Cleaning Day

It's cleaning day! Because today is Yoojin-comes-to-stay-over-day and tomorrow is retreat and it's rainy which means it's perfect for laundry-vacuuming-dusting-packing-reorganizing.

There's a little trick I've learned recently to controlling clutter::: take a picture of the space, and you'll be able to more easily identify what should and should not be there. Our brains are wonderfully adept and can quickly skim over things that it's grown accustomed to -- i.e. patterns (this is a really poor and cut down explanation of why we can read things like this). Patterns can be in text, concepts, or spaces. I have no research-based scientific backing for this, but I think that based on our brains' ability to chunk things into patterns and store them into long term memory as "habits", we can similarly chunk our cluttered spaces into patterns. So unless you are very intentional about looking for clutter, it's easy to ignore it because it's "just always there anyway" (patterns!).

Cameras don't do that. When we look at a picture, we're looking at a frozen instance of space. Yes, inanimate objects are still inanimate objects (unless you live in Harry Potter world and every picture is alive), but the finality and distinct boundaries of a picture force our eyes and brains to explore the finite space, to actually process those patterns that we otherwise overlook (literally). Sometimes, we need to be slowed down by a physical picture (or digital, whatever) so that we can really process what's going on in that space.

I think the same goes for life in general. There is a lovely article on the Harvard Business Review about prioritization, with one quote that I really like:

"Many of us have become addicted, unwittingly, to the speed of our lives — the adrenalin high of constant busyness. We mistake activity for productivity, more for better, and we ask ourselves "What's next?" far more often than we do "Why this?""

I would say that's very true, and generally descriptive of what I do with myself. Activity most definitely != productivity, and more != better, yet somehow we convinced ourselves otherwise (or just me).

From the article,

"It's only when we pause — when we say no to the next urgent demand or seductive source of instant gratification — that we give ourselves the space to reflect on, metabolize, assess, and make sense of what we've just experienced. 

Taking time also allows us to collect ourselves, refuel and renew, and make conscious course corrections that ultimately save us time when we plunge back into the fray."

It's been a theme in my life for a while now, I'm such a slow learner... but I think that I've been internalizing and exerting this more. Hopefully.

Welps, happy cleaning day! And also I can't wait to eat my lunch!