A question...

In Exodus 9, God sends a plague on the Egyptians that causes all their livestock to die. Later in the same chapter, he sends another plague, this time of hail. The Egyptians are told to bring all their livestock in from the fields, otherwise the hail will kill them. But aren't all the Egyptian livestock already dead? Is it understood that a significant time has passed between plagues? Or did the Egyptians pinch livestock from the Israelites?

Unclutter Your Life - Day 1

Day 1 of Uncluttering Your Life in One Week involves uncluttering three areas:

1. Your wardrobe
2. Your office
3. Your reception station

Wardrobe

The basic process to purge wardrobe clutter is simple - start at the top of the pile of clothes and sort them into three groups: items to keep, items to purge, and items requiring extra attention, like repairs. The tricky part is deciding which items belong in which group. Erin suggests a few main guidelines

1. Only keep items that fit you now. Like many women, my weight fluctuates. Well, really, over the course of the PhD, it's just gone up. Erin would advocate getting rid of all the clothes that don't fit me at the moment, but I just can't bring myself to do this. I have so many lovely things that I still hope will fit me again one day. I generally try to buy clothes that are stylish but not too fashionable - I don't like to buy things that will only last one season. So many of the clothes I have that are too small at the moment will potentially still look ok (and not too out of style) if I can lose a bit of weight. That might be a vain hope, but I did manage to lose some weight after I submitted my PhD thesis last year. I put some back on over Christmas, but if I can get back to my healthy eating and exercise routine, there's a good chance I'll fit into these clothes again. So I've made myself a deal - I'll toss anything that I don't fit into by the end of the year, and I've tried to keep only the nicest of the too-small clothes.
   
2. Purge seasonally. I'm putting off my purging until the end of the year, due to the weight-loss possibility, but if I get to the end of summer and find that I haven't worn an item, it will have to go. The same thing will apply to winter (but not until 2011). So uncluttering my wardrobe will be an ongoing process.
3. Consider your personal style/uniform. An example of a "uniform" would be Steve Jobs with his black turtlenecks and jeans, but I haven't yet figured out how to apply this to myself. The problem is that most people would have a number of roles, and perhaps need a different uniform for each - suits for the office; track pants for doing the housework; casual gear for weekends; nice dresses for weddings and other special occasions; exercise clothes for going to the gym... I think this will be taken care of by the "purge seasonally" requirement - it will just take a bit longer.

I've been through my wardrobe at home and ended up with a bag of clothes to donate to the op-shop and another to take to a charity bin for rags. I still need to work on all the clothes that are lingering at my parents' place - things that don't fit but I'm hoping will some day. If I stick to my plan, these will definitely all be gone by the end of the year - either taking their place in my regular wardrobe or being uncluttered out of my (and my parents') life.

Office

According to Erin, " In a competitive marketplace. a clean, organized, well-decorated office might be the key to keeping your job, earning a raise, retaining a client, or being promoted, irrespective of the quality of work you actually do" [44]. I don't have a job at the moment (not a full-time paid job, anyway) so I don't really need to worry about the perception people will have of me from my office. However, I do know that having a tidy and organised workspace is extremely conducive to productivity, and conversely, I feel I cannot do any real work if my work area and my thoughts are in a mess. Monday's job is only to deal with the physical space of the office - the filing problems are taken care of on Tuesday.

The most obvious thing, of course, is the desk. I've had an Ikea desk that's just a basic rectangle with a pull-out side panel. I didn't work at home for my PhD, so it's not until recently that I've found it's not really the best set up for me. I much preferred the corner workstation I had at uni. We also needed to buy a new desk for Matt, since the keyboard shelf from his computer workstation mysteriously vanished during our move. So, we took the plunge and bought a new desk from Officeworks and another Billy bookcase from Ikea to store all the books and papers from my PhD (until today they were sitting in two large piles in the corner). I now have a corner desk with a raised shelf for my laptop and extra shelves underneath for storage (handy for things like the external hard drive). According to the principles of uncluttering, I only have things on my desk that I use regularly, and just two decorative objects - a photo of Matt and the paperweight the university gave me as a gift when I submitted my PhD (not sure why I want that one on my desk...) I have a few books that I refer to often, and an in-tray. Erin's obviously into the whole Getting Things Done system, because she says that the inbox should be processed a few times a day, and action taken on each item the first time it's touched, and the inbox should be emptied at the end of the day - no exceptions. I'm leaving this step for next week...

Reception Station

This is basically the entry point to the home, and should include the following:

• Somewhere to remove and store muddy and wet shoes
• Somewhere to hang jackets/coats and store hats, gloves and scarves during winter
• An area to sort through mail, with a shredder to immediately shred things like pre-approved credit card offers
• A trash can
• A place to put coins
• An inbox
• A designated space for a backpack, purse or briefcase
• A space for keys
• A space for charging cell phones and other electronic devices

We just simply don't have anywhere we could possibly fit all these things together. I can see how it would be handy - it would stop me from dropping the mail on the table, my handbag on the floor, my cardigan on the bed, my phone remaining uncharged in the handbag, etc - but I just don't know how to do it. And I don't really see why it's necessary to have a second shredder - why not walk to the study and shred the papers there? Perhaps if your house is really big this might be difficult, and then you might have room for all this. I think what I'm going to try to do instead is to develop routines. Mail goes to the inbox in the study. The handbag goes to the shelf in the wardrobe, after the wallet is cleared of receipts, the phone is checked for charge and any other clutter is cleared out. The keys stay in the door, or in the bowl on the bookshelf near the kitchen. The jacket gets hung up in the closet, or over the back of the chair in the bedroom if it needs airing. Rubbish goes in the bin in the kitchen and shoes are left outside the front door. Done. Now, if only I can keep to this routine...

Tasks for tomorrow

• Bathroom
• Files
• Routines for household chores
  

Unclutter Your Life in One Week

I'm on an organisational spree at the moment. The new year always seems like a great time to get my life in order and to change my habits so that disorder does not return. I've never been good at keeping New Year's Resolutions (but who is, really?) so this is not a resolution - just a desire for change.

And even more than desire, a plan for change. I enjoy reading "life hack" blogs, as part of my ongoing journey towards organisation and better time management. I don't remember why/when I first started reading, but one of my regular haunts is Unclutterer.com. It's a combination of the age-old mantra "A place for everything and everything in its place" and the newer (or perhaps just renewed) emphasis on minimalism (also seen on blogs such as Zen Habits). The editor-in-chief of the blog, Erin Rooney Doland, has recently published a book called Unclutter Your Life in One Week, which provides a week-long game plan for removing clutter from home, office and life. It seemed like a good way to start getting myself organised for the new year (the second step will be David Allen's Getting Things Done - incidentally, Allen wrote the foreword for Unclutter Your Life).

A review I read of Unclutter Your Life on another of my favourite life-hack blogs, The Simple Dollar, provides a glowing recommendation. Trent describes it as " This is the single best book I’ve ever read on organizing your life." However, he does acknowledge that accomplishing all of the ideas in the book in one week is impossible. The value comes in the detailed advice as well as the progressive steps Erin outlines. Even if it can't be done in one week, following all these steps should lead to a less cluttered (and therefore, according to Erin, more "remarkable") life.

I've read through the whole book, and now I just have to try to apply the advice and the steps outlined. Each day has three tasks: one at home in the morning; one at work during the day; and another at home in the evening. I'm going to try to complete the whole process in one week, but I have cheated a little - I started, somewhat half-heartedly, last week. From my overview reading, there are two main frustrating things I've noticed:

1. To begin with, Erin has a rather odd view of work-life balance. For work life to be in perfect balance with personal life, a person should be at work the exact same amount of time as they have free time. Obviously, no one really wants to be at work 84 hours a week. So, Erin advocates "work-life symbiosis", which is "what you achieve when all aspects of your life exist together harmoniously" [7]. I would have thought that this is what most people mean by "work-life balance." But that's really just a small point.
2. The fact that it is impossible to complete this process thoroughly in one week is a little frustrating, given that the title is Unclutter Your Life in One Week. The problem is that the processes outlined would take far more time than allowed. For example, the task for Monday morning before work is to unclutter your wardrobe. As this involves getting all the items of clothing in one place for sorting, first "Wash everything in your dirty clothes hamper and pick up any items that maybe at the dry cleaner" [20]. While all the clothes are out of the wardrobe, this is a good time to "repaint, repair, dust, hang hooks, replace rods, or change your wardrobe storage in any way" [22]. How can that possibly be done Monday morning before work? Perhaps the seven days are not meant to be taken literally as seven twenty-four hour days, but instead refer to periods of time, or ages - convenient marking points for outlining a process. A literary device or metaphor. Hmm. Where have I seen that before?!

All in all, this seems like it will be a very useful book, and if it can motivate me to unclutter and organise my life, I'm not going to complain that it takes longer than a week! But I'll reserve my final judgment for the end of the process.

2010: A Return to Blogging

A new year; time for a new start. It's about time I got back into the habit of blogging. After all, it's not just about procrastination. It's also a good way to ensure that I write regularly. If I'm going to be a writer (as all academic researchers are), then I need to write. Of course, I'll have my big writing projects - journal articles, trying to transform my thesis into a book - but I think it will be helpful to write smaller pieces more frequently, to ensure that my creative juices keep flowing. At least, that's my current rationalisation. But surely it's a more productive method of procrastination than Skweek!

I've been trying to develop a few ideas for blog entries. I've written a few over the years celebrating the birthdays of important people in the history of science and religion like Galileo and Samuel Clarke. I'd like to make a regular habit of that, though I've already missed one of the biggest ones. Hopefully I can pull something together on that super quick.

To ease my way back into blogging and writing more generally, and to motivate myself to actually complete this project, I'm also planning to write a little about my attempts to unclutter my life in one week and institute David Allen's "Getting Things Done" as a method of organisation.

So that's my plan. Only time will tell if it actually works out in practice!