atlantalarry

Simplicity Part VI: Getting things done by doing fewer things

As I work on implementing David Allen's excellent Getting Things Done system in my life, I'm also working on paring down the sheer number of things I do, and getting my priorities really straight.

Some tasks are inevitable.  My mother, who will turn 90 in a little over a week, has had two hospital stays in the past three months, one for a broken hip, one for a blood clot.  This generated a great deal of work for me, including taking her to follow-up doctor's visits, and dealing with the prescriptions and much of the administrative detail.    Family emergencies have to be dealt with, no matter what else is going on with one's schedule..

On the other hand, many things I do constitute wasted time and scheduling noise.  Even many of the things which can be justified in the grand scheme of things (political activism, for instance) translate into a great many scheduling collisions, and often unrealistic todo lists.

So I'm faced with a series of questions:

What are my high level priorities?

What's the relative importance of recreational down time to my "saving the world" activities?

How many discrete tasks is it prudent to put on the schedule for any given day?

I have the luxury of time to think about those things at the moment.  I've retired from my "day job", and  my new business is in that formative stage where I can stop and resume when other things arise (in other words it isn't bringing any money in yet, so interrupting it costs me little money).  Even taking my mother to the doctor's appointments results in time in the waiting room to think and write.

I have figured out one thing already, though.  Part of my ability to "get things done" is going to require not only paring down physical objects in my life, but arranging my life so that I have fewer external committments.  Note that I didn't say "no external committments".  I'm a very socially engaged person, and I value my family and friends.  It's also not possible for me to drop all community and political activity.  I'm a born activist.  I just have to be a lot more selective, and learn to say "no" to overcommittment.  In fact, the most  compelling reason to pare down things is so that the things I do commit to are done well.

So in focusing on a few important aspects of my life, I hope to have more time for friends and family, not less, and for my business life to go better, not worse, and for all the community interests I have to result in more effective work, not less.

Clutter is not just a word that applies to physical objects scattered around the house.  It also means poorly considered, disjointed, badly executed things festooning my todo list.

Simplicity Part III: More on Clutter

I wrote about my ongoing attempts to rid myself of extraneous material objects in my previous post.  The phrase "extraneous material objects" probably sums up the stuff I'm talking about better than the word "clutter".  The word clutter somehow seems to imply that if the stuff is neatly organized, it's still ok, even if it's useless, duplicative, and wasteful.

Why do people accumulate stuff?  I think at the core there is a human impulse to hoard things.  When people were living in more basic conditions it made sense.  The family which had accumulated the most food was liklier to survive through the winter.  Likewise, when humans began making better tools, the family with the most impressive stock of tools had an edge in survival.

So how did we get from holding on to that state-of-the-art stone axe, to millions of broken Popeil's Pocket Fishermen being stored in garages, basements, and closets?  I think there are three parts to the answer. 

First, the fact that we have the hoarding impulse built into the human genes makes us, on average, terrible at doing cold, hard, evaluations about whether we need any given object.  Second, we are status seeking creatures, and the people with the largest array of objects have in most cultures occupied the highest status.  Finally, there are always people eager and willing to convince you that you have a need for objects they are selling.  This was true even before the rise of Madison Avenue and the 24 hour a day nonstop bombardment of advertising to which we are subjected. 

Now the entire economy is built on people buying things of dubious necessity, and in most cases of shoddy quality as well.  I'm not arguing that everything a person owns needs to have some practical utility.  Art objects and recreational equipment are perfectly legitimate things to have.

The real problem operates on two scales.  On the broad scale, is it healthy to have an economy which depends on producing and more and more poorly constructed McMansions, fat and sodium laden hamburgers, and underutilized junk to store in the garages, closets and attics of those McMansions?

On the smaller scale, which is a healthier and more satisfying way to live?  Constantly rearranging piles of inert objects?  Or a situation in which a smaller number of possessions are in their proper place, ready for use and easy to find?

Another issue is in the realm of personal economy.  If a family buys a lot of things, it requires a larger income than a family which spends less.  I've always been convinced that the shift from a one earner family to both partners working had less to do with either inflation or the rise of the feminist movement than it does with the increase in the number of things families consider necessities.

In discussions about consumerism, a question often arises.  If a sufficient number of people opt out of the scramble for an increased number of material objects, will it damage the economy, creating high unemployment and the collapse of major industries?  I don't really know the answer to that.  I suspect that in a better managed world there would be good, productive, fullfilling activities for the population.  But since I'm pessimistic that there will be a significant drop in the hoarding impulse population-wide, I doubt Toys-R-Us has much to worry about.

Another question, of a much more personal and individual nature, is what are the real necessities of life, and how many objects of a not strictly necessary nature is it healthy and appropriate to own?  For instance, a television is really only necessary if you're a TV critic.  Yet TV has somehow solidly landed on the list of necessities for the American family.  Even automobiles are conveniences rather than necessities, despite the feeling of most Americans that they can't live without them. 

Overall, I've come to the conclusion that too many possessions is at best a distraction from more importants things, and at worst a debilitating and wasteful, resource and energy drain.