Clutter, identity, and Getting Things Done
But I’ve been playing catch-up recently, blasting through a backlog of household accounting and emptying my email in-box. It’s that latter thing I wanted to say a few words about.
I’m pretty good with email. People compliment me on how quickly I respond, and this seems to be different from their usual experience (and mine) where emails often go entirely unanswered or replies can take weeks or months.
I tend to get very uncomfortable when the number of emails in my in-box gets above 20 or so. Above 30 and it’s a sign I’m not coping well with the number of things I have to do. On any given day you’ll tend to see about a dozen items in there. As I said, I tend to be good with email and I find it easier to respond as quickly as possible to stop the number of unanswered items building up.
I’m not perfect, of course. From time to time there will be an email lurking at the bottom on my in-box for weeks, and sometimes for a few months.
The “secret” of Getting Things Done (GTD) is to collect things centrally in as few in-boxes as necessary but as many as are needed, and to process them so that the items are translated into action items. So in the last few days I’ve been concentrating on emptying my in-box completely. I now have nothing at all in it. Everything has either been replied to or turned into a to-do item or project in my GTD program (I use OmniFocus).
What’s been interesting for me is this: Yes, I feel uneasy when there are too many things in my in-box, but I’ve discovered that I also feel uneasy when there is nothing in my in-box. Even having one or two items in there brings me a sense of security. A blank in-box freaks me out.
It’s curious where and how we (I) bolster a sense of security and identity. My sense of who I am seems threatened by having an empty in-box. My sense of identity is connected with having items stashed in there.
I described recently how looking at an empty in-box is a bit like looking in a mirror and seeing a blank face looking back at me. That may seem like an extreme analogy but it’s chosen very carefully. Something in which I invest my sense of self is now missing, so it seems as if a part of myself is missing.
I’m not entirely sure what it is that I get from having just a little clutter in my in-box. Perhaps it’s some kind of reassurance that I’m useful or necessary.
Generally in my life I oscillate between clutter and tidiness. I let things — not-quite-finished projects — build up, and then realize that it’s bad for my mental states (not to mention my work) to have piles of papers, books, etc, lying around. So I then make an effort to get organized and restore some order.
A friend who had a similar issue (except that she found it even harder to get organized than I do) once realized that she was untidy because she got something out of it. Clutter provided her with something (I can’t recall exactly what — perhaps it was a sense of being too important to have time with “trivial” things like clearing up). I’m having that same sense. This doesn’t mean that I can’t get organized, of course, it means that I need to be aware of the fact that that the samskara (habit) of untidiness is likely to manifest again — it’s not going to vanish just because I’m on top of the household finances and have an empty in-box — and also that I need to identify the need that clutter was filling and find other ways to meet that need.
8 Responses to “Clutter, identity, and Getting Things Done”
About this entry
You’re currently reading “Clutter, identity, and Getting Things Done,” an entry on Bodhipaksa's blog, bodhi tree swaying
Published: Feb 27 2009
Tags and categories
Tags: Getting Things Done, GTD, mindfulness, needs, organization
Category: Meditation & practice
GTD is a great concept. David Allen knows his stuff. Have you heard of Outlook Track-It? It’s a small toolbar for outlook that enables email flagging for followup reminders.
Sounds like a useful application, although I don’t use Outlook.
Great blog. I’m curious about your topic. Maybe the GTD model pushes one to feel “empty” so that being dependent on busy-ness can be put to rest.
I think many tools that help us break habits can leave us feeling a bit lost for a while. One Buddhist way of talking about this is in terms of a “bardo” on an in-between state where were leaving behind the familiar and entering the unknown. Another way of talking about it is in terms of the “cremation ground” where what is familiar is allowed to die and rot away. A third is talking in terms of going forth from false refuges towards true refuges — but often when we go forth from a false refuge we don’t quite know where we’re going. I’ve been through all this in many areas of my life, including planning, many times, but it’s struck me more strongly this time.
I got 2 copies of this book. So many disorganised books that I didn’t know about/couldn’t find/had forgotten about the first copy. Anyone know of library catoaloguing software for the home book collector?
I know what you mean about the inbox being empty. That vacuum is so threatening.
There’s Bookpedia if you’re a Mac user. I haven’t used that one, but DVDpedia is amazing. You just wave the barcode of the DVD case in front of your webcam and the DVD is automatically entered in your database. The book program probably does the same thing with ISBN barcodes. There’s also a mobile version of these programs for the iPhone.
The empty in-box is now starting to seem more normal, I’m pleased to say. You can get used to anything, including being organized!
The one thing that trips me into a bad sense of fear/anxiety/claustrophobia is thinking about my ‘Do Lists’ or ‘Action Lists’. I have my email in box but I also have my household to do list – the finances and the DIY. The kids are giving me emotional blackmail about not taking them swimming whilst I am tidying up the mess they just created or fixing the leaking lavatory and all the while I have an income tax form and 50+ email messages hanging over me. It is the Augean Stables.
The only way I find out of it is to chant to myself the old Zen thing of “Chop the wood and fetch the water” i.e. acknowledge that the list of things to do will always be there so just do them with awareness. Often I find myself thinking “Chop the water and fetch the wood” which cheers me up.
There is no such thing as an empty list. There is always some one else who could do with a hand, litter to be picked up, things to be cleaned, wood to chop or water to fetch.
Always have in mind that the most important thing to do probably isn’t on the list.
GTD encourages us not to use our in-box as a stand-in for a to-do list, but to process each thing in there so that it’s on a properly organized to-do list, dealt with on the spot (if it takes two minutes or less), or discarded. And the household to-do list and the work to-do list are combined into one. There has to be more than one in-box, but each in-box flows into the same organizational system.
Much of my task-related anxiety comes from one of two areas: either not putting something in a list at all, so that it keeps coming back to me at odd times as an anxious reminder of something left undone, or having a to-do list that’s not well managed. I’m still working on that latter — I tend for example to dramatically underestimate how long some tasks are going to take me.
One thing with respect to keeping my to-do lists organized is having a someday/maybe list where “good ideas” (the bane of the over-ambitious creative type) can go, just in case there’s a rainy day when I can take one of those tasks on. Actually, I sometimes decide just to get obsessed and do one of those someday/maybe tasks even if it means setting some other stuff aside and creating a backlog. I sometimes do that with writing, knowing that I’m going to have to spend a long time catching up with household tasks like laundry, tidying, or bookkeeping. The joy of creation more than outweighs the pain of playing catch-up (and the occasional credit card late fee).