Have you ever walked into an office and thought, and maybe even said out loud "how do you get anything done with all this clutter"? Clutter, if you've ever seen it has no rhyme or reason to it, even though the person responsible for the clutter may say, "I know where everything is". Physical clutter is easy to spot, in fact, it's hard to miss. Mental clutter, which is far more common, is much more difficult to recognize. At one point in everyone's life, whether they realized it or not, you've experienced mental clutter. If you've had difficulty focusing, prioritizing, or balancing all the many important aspects of your life, chances are you've experienced mental clutter. A cluttered mind disrupts and hinders our productivity, our life balance, our priorities, and in the end our mental health. Last week I talked about distractions, about prioritizing. To declutter your mind, you need to avoid distractions when possible. It's OK to say NO, not right now. Everything can't be the top priority and no two important things can be equal priority, you have to learn to choose, no matter how difficult it is. If you have two children, who both have a separate curricular activity, what do you do? You can't be both places at once. I hope you don't just say, since I don't want to choose, I choose neither. You, time permitting, could go to the 1st half of one & the second half of another. You could prioritize based on future extracurricular activities. For example, if one child's event is their one and only spring band concert, and the other's is one of many baseball games, you should probably go to the concert and then make it to the next game. The more we put off decisions, the more our mind becomes cluttered. If you want to see how truly productive and efficient you can be, declutter your mind.
