Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Clutter is a bunch of things that seem to pile up and get in the way. Physical clutter is easy to see. Mental clutter isn’t easy to see. Clutter – physical and mental – tends to drain energy with no action resulting. I recommend avoiding mental clutter by putting ideas into a place for later use.

While taking a walk, I see thousands of different homes in rural, suburban, and urban settings. Some of the homes are fabulous. Some of the homes are lacking much in comfort.

One of the attributes that separates homes is clutter. Some homes are surrounded with this and that and this and that and…well, a lot of clutter. See, for example, this little trailer and a lot of clutter to the right.

Next to the left is a photo of another house trailer with no clutter. This shows that you don’t have to own a large, red brick classic home to have no clutter.

Clutter affects the lives of the people living in those homes. I know people who live in places like that on the right. They despair much of the time. They know they should pick up something, but there is so much there, they don’t know where to start. They usually sit about thinking of where to start, but never actually starting.

Now to mental clutter. It is hard to see when a person has a lot of mental clutter. It is all in their head, and I don’t know how to see into anyone’s head. I have carried around a lot of mental clutter at times in my life. I struggled to think straight or think at all with mental clutter. I knew I should do something with all the ideas I had, but I couldn’t decide where to start. I thought and thought about starting, but never started.

I subscribe to techniques of arranging ideas like Jerry Weinberg’s Fieldstone Method. These techniques basically call for putting the ideas in an idea place. The placed ideas are no longer cluttering the mind. They are gone, no worries, no confusion, no more rearranging clutter.

When I have an idea, I put it on a 3×5 card. Later, I may put the content of the cards on my computer. Regardless of the media, the concept is simple – take ideas out of the mind and put them some place for later. That frees the mind to create new ideas or work with saved ideas.