I relaunched my popular productivity summit this week (get your free ticket here). As a result, thinking like the productive person I try to be has been top of mind. As I see it, though, productivity is a load of hogwash if it doesn’t work for REAL people.
Today, as I recognized a huge-stupid-dumb-lame blind spot in my own daily life I confirmed that oh hey I’m REAL and I’m also nowhere near the end of my journey to intentional work. It’s a process.
This morning I pulled up to my office early after waking up early and feeling stressed out for no good reason. As I parked I looked over glumly at the pile of crap in the passenger seat. This is the pile of crap I bring to the office every day. It includes a lot of stuff I hate and a few things I do not. It includes a heck of a lot of what I don’t need.
Firstly, there is my favorite backpack in the whole world, the one I have owned four (five) of because the zippers don’t last forever. Inside is my Macbook Pro, my awesome dot journal (a Leuchtturm Hardcover Medium A5 Squared Notebook), my Kindle, my favorite sustainable cosmetics bag from ABLE, some random food items, a pen I love, and the usual mountain of scraps of paper and receipts.
Next to it is the monstrosity. This “bag” (I use quotation marks because it’s more a small dead mule than an accessory) is maroon and looks decidedly diaper friendly. My mom was cleaning out her house one day this year and as the logic always goes when one is cleaning out, “Well, this was a $150 bag at Lulu Lemon so it’s a shame to give it away! You’d love it! ” Agreed. Nevermind that it’s unattractive and ratty. It’s sturdy. And at one time it cost $150 at Lulu Lemon so YEAH.
Inside this bag is where things really get problematic. First, there are my two oversized work notebooks (the awesome Leuchtturm Master Slim A4+ Dotted Notebook). These are amazing, and I use one every year or so for note-taking for work but they are hardly transportable wonders. They are also sequential (AKA organized badly) and I always have the sense I PROBABLY need to reference something in last year’s one. So I haul around two. JUST IN CASE. Then there’s my Passion Planner. Love that thing. Then my cool Danish carafe (Swell stainless steel water bottle) of decaf bulletproof coffee I got in Copenhagen. Then some folders of — let’s be honest — who the hell knows what. Then a bag of food. Then someone’s pacifier.
DO YOU GET THE PICTURE?
As I walked around to the passenger side of the car to haul the dead mule out today (because hey it’s too heavy to lug out from the driver’s side), I had a flash.
I KNOW it is ridiculous to haul this around all the time. I have said for 5 days now every time I get to the office that I’m going to “clean it out” and “get streamlined” so I can stop the madness. Somehow, this grand plan always falls to the bottom of every day’s to-do list. The result is that every day I am hauling around a bunch of crap I don’t need simply because I don’t want to do the work of figuring out what I really DO.
It’s not an uncommon problem. Every day we haul around ideas, worries, fears, and beliefs that no longer serve us. We drag them up from our subconscious and hold them up to the light and wave them around a bit more, no matter how crappy they are and how useless they are to our current lives.
The better way?
To get rid of them, of course. A feat far easier said than done.
For today, I’d say the easier answer — the BABY-STEPPING answer — is to at least recognize them for what they are. “Oh yeah, the dead mule of crap I don’t need anymore.” “Oh right that fun memory of my massive failure five years ago I like to recall with wild abandon.”
For now, for today, recognize them. That’s one step in the right direction. Someday soon, you can make another.
What crap are you hauling around today that you no longer need?
This article resonates. Because I identify with this situation and this could have been me. I am struggling with procrastination. Though I clearly know it’s time for action than keep thinking, the goal seems to move farther away.
OMG – how appropriate! I actually have a backpack I used to take my work with me on my vacation to Spain last winter (yeah, you heard that right…WORK on VACATION!) that has been sitting in a corner of my living room since I returned from said vacation. It’s “mostly” cleaned out, but not really. There are random receipts in there, some notes I took on a webinar in the airport, a souvenir I apparently didn’t really need…you get the picture! I actually added this backpack of God Knows What to my “To DO” list for today. I will definitely be emptying it out and reclaiming my space. Who knows, maybe there is a wad of euros in there that I forgot about!
I no longer carry a purse. Instead, I carry a wallet with a shoulder strap that fits all the money in its various forms, and down in the fold I can fit a skinny lip gloss, a skinny pen, and an emery board. There’s a tiny mirror. Someone gave me one of those Swiss Army knife-in-a-credit-card things, so I also have very skinny and flat scissors, screwdriver, etc. In a pinch I can squeeze my phone in there, or the car keys, but not both. So far, this has never been a problem. It even fits into the console or glove box in my car, and it never weighs me down. If there’s anything I need that I don’t have, chances are that someone else will have it in their backpack/tote bag/carryall!
I do the same thing – carrying a ton of stuff to and from work-some stuff I need but the majority I don’t. Always planning to sort it out when I get a chance. 🙂 It’s kind of a relief to know that there are others who share similar habits. One thing I usually carry is a bag of supplements. If I don’t get them put into a little pill organizer the night before or the morning of I just throw all the bottles into a bag and haul it to my office thinking I’ll take them. Well, most of the time I don’t. I just haul them right back home. I also have a ton of miscellaneous papers, receipts and folders.
Can so relate! I have a rolling bag that I bring to work every day and, although it still works well for me, it tends to accumulate a lot of crap in it. I’ve had cleaning it out on my to do list all week. But I’m hampered by having just moved so I don’t actually have anywhere to put the crap yet. I like your idea of just acknowledging it and then taking small steps to fixing it rather than being anxious over it for days.