Hasta La Ideas

My alma mater is currently ranked number one in all of the college men’s basketball rankings. They’ve been in the top spot for 11 of the 14 weeks of the polls, and were number one in the preseason. There are five games left in the regular season, and all of the teams Kansas has left to play would love to see the Jayhawks lose.

Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, and Missouri fans aren’t the only ones who want to see Kansas mess up their record in the last five games. Fans of the other ranked teams would be happy to see Kansas take a tumble, and, after watching some of the games this year, I’m pretty certain there are a few referees that would be glad to see Kansas lose, too.

In competitive sports like basketball, a game has to end with a winner and a loser. If you’re on top, it’s because you beat other teams to get there. You make enemies quickly when success after success stacks up beneath you. Other people don’t like to see you succeed when it was at their expense. In fact, other teams and fans watch you in hopes of experiencing schadenfreude.

In our work lives, however, very few things are like competitive sports. If someone does well, it’s usually not at the expense of someone else. Many people can do well at a time. Everyone on a project can be successful. Just because someone receives a promotion today doesn’t mean you won’t ever be promoted. Even though this is the fact, it is easy to lose sight of it. We quickly clutter up our minds with jealousy, envy, and hope for some schadenfreude in our immediate lives.

If you want to be productive and manage your time well at work, you need to let go of the belief that your workplace is a zero-sum game. If a colleague is praised for his or her work — even if you feel it is unwarranted — be genuinely happy for that person and then immediately return to your tasks. Getting caught up in office politics, sabotaging your colleagues, and focusing on anything other than your work is a waste of your time. Engaging in such negative behaviors causes people to believe you can’t be trusted, you’re a bad team member, and you’re only out for yourself. Even if you aren’t outwardly expressing your frustrations, obsessive negative thoughts can decrease your productivity. Believing that someone else’s win is your loss is clutter, it keeps you from being productive, and only damages you professionally in the long-run.

Back when I was an avid knitter (a.k.a. before parenthood), I participated a few times in the Knitting Olympics. The idea of the Knitting Olympics is that you begin a large project at the start of the actual Olympic opening ceremonies, and you work diligently to finish the garment by the end of the closing ceremonies. Many knitters take on intricate lace shawl or fair isle sweater projects — projects that are really challenging to finish in 16 days.

I like the idea of using the Olympics as motivation to complete a difficult project. Olympians train years, decades, and some even their entire lives for mere minutes of Olympic competition. They don’t give up because the obstacle might seem unobtainable; they keep training until they realize their dreams of Olympic glory.

There are only 12 days left until the final Olympic ceremony. What challenging uncluttering project can you conquer before the Olympic flame is extinguished?

Sentimental clutter plagues our attics, basements, closets, garages, and desks. These sentimental trinkets can keep us from moving forward with our lives physically and emotionally. If there is so much of the past taking up space in the present, there isn’t room to grow.

The article “What is nostalgia good for?” from BBC News discusses a recent report from the financial services firm Standard Life, the book Get It Together by Damian Barr, and research conducted by psychologist Clay Routledge at North Dakota State University that may provide insight into why we accumulate so many sentimental items and have even greater difficulty letting them go:

“Most of our days are often filled with with routine activities that aren’t particularly significant — shopping for groceries, commuting to work and so forth,” says Mr. Routledge.

“Nostalgia is a way for us to tap into the past experiences that we have that are quite meaningful — to remind us that our lives are worthwhile, that we are people of value, that we have good relationships, that we are happy and that life has some sense of purpose or meaning.”

Unfortunately, keeping everything from the past can have a negative impact on the future. From the article:

But Mr Barr warns the past can be fun in measured doses and for the right reasons.

“You shouldn’t revisit it as a way of avoiding the present or not thinking about the future. If you spend too much time thinking about the past, you are simply not going to be prepared for the future socially or emotionally.”

While highlighting the benefits of nostalgia, a 2006 report in Psychology Today magazine has warned that “overdoing reminiscence” risks an absence of joy derived from the present, and a reliance on past memories to provide happiness.

Thinking about the past could also trigger painful emotions, such as grief for lost loved ones or feeling like a has-been if recalling a distant career success.

Since we get a bump of happiness from sentimental items, it’s okay to keep a few of the prized possessions. Make room for the handful of valuable-to-you pieces of nostalgia that aren’t actually clutter. Get rid of the rest of the stuff that holds little-to-no value, though. A quilt from your grandmother might be an object you keep, but a stick you picked up one day in her yard might be something you should trash. It’s impossible to keep every object that comes into your life, so keep what is truly important (not clutter) and clear the rest (clutter) to make room for your present and future.

A few tips for ways to let go of sentimental clutter:

• Snap a digital photograph of the item and keep only the image. Save these pictures securely online in a program that allows you to keep notes about the image (like Flickr or Picasa).
• Write a journal entry about the item before you get rid of it. The act of writing down the memory will let you think about the experience, which is usually more valuable than the object itself.
• Invite friends to a Nostalgia Night and video tape your conversations about the items. If your friends wish to take any of the items home with them, let the object go to a good home. What is left afterward can be recycled, given to charity, or thrown in the trash.
• Make a deal with yourself to only keep sentimental items that will fit in a specific acid-free storage box or scrapbook. Deciding what will make it into the box or album can be a new happy memory itself.

Be sure to check out the full article for more insights into nostalgia.

All along the east coast of the U.S. today, we’re getting blanketed with snow. As a result, I’ve declared that I’m not leaving the house unless it catches on fire. I’m spending the day in my pajamas, nursing this awful fever-cough-runny-nose ick I’ve caught from my son, and taking care of some unfinished items on my home’s to-do list.

Three of these to-do items are great tasks to complete on a day you’ve decided to stay at home. From my home to yours, I bring you three uncluttered activities you can do on a lazy Saturday:

1. Sort through your magazines and catalogs. Curl up on a comfy corner of the couch, pull out your giant stack of reading materials, and take an hour to read and then recycle all of these materials. Any articles you want to keep, rip out of the magazine and then scan them to your computer. Farewell, July issue of Vanity Fair!
2. Backup your home computer. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — There are two types of hard drives: those that have failed, and those that have yet to fail. If you’re not regularly backing up your hard drive, you’re tempting fate. Open up an account at Dropbox.com and securely upload all of your important data. In my opinion, a non-backed up hard drive is clutter because it’s a distraction to your life the same way dirty socks are in the middle of your living room floor.
3. Clear the clutter from your laundry room. I’m not really sure how it happens, but laundry rooms are clutter magnets. There are piles of loose change, random receipts and pony tail holders pulled out of pockets, errant socks, used fabric softener sheets, and three bottles of partially used detergent haphazardly strewn about the room. Go through the items in this area and create a more organized system. The more you enjoy being in this space, the more likely you will be to keep up with your laundry chores. A nice drawer organizer can be repurposed to hold buttons, safety pins, and change. And, a large plastic shoe box can become the permanent home for your detergents and fabric softeners.

Now you all know how I’ll be spending my Saturday at home. What uncluttered items are on your to-do list for the day?

1. Grab all of those post-it notes off your screen, phone, keyboard, and bulletin board and permanently capture that information. Enter phone numbers into your address book, put to-do items on your calendar, and hide your passwords in a place where snoopers can’t find them.
2. Gather up all of your writing implements, and test your pens and markers. Get rid of those that don’t work, and sharpen all of your pencils. Finally, put all of these items in an organized container that is near where you use them.
3. Process an inch of paperwork from your desk’s inbox. File, sign, scan, read or return the papers as necessary. Don’t put anything back into your inbox.
4. Get everything out of your office that doesn’t belong there. Walk that dead printer to the IT department for recycling, and give your co-worker back the scissors you snagged off her desk when you couldn’t find yours.
5. Check your bulletin board for any out-dated office phone lists, take-out menus, or memos, and drop them into the recycling bin or shredder. Rearrange what is left so that the information you reference most often is in the spot that is easiest to see.