Never Clean Up Your Mess

Writers are especially prone to making the big mistake of cleaning up a mess that has piled up in our lives. Anyone repeatedly confronted with a mess in their lives will reach a boiling point sooner or later and begin hauling tras hout, filing, throwint it into a box, shoveling it aside until later, and just putting stuff back where it is supposed to be.
With great satisfaction we then resolve to keep the mess out of our lives from then on. Before we know it another mess has creeped upo9n us again. With a scowl we wonder, "Where did this mess come from?"
When I first began searching for practical ways of eliminating the autogenesis of clutter on my desk the stacks were three feet high before I noticed them. Back then I would tell others, and worst of all I would tell myself, "Don't touch anything on my desk; I know where everything is." And yes, actually I did know where everything was right then, everything that was still fresh in my memory anyway.
What we must first admit is that the clutter in front of us today came from the same place as the first mess did, and the one before it too. It takes more than a generic resolve to keep our lives clean. Simple ratiocination tells us we need to determine how we make a mess so that we can turn our lives around and remove the sources of mess in our lives.
In the same way, telling our children to clean up their mess doesn't change their natures which are causing the mess. Telling ourselves not to mess things up won't help either. At all costs we have got to find out where they are coming from.
"I know where my messes are coming from," you are probably muttering. Oh, but do you? Then why are messes still happening in your life? If you really knew why the situation was happening you would at least be able to diminish it. Consequently, if clutter isn't diminishing then you are on a false trail that can only lead to more messes down the line.
The quickest and surest way to determine where our mess comes from is by analyzing a mess we have. As I said, don't clean up your mess. Find out where it came from and discover the reasons behind the decisions you made that culminated in a mess. I could shovel stacks of paper that weighed two and three pounds into one trash can. Since I have quit the practice of dusting my hands off and saying that was out of the way, I have slowly gained control over the origination of clutter until it now takes weeks and months for the top of my desk to be obscured from view.
When I sit down at my desk now I scan the desktop for signs of clutter. What is this? Where did it come from? Why did I set it aside? Why didn't I come back to it? Did I make the right decision? Is it still pertinent? Where SHOULD I have put it?
Most of the time the clutter in my life appears simply because I set work aside in order to do something else that is only incidental. As I analyzed this tendency I realized that it was the incidental work that needed to be set aside. Once I recognized this tendency it was easier to recognize similar patterns in other areas BEFORE they develop into clutter.
Once I understood the problem I bought a three ring binder (with pockets) and a three hole punch. When something incidental comes up to distract me I put it inside the three ring binder. This is NOT a scratch pad. It is not a TO DO list. It is a reservoir.
A scratch pad is for temporary use and is to be thrown away just minutes later or filed immediately. A TO DO list are notes to myself that something important MUST BE DONE. A reservoir may be an actual document from some other company that I am keeping because it prompts a line of thought, or it may be a article that came to me fresh and hot and be three or even four pages long. There will also be instances where a few sentences are thrown in, but the idea remains the same. The only reason that reservoir is kept is so it can feed me and my mind later.
I set the reservoir aside and I will work on it when I can't afford to get caught up in more serious work. For example, when I HAVE to be at an appointment at a specific time and I have a short time buffer of from ten to fifty minutes I will bring it out and begin working on one or two short term projects. After this began producing undesirable results, not getting ready to leave on time -- which resulted in more clutter, which I analyzed the reason for it appearing, led me to a wholesome NEW approach; now I get ready to go FIRST. THEN I sit down at my desk and open up the reservoir. When the last minute approaches I can then snap it shut, stand up AND LEAVE a clean desk behind me as I hurry off. Every last second has been used up, clutter has been eliminated and I made it to my appointment on time too.
So, when you notice clutter cluttering up your life, DON'T CLEAN IT UP. Ask yourself these questions before you move a thing. What is this? Where did it come from? Why did I set it aside? Why didn't I come back to it? Did I make the right decision at that time? How could I have avoided the need for that decision and all the decisions similar in purpose? And only then do you ask yourself: Is this clutter still pertinent? Where SHOULD I have put it? Where should it go to now.
You have the power to take your life apart and put it back together again so that YOU are the kind of person that does not create clutter, you control it.