How to De-clutter Your Life for Clarity
Back in February, I read this book called Declutter Your Mind by S.J. Scott and Barrie Davenport. Before reading that book, honestly I didn’t even know about what clutter actually is. Only after reading the book I realized that there was a lot of clutter in my life and it was affecting me in many ways I didn’t even realize and they were not good for me.
Through this story I try to share with you some tips and habits(most of which I learned from the book and some of my own) that have helped me declutter my life and trust me it’s a lot better now.
What is Declutter?
While writing this story, I noticed that the text editor doesn’t recognize the word declutter. I looked for this word in the dictionary and it was not there.
So here I present to you, my interpretation of the meaning of the word declutter.
Declutter as the word itself suggests means to remove/organize clutter. It has a different meaning for different people but the basic idea is to remove all clutter for clarity. For example: cleaning your room can be a decluttering activity, writing your thoughts out on paper or digitally can be a decluttering activity.
Why should you consider Decluttering?
Have you ever felt like there is just a lot of information and chaos in your brain?
Do you feel worried about the mammoth load of tasks that you need to complete?
Or are you stressed or too worried about your life in general?
Well all of these problems can be solved by a number of processes and decluttering is one of the most important of them.
“If you choose, you can be joyful every moment of your life. It’s time you made your choice.”
-Sadhguru
Decluttering can make you worry less about the stuff around you and
the stuff inside your head and help you stay focused on the more important tasks.
It can help you to lead a better, more clear, organized and happier life.
How to De-clutter?
Step 1- Declutter your thoughts:
I think the first step towards decluttering is, you have to know who you really are. You should know what you want from of your life, your purpose in this world and what you really want and need to do. Anything that is strongly established in the mind is bound to find existence in the real world.
Once your brain knows your what you need to do, all of your actions will tend to be directed towards that goal. There will be less distractions and you will be able to give your full efforts towards the achievement of your goal.
Focus on your strengths and not your weaknesses. Ignore negative comments, learn from your mistakes instead of being discouraged by them.
Here are some habits that that you can practice to remove the clutter in your head:
- Focused Deep Breathing:
Set a timer for 10 minutes, sit straight and start inhaling slowly through your nose until your lungs are filled. Pause for a count of two and exhale slowly. Pause again, then repeat.
- Meditation:
There are many ways of practicing meditation and almost all of them include sitting still, focusing on your breath and avoiding other thoughts and distractions. Find a type of meditation of that suits you and start doing it on a regular basis (I like doing the ChitShakti meditation by Sadhguru). Meditation is a tool that can help you train your mind and control your thoughts. It helps you to control worry and overthinikng.
Remember, you can experience the benefits of meditation only through regular practice.
- Dump all negative thoughts:
Start observing your thoughts, make a distinction between you and your thoughts. Whenever you feel something negative, try to convince yourself that it is just a thought and not a reality. For example, if you think, “I’ll never be able to finish this task”, change it to, “I’m having a thought that I’ll never be able to finish this task.” This reminds you that you are not your thoughts.
You can also try writing your negative thoughts on paper or visualize them being destroyed. This way you can feel that they are out of your mind and are not worth your brain’s memory.
- Distract yourself:
Do something that will make your mind busy like writing, playing an instrument or designing something, etc. These activities require focus and some mental labour, which prevents you from falling back to that loop whole of negative thoughts.
- Make a list of your core values:
Think and make a list of values that you want in your life and work. This list will be the measuring stick for many of your life’s choices. You can go through this list of words and write down each one that feels important to your life. This way you won’t have to go through the hassle of thinking again and again before making a choice that is related to your personal and professional life. You can just check if the choice meets a majority of your life values and if it does, it’s safe to opt for it.
- Create S.M.A.R.T. Goals quarterly:
The S.M.A.R.T. acronym was first used by George Doran in the 1981 issue of the Management Review.
It stands for:
S: Specific- These goals answer questions like who is involved, what do you want to accomplish, where will you complete that goal, when do you want to do it, which constrains might get in your way and why are you doing it. These goals are important because they tell you that you have achieved your goal for sure.
M: Measurable- These goals answer questions starting with “how” such as, how much, how many and how fast. They help you to measure progress towards your goal.
A: Attainable- Observe at your life and set an objective that is slightly above your expectations. These are attainable goals and they stretch the limits of what you think you can accomplish.
R: Relevant- These goals focus on your true desires. They are in harmony with everything important in your life from success to happiness.
T: Time-bound- These goals are meant to be accomplished within a specific deadline.
S.M.A.R.T. are clear and well defined goals which let you know if you’ve actually achieved a goal.
Step 2- Declutter your surroundings:
Well, I think this is not as important as decluttering your thoughts because in my opinion it’s more subjective. If you can focus when there is clutter all around you then congratulations, there is not much need to read any further.
But if you’re anything like me and you can’t focus when your room looks less like a room and more like a storeroom, it might be useful to continue reading.
Researchers at the Princeton University Institute published the results of a study conducted by them in The Journal of Neuroscience that relates directly to clutter free and organized living. According to one of the reports:
Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.
In other words, in a cluttered environment, the visual chaos restricts our ability to focus and limits our brain’s activity to process information.
Here’s how to declutter your home:
- Focus on cleaning for 10 to 15 minutes every one or two days.
- Clean one part of a room at a time. For example, you may decide to declutter your study space for today, wardrobe for tomorrow and so on. In this way, you’ll not feel overwhelmed and bored during the process.
- Make a list of things that are not useful to you. If they are not near and dear to your heart, you can donate or recycle them.
Step 3- Declutter your Digital Life:
If you spend most of your time in the virtual world, you probably have a closer relationship with the virtual world than you have with your family, spouse or friends. You know that there is something not right about it, yet you find yourself gazing back at your phones or laptops whenever you have a moment to spare.
Well, just ask yourself, is this really the life that you want to live?
If the answer to that question is no, the following tips might be of great help:
- Observe yourself:
Think about how much time you spend on the digital world at the end of the day. Of course there are necessary online tasks and activities but then there are hours you spend playing games, surfing the net, and browsing through your social media feed.
This digital input creates a disturbing state of mind as it has an addictive quality that prevents you from pursuing the bigger and more meaningful aspect of life.
You can block out an hour a day in which you will not participate in any digital activity. Switch your phone off and if that’s not possible, disable all notifications and put it out of sight. Shut down your computer. I suggest you read a book, or exercise, or practice a new skill like learning an instrument, writing, drawing. There’s a ton of stuff for you to do in the real world.
- Check if your device is cluttered:
Digital clutter sneaks up on you and before you know it, your desktop and home screen is filled up with icons, email inbox is overflowing, and your files and documents are all over the place.
Declutter your home screen, by this I mean that, you remove all the apps on your home screen or desktop, if they are not very important (this video was helpful for me,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JibWFxwOqAs).
Organize your files and folders, there are many videos on YouTube that teach you how to do this efficiently (https://youtu.be/bKjRKZxr-KY, I personally like this one).
Finally, get rid of those addictive apps. Delete those apps that you feel are the most disturbing. If you feel like you need to browse through social media, or play games, you can uninstall them on some days when you just need to get work done. And if you’re like me and playing video games makes you happy, it wouldn’t be a wise choice to completely give up video games (at least, not for me). In that case, you can do what I do, that is using video games as a reward for completing a task. Do not allow yourself to play video games or do anything else before you have completed that important task.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks a lot for reading. I hope this will help you to make better use of your time, make you happier and more productive.
