We’re drawing closer to Chinese New Year, and I’ve been doing some early spring cleaning with some hardcore decluttering this year.
Now, I love me some decluttering, but how to go about doing it? After years of making both leanness and regret, I’ve found a quick and easy way is to divide your stuff into 3 boxes, and then decide how hardcore you want to get.
(These don’t have to be actual physical boxes, but boxes you categorize your stuff into in your mind.)
The 3 Boxes of Decluttering
The Keep Box
This is easy. The stuff that you absolutely know you want to keep goes into the Keep Box. This includes things like the clothes you always wear, the books you love and the stuff you use everyday that keeps you happy and healthy.
The Throw Box
Stuff that is definitely going out goes into the Throw Box. This includes stuff that don’t fit your present life anymore and have no place in the vision of your future. If you haven’t used or seen it in a while, chances are that it’s good to go.
The Maybe Box
The Maybe Box is where stuff you’re not sure whether you want to keep goes into. When you’re sorting out your stuff, don’t stop your momentum with indecision. If you don’t know whether to keep or throw something, put it in the Maybe Box and decide later. Read More →
The top 10 productivity lessons I learned in 2008 that helped me work faster, better and happier. The short version for the busy folks:
1. Work at What You Give a Damn About
2. Knowing is Not Doing
3. Decide What Has a Place in Your Life and What Doesn’t
4. Multi-Tasking is a Big Fat Lie
5. Create, Don’t Freeload
6. Tackle the Small Problems First
7. Respect Your Unconscious
8. Money is Renewable, Time is Not
9. People are not Schedules
10. 80% of Value is in the Habits
11. Make Ideas
And here we go with the long version!
1. Work at What You Give a Damn About
I find that I’ve done my best creative work when I do stuff that has real meaning for me. Maybe I’m a spoilt knowledge worker diva, but I can’t do banal, uninteresting stuff that doesn’t make a difference.
But beyond personal satisfaction, this is about making personal meaning – and this is real regrets-at-your-deathbed level stuff here. It’s just stupid to be productive for productivity’s sake; do you really want to run faster and harder up a ladder that’s propped up against the wrong wall?
Find out where you want to contribute to most, and then productivity the heck out of it. Now cue quote from famous person, in this case Steve Jobs: Read More →
Yesterday, a friend of mine read an article I wrote, and said the writing in the article read like the way I spoke. It sounds like a duh thing to say, but to me, it’s the highest compliment possible, because for me, it’s the hardest thing to do.
It takes me a lot of effort to make my writing sound as natural as possible without sounding like a PR drone, to remove as many layers between myself and my reader as I can with as authentic a voice as I can muster. To say things not in the way I think I should say them, but in the way I do say them.
A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy. It isn’t. A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking. Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or believe you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. Read More →
Wherein favoritest becomes a word, and I share the favoritest personal growth books I read in 2008.
Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina
Surprise, surprise? Not really, if you’ve read my book review, Personal Atrophy for Foolish People anti-theory and Moving Towards Wisdom, Beauty & Strength application of the book’s principles.
There’s only one reason Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth is up here, and that’s because its worked for me. I think Steve nails it when he describes the core principles of all personal growth as truth, love and power. Admittedly, it wasn’t such a big revelation to me since my friend Eleutherios had already introduced me to the Kabbalistic equivalent of wisdom, beauty and strength, but Steve’s re-introduction was the tipping point that came at the right time in my life.
I saw that applying these principles to be more honest to myself and others around me with Life Coaches Blog would make me happier, result in a greater connection to my heart and give me the power to get to the next stage in my life. And it has, not just on my blog but in my working and personal life as well.
The real litmus test of a book is whether I’d put cash down on it, and even though I’d already had a pre-release ebook review copy, the moment I saw it on the shelves I bought it. Read More →
If you look to the past to live your present, your future can never be anything more than a repeat of history.