In an earlier articles called “Getting Wealthy By Swimming to Shore“, I compare the process of getting out of debt and becoming rich to swimming to the ocean shore. Becoming “Financial Independent” would be accomplished once you first touch the shoreline. While it’s still possible to make the swim with clutter, I would think that it would be like swimming to shore through seaweed with your clothes and shoes on.
But why is clutter considered bad, you might wonder?
Because it distracts you from the important things in your life that you need to focus on to get things accomplished! By having clutter at your office or in your home, you are constantly being distracted by unimportant materials.
Another problem with such cluster is that it takes valuable real estate space on your desk or in your home. That space could be occupied by more relevant things!
If the clutter is really bad, you can lose important information within the piles of unimportant junk.
In the past, I would build up clutter by saving credit card offers and other junk mail for later reading. The problem is that I never find the time to read the mail later, so the mail offers would just accumulate in a “never read” pile. Eventually this piles get big and important mail sometimes gets mixed in the piles and things get lost. Or I would avoid those piles because it would be overwhelming.
As you may have guessed, I speak from experience. The way I overcame my cluttering habits is that I had to realize that I’m not going to take my clutter with me when I die. I had to learn (over years), how to process such offers more quickly and disregard those pieces of junk mail or unimportant objects in my life.
Actually, even now I’m in the process of either selling or purging some of my hidden clutter down in my basement. I know that it’s stuff that I will never need or use again, so I’m at the point where I just want to get rid of it.
Do you have clutter, and if so, do you think that your clutter may have held you back from being successful?
Simplify, simplify simplify!!!
MR