CLUTTER - THE FOCUS KILLER

Clutter. Chaos, derangement, disorder, jumble, muddle — the synonyms say it all but lets stick with clutter.

Yes clutter. Funny word. One of those where the more you see it, the more you question if it is a real word or not. You’ll see enough instances of the word in this brief article.

Clutter has driven me to write this, in order to remove at least one piece of clutter from my mind - which is the annoyance that clutter imposes on my life these days.

But what clutter in particular is causing my annoyance? All of it. And it manifests in so many ways. I’ll start with this screen and zoom out on my life. When I say this screen I mean…..

Three Screens. Each with various tabs open. Actually I can technically zoom in on the clutter too as each screen is cluttered with tabs, which themselves are cluttered. I have five Google accounts, each with their own email, calendar, drive, photos. These are for a couple of companies, a side hustle or two and this writing side-line.

Backing out of the screens I have a desk which is, (yes here’s the C word again) — cluttered. Paperwork, notebooks, cables, speakers and a phone. Lets not even venture into the phone.

Further afield, the house is cluttered — unprocessed laundry and the trails of destruction from a nocturnal teenager.

(I think she still lives here, I’m not quite sure.)

At the end of a busy working day, my mind is cluttered from the half done tasks, remaining tasks, emails from five accounts that need processing — so what do I do? I sit down and ‘relax’ and clutter the brain up even more, doom-scrolling pointless and meaningless social media feeds beaming information at me that I did not chose to absorb.

As a result of all of the above, my brain is a jumbled, deranged muddle of disorder and chaos.

No wonder I’m going through an inefficient spell. Smart-Thinking? Come on, practice what you preach.

So tomorrow morning I'm clearing the diary for a couple of hours and I'm going to start by clearing the desk. Marie Kondo style.

That will open up a clear space in my mind and I'll then clear my virtual desktop and get back on top of things. Clearing the clutter in your mind has an exponential benefit in that the more you tackle the better everything gets. Creating some space allows all the other blocks of clutter (real or virtual) to move more freely. Like ‘defragging’ your brain.

They say a clear desk is a clear mind and I think there’s truth to it. I regularly have a purge of all the clutter and the result is instant clarity and focus — until the next wave of clutter starts to stick.

And I think this is the solution moving forward — DON’T GIVE IT CHANCE TO STICK.