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Mental Clutter - STUFFology101 graphic

The Future of STUFFology 101

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In the book Chrysalis, coach and author, Ann Vanino writes about cocooning. The caterpillar knows nothing of what the future holds and yet, prepares a cocoon for a metamorphosis into a beautiful creature that takes flight.

Fifty Years of Clutter Awareness

For over fifty years, since I was a pre-teen, I have been aware of clutter due to my parents’ penchant for saying “yes” to anything that was free and then not being able to let go. Forty-five years later, after my mother died and my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I cleared their home. We’ve all read the stories of apartment-sized dumpsters of possessions being discarded. That was my experience. Forty years after those childhood experiences, and in my fifties, I realized I had a talent for helping others release their own life cocoons created by physical, mental, and temporal clutter.

Eric Riddle joined me, and together we have written articles about decluttering and a book, STUFFology 101: Get Your Mind Out of the Clutter. We advocate the process of S.T.U.F.F.—that is, Start. Trust. Understand. Focus. Finish.

Success Requires Commitment

The truth is, many of us need stronger faith and commitment to the task we set our minds to. Consider all the New Year’s resolutions that are broken long before the change of seasons.

To be able to stand back and truly marvel at one’s success is often the result of dedicated and focused effort. Like the caterpillar, our unyielding effort magnifies into an unexpected magical creation.

Larger Impact for Limited Time

We need to have a larger impact if we want to ensure our limited time is well-invested.

Mental Clutter - STUFFology101 graphicLate last year, I posted, We NEED Your HELP – Please Read and Comment. Surprisingly, we did not receive a single comment or email answering the questions I posed in the article. We did receive one heartfelt and thought-provoking email, which still warms my heart.

While the clutter world is filled with extremes—Marie Kondo’s anthropomorphic approach of imbuing life-energy to possessions before letting go of those that don’t spark joy to the tough love and therapeutic approach with extreme hoarders—STUFFology 101 continues to urge clutter bugs to define an area of clutter and to take the S.T.U.F.F. steps in letting go.

Time passes more quickly, the older I grow. How I invest my time is more important, because it is time I can never get back. The same is true for you.

I know what it means to live without a lot of STUFF. I feel lighter after working through an area of accumulated clutter. I feel JOY after gifting someone with something I no longer need. I find pleasure knowing I have no desire to accumulate possessions.

Do I share these experiences in weekly articles on STUFFology101.com? Bi-weekly articles? Monthly articles? Do I work on another book? Do I totally reconfigure the website? These are some of the questions I will begin asking as I take time to enter a STUFFology cocoon.

In the interim, look for a major announcement Eric will be sharing this month.

Mental Clutter - STUFFology101 graphic

We NEED Your HELP – Please Read and Comment

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During the Fall Season of 2020, co-author Eric and I agreed to redirect our time and effort to write an article every other week. Between the two of us, we figured you would have an article a week to read and digest. We wrote articles that would be timely enough for you to apply to your life.

STUFFology-101-Get Your Mind Out of the Clutter book coverWe thought our investment of time would ripple beyond our immediate circle. We wanted our message to gain traction and reach people beyond our first and second connections. We hoped our words would help more people clear physical, mental, temporal… clutter from their lives.

As we continue spending more time at home, COVID and its variants alter our life plans.

We anticipated delivering coaching sessions via ZOOM while producing follow-on materials to our bestselling title, STUFFology101: Get Your Mind Out of the Clutter.

Progress Report

It has been 14 months since we made and implemented our joint commitment. We are grateful for our dedicated fans who respond and share. Yet, I’ve been asking myself, lately—What impact am I having for the time I invest in writing these articles?

I’m growing older and antsy about time well spent.

We should all seek to manage our limited time more productively—for things that are having an impact. Time is the only thing that passes and cannot be recovered. I want to feel this part of my life’s purpose touching our devoted fans and then rippling far beyond. When more people are engaged and responsive, the energy created is contagious and fuels us to produce more.

Here is Where I Need Your HELP

As we set our sights on 2022, I ask for YOUR ADVICE regarding the following:

  1. What impact are we having?
    Your words will help us if you are specific and share the URL(s) of one (or two) of the articles you found impactful and how.
  2. Shall we continue?
  3. What shall we do differently that will enable us to create wider ripples?
    We’re all in this together and can gain insights from one another.

Be brave. (We have been brave carving out time to post for 14 months.)
Post your comment below, or… if you rather write to us, please email EricRiddle@STUFFology101.com.

I will write a follow-up post on January 10.

NAPA Wine Country Castello di Amorosa in CalistogaAvadian photo 2021 NAPA Wine Country Castello di Amorosa in Calistoga

Declutter Your Smartphone

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When is the last time you looked at the condition of your smartphone?

Did you run the Device Care feature (in Settings for Android) to clear the clutter and help it work more efficiently? Screenshot of Device Care status on Android Smartphone

Digital Memories Grow Rapidly

Wherever I go, I take pictures. I also shoot videos. I am pleasantly surprised by people’s reactions to the people-and-nature photos and videos I post to social media. While I use my own smartphone and then spent (too much) time trying to get them high-resolution videos, I’m clearing the temporal clutter in my life. I use their cameras to shoot most of the pictures and videos. Meanwhile, I use my phone only for the must-have (a subjective call) images and video, saving gigabytes of space and time.

Years ago, in the days of pre-digital photography, we dropped off our rolls of film to be developed at a Fotomat booth or mailed them. We were careful about capturing the ideal shot as our hobby could grow quite expensive. Back then, I read that a National Geographic photographer could take as many as 10,000 photos for every one featured in the magazine. WOW!

Gigabytes of Too-Much Data

Today, the ease of digital photography and immediate feedback, makes it easier to quickly delete poor images as we continually improve our photography skills.

Friend, Manish Mamtani, an IT/Finance professional, parlayed his photography hobby into an internationally recognized following with photos featured around the world including at the White House and in NatGeo.

Those of us who enjoy taking pictures or shooting videos have likely accumulated tens of thousands if not 100,000 or more photos on our hard drives not to mention the seemingly endless gigabytes of photos and videos on our cards inserted in our smartphones.

Before I travel, I try to leave with at least half of my phone and card space available for new-photo and video opportunities. I am always surprised by the person who hands me a smartphone that doesn’t save the images or videos I shoot because there’s no more space left on their memory card or phone. They quickly delete and ask me to retake the images but by then the magic has passed.

Keep Control of Your Data

Take control of your smartphone files. Beyond your photos and videos, look also at your text messages, especially, those with images or videos. Also, review your emails and delete as many as you can.

Declutter.

When you’re finished, be sure to run the Device Care feature, again.

Digital Clutter Creep

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How do you spend your time?

Time is an interesting concept. We can spend it, save it, or waste it.

My recent computer issues forced me to spend a great deal of time fixing my mistake. But also offered me the opportunity to examine how much time I was in front of a computer screen for work and leisure.

Your desktop, laptop, tablet, and smart phone all count as a computer screen for my purposes/definition. Turns out it was quite a bit of time each day.

For me that is a combination of digital and temporal clutter. How often have you gone on Facebook to do a quick check on a friend or family member and realize an hour has passed when you log off? Or maybe clicked a link your friend sent you of a YouTube video and are still watching related content a half hour later? The examples are endless across social media platforms. Even checking your email can be a giant time suck from your day.

I mention these examples not to be judgmental. I mention them because I have done them myself without really thinking about it. If you value your time like I do, it is important to review where the hours go each day.

Email is one of my clutter issues. I would sign up for a newsletter on a topic of interest and continue with it even after losing interest over time. The delete key easily removing the newsletter from my inbox. Consider that over multiple newsletters and many months equals wasted time. Part of my solution to my digital clutter when migrating information over to my newer laptop was to ruthlessly unsubscribe from newsletters to clear up my inbox. Simple I know. Yet it took a computer device failure to look critically at my email and how much time I spent with it. Digital clutter creep if you will.

I challenge you to take a step back and examine where your time goes each day.

Time for Yourself

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Time goes by each day. How do you spend your time? Time management is important for our general health and happiness.

In STUFFology 101: Get Your Mind Out of the Clutter we note that, “All of us have 168 hours each week. How we fill those hours determines the quality of our lives.”

Are you busy? Probably. Life can be hectic for many of us. Temporal clutter often keeps us from taking time for ourselves.

Do you make time for yourself? If you don’t, your body will eventually protest.

Here are a few resources that may help:

The picture I chose for this blog post is a digital clock with a slightly off-kilter display. A useful metaphor for how we spend our time each day. That is, we can be off-kilter if we don’t take time for ourselves.

A quotation from Diane von Furstenberg reinforces this point well,

“It is so important to take time for yourself and find clarity. The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself.”

Take time for yourself today!

Bonus quotations to further help you remember to take time for yourself.

Seashells w eyes conversingBrenda Avadian 2021

Letting GO of Temporal and Mental Clutter to Let IN

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Something will always fill the void
IF we let it.
We choose whether or not
We will leave the time and space open.

The Importance of Time

The older we grow; the more important time becomes.

At age 61, I find less of it. Even though, the actuaries say I’ll live another 30 years, painful arthritis is my annoying companion. 

I’d better go on all my fun physical adventures now. Once my knees and shoulders get stronger (unless I need surgery), the Sierra Mountains will beckon me. By the next decade, who knows.

If there’s a silver lining in the COVID cloud it just may be the forced reflection and observation of how we’re passing each day.

Letting GO to Let IN 

Letting Go to Let In has been a thread throughout quite a few of our STUFFology 101 posts. 

It’s an important theme. Like eating, we can only ingest so much before we need to let go. Constipation is painful and dangerous.

With this, I’ve decided to let go of one of my long-standing organizational memberships. 

While many are getting rid of their physical stuff there’s also all that non-physical stuff that fills our minds with mental clutter and steals away our limited time.

I have thought about why I need to let go in order to let in something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

Reduce the Clutter in Our Lives

When we reduce our temporal clutter, we open time for what’s important in our lives. When we reduce our physical clutter, we make space and clear some of our mental clutter. We need to take a serious look at the cluttergories we tolerate that needlessly fill our lives.

For two and a half years, I’ve postponed moving on in one area of my life. Being a loyalist, I’ve remained. Yet, the clock keeps ticking and I know I’d rather do the things that align with the direction I’m headed in, now.

Let in What Matters

For about a decade (maybe more), I’ve wanted to host a salon. Among the varying French traditions, these are meetings where self-proclaimed intellectuals discuss a topic in depth.

Seashells w eyes conversing

This intellectual pursuit re-energizes my passion for deeply thoughtful discussions about diverse topics.

The other activity I’ve wanted to re-engage in is serving my community with the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT).

We must decide what to let go to leave space and enough time in order to do what matters in our lives.

For more, click to read:

Less TV for More of What Matters

Treasured Books to Declutter

Letting go and Letting IN the World with Professor Dumpster

Constant Clutter Conspiring to Constrict Your Life?

What HAPPENED? Too much Time STUFF!

 

Cluttered Garage - ER

Constant Clutter Conspiring to Constrict Your Life?

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Help is on the way!  During this COVID-19 period of limiting travel and social contacts, STUFFology 101, co-author, Eric Riddle and I met to discuss reinstituting regular STUFFology 101 decluttering tips to help you while we’re all spending more time at home.

With all this time, we have the cleanest homes, right?

Nooooo?

Cluttered Garage - ER

 

While we try to set a good example as STUFFologists, we’ve also been dealing with our mental and physical clutter, while balancing the temporal cluttergory of our lives.

Months from now, WILL WE regret wasting away our days and weeks, not having used this valuable time to get things done?

Why have regret, when we can take steps, starting now?

Eric and I will post short digestible tips each Monday at 8:00AM PST.  Visit us for real-life tips you can apply to the cluttergories in your life.

We invite you to join and engage with us by sharing your own experiences.

Together we will get our minds out of the clutter.

Clock face

What HAPPENED? Too much Time STUFF!

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Clock facePHEW! What happened to 2016?

We’re 11/12 of the way through the year and if you’re saying this, it could be due to too much temporal clutter!

Even I, a STUFFologist – an expert in decluttering the cluttergories of our lives – have lots going on and feel involved in too many things!

Sometimes, we go through periods like these and all we can do is keep up… barely! A family emergency?  We have to fit it in as we set aside other important tasks. Fortunately, there are only 24-hours in a day! Otherwise, we’d be busy, Busy, BUSY for Many MORE hours!

You may recall one of the cluttergories defined along the left side of the page is:

Temporal CluttergoriesTemporal clutter is when we fill our days with so many activities we can’t focus on any one. People who say they’re too busy are often suffering from temporal clutter.

We fill the open slots in our days with seemingly interesting diversions.

I’ve been reviewing author Dorothea Brande’s two-million copy selling 1936 book entitled, Wake Up and Live where she writes about successful people heading toward goals while those who fail head away from goals. In other words, failures engage in self-sabotage. Brande employs an elegant example in the first chapter. (Bracketed “you” replaces use of male gender.)

Suppose [you] had an appointment a hundred miles north of [your] home, and that if [you] kept it [you] would be sure of having health, much happiness, fair prosperity, for the rest of [your] life. [You have] just time enough to get there, just enough gas in [your] car. [You] drive out, but decide that it would be more fun to go twenty-five miles south before starting out in earnest.

Doesn’t make sense, does it?

Yet, how many of us take a break or worse, explore a diversionary route when faced with eventual success? If toward the end of this year, you’re finding achievement of your goals elusive, take an honest look at how you’re spending your time. Brande expands on how we justify our decision to fail.

When failure comes about through devoting precious hours to time-killing pursuits, we can all see … by looking more closely, by discovering that this work gets us nowhere, that it both tires us and leaves us unsatisfied, that we see here again energy is being devoted to the pursuit of failure.

This year, I took steps to focus more on the things that will help me to reach my goals.

Fewer and Better Quality Speaking Engagements
I’m surprised to find fewer potential clients who are prepared to partner in co-creating a stellar program. When I find that rare person who is willing to work to produce an optimal program, I accept the invitation and together we create a memorable and rewarding program.

Reduced board service
For those who know me, I bring everything to the table and more. Surprisingly, there are too many board members (unfortunately) who want/need the prestige but are not prepared to fulfill their fiduciary duties. An example is corporate board membership where board members serve in 9 or more other boards receiving fees of $245,000 or more for each board. Seriously? If your board meets quarterly and you’re a member of 10 boards, you’re needing to prepare for 40 – 80 days of meetings in a year let alone trying to fulfill your primary job as a CEO. Not gonna happen… effectively.

Let go of the temporal clutter in your life. 

Take these final weeks of the year to focus your efforts toward your goal(s).

So often we justify interim failure by saying we’ll start anew in the New Year. Why program yourself toward failure? Work toward success! Dorothea Brande believes success takes just as much energy as failing. I’ve found I feel much better when I test out strategies as the year comes to a close. By the time the New Year arrives, I’m on a roll having already taken steps toward success. I feel much more confident about tweaking my approach as I go along. Try it. NOW! Don’t you deserve to feel better than you do, right now?

Most THINGS don’t Matter Unexpected Gifts Do

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Life Lesson: Most THINGS don’t Matter Unexpected Gifts Do

Oftentimes, we are caught up with THINGS.

We collect things. We clean, organize, and display them. We feel a loss when things go missing.

Yet, if we let go of some of these things or even better, don’t bring them into our homes, we’ll receive unexpected gifts that may surprise us.

Brenda Avadian in Mexico Drinking la Leche fresca de CocoWhile on a trip to Mexico, my husband and I lived high on the hog, we also lived along the middle of the hog, and under the hog. Okay, I’m stretching the cliché a little.

We returned home appreciating that we had a shelter even though it was a fixer-upper. We questioned if we should proceed with remodeling.

Even now, in our information-rich world, the more things we acquire, we run the risk of creating physical clutter, which soon grows into toxic mental clutter that takes time away from what matters in our lives.

Ever ask a person a question and not get a straight answer?

C’mon, what is it? Yes or No?

It’s hard to decide with a clutter-filled mind.

Instead, when we declutter the various cluttergories in our lives, we feel lighter, more focused, and are more decisive.

At around 7 minutes in the video, you’re invited to do an exercise. Click on link for an overview of the STUFFology 101 Cluttergories. Print a copy and then write your notes (from the video) on the reverse.

And the hog?

We finally ate the hog, but carnitas are not part of this story except for an unexpected gift.

I crossed one item off my Bucket List—a goal I’d had since I read stories in the 5th or 6th grade recounting family gatherings in Mexico.

What was it?

Watch the end of the video for my unexpected gift.

Yours will be different, and that’s what makes these gifts unexpected.

ENJOY.

If the embedded video does not display below, click on http://youtu.be/ViA9Xdsvz2g

 

Who has time to read?

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Who has time to read? You do, despite the temporal clutter in your life. I like to read for pleasure, for personal development, and so forth. With all the demands on our time, it is a good idea to have a plan for your reading.

When preparing STUFFology 101: Get Your Mind Out of the Clutter, I read and subscribed to many newsletters and articles about clutter, some of which we reference in the Additional Resources section of the book. I continue to read and watch videos from other experts; you never know what will trigger a fresh idea.

One such expert is Maria Gracia from Get Organized Now! She has wonderful stuff on her website to help you control your clutter. In one of the videos on her YouTube channel she explains how to organize your reading. As someone who loves to read and is still building my personal library, I really appreciated her perspective.

Remember too that you can always read from your smartphone or tablet through one of the popular reading apps like Kindle or Nook.

You do have time to read when you follow Maria’s advice.

Pick up that book or magazine and enjoy a good read today!