Not Missing Out on Inauguration Day

The United States will inaugurate a new president in two days, and at least one in 50 people in the country is personally involved in the event, going to Washington to be part of it, going to an observance elsewhere, or helping the rest of us keep up with the events. It is a ritual built up around an oath of office that, in a pinch, could be done by four people in less than a minute, yet millions of people will be spending most of the day on it. And others worry that they may be missing out.

A Good Time to Throw Things Away

You throw things away every day, but this month and perhaps this entire year are an especially good time to throw things away.

One reason is low fuel prices. Fuel prices are half of what they were recently and near their lowest levels in five years. They may not stay at these low levels for long, so it’s good to take advantage of the current low prices. Fuel is the main material cost of throwing things away — imagine how much fuel it takes to drive one of those big garbage trucks full of garbage. Throw things away now, and they can get hauled away at the current low fuel prices. It won’t cost any less to throw things away in the future, so if you have things to throw away, you may as well throw them away now.

When Spring Comes 3 Months Early

The weather today is a perfect example of why it doesn’t always make sense to plan ahead. The temperature is already (before 9 a.m.) higher than the high temperature that was forecast a day in advance, and if the sun comes out, we could have May-like weather and a record high temperature. It’s not the weather anyone could have planned on, but here it is, and it’s a great day to do something outside, or get an early start on spring cleaning.

No Snow Days

When I say, “There are no rainy days anymore,” I mean it doesn’t make sense to set aside tasks to do on days when you aren’t so busy. The things that interrupt our schedules are not frequent enough or disruptive enough to throw us off. That means, if you know you can’t do something today, it’s safe to assume you won’t be able to do it tomorrow either.

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.