Recently we moved and everything came down from the attic. Years’ worth of memorabilia from my parents, grandparents, aunts, and great uncles. Treasures that had been carefully saved over the years. It was the proverbial walk down memory lane, reminiscing about different life events from before I could walk and taking a peek into a life that was lived long before I was born. Life in the 1800s (morsesociety.org) At the end of multiple sorting weeks, though, came the question of what to do with it now? Store it back up in the new, tiny, and insulation-filled attic? Place it around the house fully realizing it wasn’t going to accentuate my mostly transitional/modern vibe. Or make sure it got into the hands that would truly cherish it, the way I was supposed to? After a few guilt trips and another week of ignoring it, door #3 won and I started a campaign of picture taking and editing to showcase each treasure in its best form. Then I advertised them everywhere and I waited…. and waited. Finally, one person reached out to ask if I would take $10 for all three antique Kodak cameras Kodak No 3A Folding Pocket Antique Bellows Camera with Anastigmat Lens WORKS V11 | eBay and could I please package them up and send them to Oceanside. For $10? I don’t think so. I felt inundated, defeated, and overwhelmed.
The moral of this story is that sometimes, it is just old stuff or even just stuff. And it really isn’t of value to you or to anyone else. Not unlike the myriad of messages, we get in our inbox every day. Some thinly veiled advertisements for something, some hawking wares like the latest seminar, and some actually the news of the day or more likely, someone’s interpretation of the news. We feel inundated and overwhelmed, but hesitant to let any of it go for fear we might miss something important or let go of something of value. Declutter Your Inbox In 5 Easy Steps (forbes.com) Our day is full of should’ s. I should flag that to read later. I should spend more time determining strategy. I should ( you fill in the blank). Sometimes, we have to realize that maybe it is just like old stuff. It is really not of value. Not of value to you and not of value to anyone else and we just need to let it go and move on. If something is critically important it will come back around or someone else will have added it to their to-do list and will forward it to you with bullet points.
We artificially determine what to spend our time on by allowing the shoulds to intrude on what we already know we want to do. Strategic plans for 2022 have long been established and it is unlikely, barring another pandemic type of event, COVID-19 pandemic – Wikipedia that those will become derailed by the latest e-mail communication. Focus on what you want to do- what you want to have accomplished-whether it is an attic cleaning session or an Outlook inbox. Control your time, add value and let the clutter go.