Weekend Favorites: The Specialness Spiral, Existential Dread and Microsleeps

Weekend Wisdom: The problem usually isn’t your organizing skills or how you manage your time. The problem is that you are dealing with too much.

I’m better with a few things.

If you already have your eye on the new year, and the simplicity changes you want to make, allow me to share some gentle encouragement. I’m not a very organized person. That’s why living with less works so well for me. There is less to keep track of, less to lose and less to think about. I rarely lose my keys or wonder where my glasses are. That said, I do occasionally look for my phone while I’m on my phone (tell me I’m not alone). This isn’t for lack of being organized. I tried to be organized. I diligently sorted and filed things. I even had a label maker and lots of bins and boxes and cabinets from Ikea. It looked nice and it didn’t last. I always had to keep organizing my stuff and “getting my sh*t together” and eventually I got tired of it. I didn’t want more stuff for my stuff, I didn’t want to get organized, I wanted to live my life.

I understand the idea of being organized, and the benefit of having organizational systems and routines but I also see that most of these systems were just created to help us save everything and store more stuff and get more done so we can bask in the glow of our productivity. I don’t care about those things. One of the reasons we are so easily overwhelmed is because we have so much to deal with. By turning your focus from organizing to living with less, you can create more margin so when bigger things happen they don’t completely upend your life. You need a buffer and some margin for the unexpected. Let’s face it, if organizing worked, you’d be organized by now. Owning less is gentler than organizing more.