to do that
matters to you, but unconsciously you’re settling for the illusion that
you’re already in demand and already overextended. It’s a brilliant
avoidance technique your subconscious defense mechanisms have set up for
you.
But this is an expensive little illusion you’re
supporting here. For all the benefits clutter bestows, it costs you a lot in
peace of mind. Clutter makes you feel like a failure, because you never get
it under control. It makes you feel guilty because you’re not trying harder
to clear out that stuff. Those feelings of failure and guilt produce a
steady background noise, crowding out more useful thinking.
Worst of all, you’re playing a dangerous game when you
pretend you have a lot to do because that pretense eats your future.
Pretending to yourself that you’re busier than you are is both a waste of
real opportunity, and real time. After all, you’re not busy fixing that
chair, you’re just busy worrying about it. And the opportunity that might be
waiting for you in some unread magazine article doesn’t exist if you don’t
read the article.
Here’s the bad news: there is no potential in clutter at
all. The hard and shocking truth is that clutter stops you from doing
something you’d love. It’s a terrible trick you’re playing on yourself.
But what about the stuff you really have to do? You know,
the thank you cards and the taxes and the broken VCR? They have to be taken
care of, don’t they? I maintain, as a recovering pack rat, that people like
us can’t tell the difference between what we have to do and what’s part of
our pretending game.
Of course, you have to do your taxes. But you might not
have to send out those thank you cards or fix the video or DVD. Browse
through the rest of these
Clutter Clearing
web pages for a
lesson in deciding what’s important and what’s just another fake out,
because that’s not something you’re good at. If you don’t believe me, look
around you.
