Monday saw me at a loose end. My therapist had to cancel and I was left with a hole in the middle of my carefully crafted morning. Rather than waste the time I decided to use it for some reflection, very much in the spirit of therapy. I turned off the phone and computer and sat with a pad of paper and tried to jot down some of my thoughts. It was a useful period and I was enthused with the ability to clear my mind a little.
As I switched back on to technology, I remembered that I had a whole series of saved articles to read. Now routinely I save web links, short films etc to an app called Pocket (disclaimer – I helped Pocket carry out their Beta test for the current version, other apps are available such as Instapaper, Evernote etc).
I’ve got Pocket set up so that I can save to it from other apps such as Twitter or my web browser and I can even forward emails to it. Which is great, except for someone as endlessly curious as me, I very quickly end up with hundreds of articles waiting to be read. This is what confronted me on Monday morning. I intended to just use the journey time I would have taken to return from therapy and cull the obvious ones, reduce the list a bit. However, once I started it became compelling.
I went down the list and deleted links which no longer interested me. Then I went through and read several short articles on mental health. Soon I was watching short films and reading longer articles on management and human behaviour. Some I discarded once read, others I archived for future reference and still more were tweeted out or emailed to friends who may find them useful.
As I write this today I’m about to embark on another trawl through the app. I’ve got a couple of TED films to watch, an interview with Tony Buzan to listen to and some interesting articles to read about motivation.
So why am I telling you this (apart from warning you that my twitter feed may be a bit random for a while)? Well, much like the time I spent clearing my mind during my aborted therapy session, clearing out the articles gave me room and space and a fresh perspective. It helped me de-clutter my thinking on a couple of important issues and prompted new connections on how I could use some of the knowledge gained. Not a bad return for a cancelled appointment.
My call to action. Have a think about your life and your work – where could you benefit from some de-cluttering?
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Ooh I know what you mean about de-cluttering items that you plan to read later on. I have tabs saved on my browser that I keep meaning to read when I have the chance, as well as mental notes on blogs I need to read. Though by storing all that information it’s a reminder that you haven’t done something which can lead to little niggles at the back of your head that turn into something more than niggles. Kind of like not looking at the ‘to-do’ list for a few days. From reading your blog I’m going to take some time to clear out the tabs and to-do list to see if that will give me the mental clarity that I need. Thank you for reminding me about de-cluttering 🙂
Hi Tracey
Glad to hear the blog worked for you. It certainly seems to have prompted a few people to action. I hope that you get that mental clarity soon.
JB