E-Mail Bankruptcy and an Attitude of Boldness

Do a blog search for bankruptcy, and most of the stories you will find will have to do with e-mail bankruptcy. This colorful term doesn’t mean what it meant just three years ago. Then, it would probably refer to abandoning an e-mail account because you were receiving too many irrelevant e-mail messages. Now it refers to erasing your e-mail inbox because you have more legitimate e-mail messages that you can realistically read.

Material Abundance and Feeling Abundant

The Thanksgiving holiday is a good excuse to reflect on the material abundance of our time. The ordinary person in 2008 has five times the material possessions of 50 years ago, and orders of magnitude more than the kings and queens of five centuries ago.

The relative material success of our time comes as a surprise to many people just because they don’t feel so prosperous. In strictly material terms, though, we are astonishingly prosperous compared to any other period in history.

Commercial Clutter

This post originally appeared in The Commercial-Free Mind, March 2004.

The Costs of a Messy Desk

How clean your desk at work is is mainly a matter of style — but not entirely. Writing this morning in Fortune, Mina Kimes describes the “clean desk policy” at Audi, which parallels that of dozens of other corporate workplaces. The reason for a clean desk? “We want to create a sophisticated atmosphere,” says executive vice president Johan de Nysschen. “It’s conducive towards organization.” But appearing competent and sophisticated is not the only argument in favor of a relatively organized office desk.

How Much Clothing Does It Take?

Some people know they have too much clothing. Others are not sure. But the amount of clothing a person needs is far less than most people imagine.

The confusion about clothing comes from the huge improvement in the durability of textiles that happened a generation ago. Clothing made since 1990 is about five times as durable as clothing made before 1970, and we have not yet fully adjusted to this.

What Are You Setting Yourself Up For?

My friend Rhoda had told everyone about the health benefits of ginger, so it wasn’t too surprising when she came back from a weekend goal-setting workshop and said she had a plan to start selling ginger to the world. She even showed me the plan, 15 pages of circles, lines, and small handwritten notes. By Friday, though, she wasn’t so sure.

Pretend You’re Moving

In Fear of Nothing, I mention moving as one of the events that can change your perspective on your possessions. Moving is so expensive, in such an obvious way, that you know you cannot move everything. You have to let go of some of the less important items. But you don’t have to wait till you move to get the benefit of this change in perspective. You can start preparing for your next move, even if you have only a vague idea of when it might be. Or you can pretend you’re moving.

Space Journaling

Sandy Grason writes regularly on the use of journaling for personal transformation. I came across an article of hers that addresses the basic problem of clutter in the way that I advocate in Fear of Nothing, by focusing on the quality of space, but with a flair I couldn’t pretend to imitate. Sandy graciously offered to let me repeat her article here.