When I was in business school, we joked that cleaning the bathroom never sounds as good as when you have an exam to study for. Usually cleaning the bathroom sounds tedious and dirty, but compared to feeling confused or overwhelmed by difficult material, scrubbing the toilet feels like safe harbor.
One of the magical things about decluttering is that it forces you to ask a wonderful question:
What is important to me in my life?
As you tackle a pile of clothes, a cluttered countertop, a shelf overflowing with books, there’s no way to get rid of clutter without answering that question.
I think part of the reason I was drawn to journalism was the power of deadlines — you probably can’t work for long at a newspaper if you don’t understand that there’s no compromise in whether your story makes the paper or not. On time, it does. Late, you miss, and you probably get to enjoy a conversation with your…
