Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [104]
The little changes add up.
Keep steadily leaning in the direction of the life you want to be living. As you rid yourself of what doesn’t help you, you’ll be left with more of what does and your life will be better. You’ll have more energy and opportunity to optimize for improvement. Every now and then, you'll stop and notice how much gradual progress you've made without huge efforts. Celebrate this achievement and let it inspire you!
The Discardian community
When you’re seeking more inspiration, join with other Discardians online and share your trials and triumphs. The Discardian community is growing every day, and there are hundreds of great stories already out there on the web from which to learn.
In addition to the holiday’s home at Discardia.com, you can find it on Twitter as @Discardia (I promise not to overload you with too many messages per day!) and on Facebook at http://facebook.com/discardia . These are the communities I’ve started. You’ll also find Discardia’s seeds scattered in blogs, forums, and other publications on and off the web.
Finding time
Do not be deceived into thinking that you can’t spare the time to achieve massive changes in your life. You have an enormous surplus available to you if you tap into a tiny fraction of the time of which you currently aren’t making positive use. The transformation of your life doesn’t have to come from spending all your time doing new things. It can be merely the result of consistently taking 1% of your passive time and making it active.
Where is that passive time? For most people, it’s watching TV. In a 2008 lecture, Clay Shirky presented his estimate that the Internet-connected population of the world watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. If we took 1% of that time, by his calculations, we could create—in their entirety, including not only the entries but all the web programming and discussion behind them—100 projects the size of Wikipedia per year, at 100 million hours of thought apiece. Small changes add up!
You can find passive time throughout your day. It comes with mindless activities, sure, but it’s also during interstitial moments—getting up to get a glass of water, standing in a line, or waiting for someone. These minute opportunities are lying fallow.
One percent. That’s all you need to ask of yourself. Just take 1% of your time and effort—even 1% of only your relaxation time—and start using it to make your life better.
Where your time goes is where you’re going.
Discardia is an attitude as much as an act
You don't need to make a lot of massive changes all at once or do every activity I suggest in order to be a Discardian. Just commit yourself to change, and consider carefully the new things you bring into your life.
Do what you can. If you don't have time or energy to clean that closet, give it 30 minutes, or go through the things on one shelf or even deal with just one problem object. Too busy when the Discardia holiday rolls around? Take care of yourself, stay focused on your priorities, and celebrate it for a few hours this time instead of the whole season.
Don’t burn yourself out doing more than is necessary to reap the benefits. Finish your first rounds of purges before you lock yourself into a new arrangement for things. Don’t spend a ton of money on new organizational toys until you're really sure you'll get enough benefit from them. For example, maybe before you buy some expensive storage compartment system, you should dry run the concept with stacked shoeboxes.
Whatever