Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [15]
As you learn how long things take, you’ll grow more confident about letting them stray from optimal conditions. As David Allen put it, “Freedom to create a mess is proportional to your ability to know what ‘no mess’ is and how to get there.”
As you practice Discardia, you'll get a sense of how long it will take to make a room feel comfortable and unchaotic once again. This is a great talent because it will reduce your stress over minor clutter and help you stay focused on implementing deeper changes. Parents will find this skill useful in telling the difference between spending half an hour tidying after they tuck in the kids and making bigger changes.
You can bring your Discardian habits to a comfortable point that you trust. Then, you can rest within a tidal pattern where your routines of decluttering and mindful relaxation wash away debris and return you to a calm, peaceful smoothness.
Symptom #5: Uh-oh Did I Remember to Worry about Forgetting That?
Solution #5: Offboard Memory
There are three things I always forget. Names, faces, and—the third I can't remember.
—Italo Svevo, novelist
Don't be so worried about forgetting things
As you get older, there will be moments when you can't remember something, but that's hardly surprising when you think about it. The older you get, the more information and experiences you've taken in. It doesn't seem odd to me that it would grow more difficult to pull a particular fact out of an ever-increasing pile of other facts.
Today, take some time to think about that which you do remember now and want to keep remembering later. We humans have an amazing memory tool for this: writing. There's that speech trick, too, which is also handy.
Label and name the people in your old photos.
Take pictures of beloved possessions with a story behind them and write the story to keep with the image. Blogs and photo-sharing sites like Flickr are particularly handy for this.
Talk into a tape recorder or an audioblog service like Hipcast and tell the stories you remember, even if they’re not associated with a physical souvenir.
Tell your stories in person to family and friends.
Most of all, don't give yourself a hard time about not remembering every single thing you've ever done, heard, read or otherwise encountered. It'd be a pretty poor and dull life if the human brain could every detail. Put the things that really matter to you in some form of offboard backup and relax.
Set up memory safety nets
Have someone else remember something for you. Enjoy the beauty of those three magic words: “automatic minimum payment.” Talk with the companies behind all your monthly bills and see if there's a way to have the minimum payment automatically charged to your bank account or credit card.
The key word here is “minimum.” You should pay more if you can to avoid interest charges, but always pay the least possible amount to avoid late fees. Then, while you have them on the phone, see if you can get your bills by email. This keeps paper from landing in your house and gives you the earliest possible warning if a bill amount is in error.
Plan ahead and make checklists or kits to ensure repeatedly that you have what you need when and where you need it. When you travel, for example, think ahead and bring the stuff you wind up kicking yourself for forgetting.
Bring your own comfortable headphones and, ideally, a music player with your own tunes to give you aural privacy.
Acknowledge in advance that airlines may not provide anything worth eating and that the airport food choices will be fair to middling at high prices. Pack a lunch or at least bring some good snacks from home.
Tuck one or two of those magazines you've been meaning to read into your bag or print out a long article from the web. You’ll get something off the stack at home and won’t have to suffer through an “It’ll do” choice from the airport newsstand. (If the magazines have overpoweringly