Making Room for New Beginning

What will you clear away?

(DepositPhoto)

Have you ever cleaned out a closet — clearing away unwanted clutter, giving away old clothing, reorganizing — only to have it fill up again in six months?

If you want to live with a clean, organized closet, you have two options:

1. Move to a home with a giant closet and hope it outlasts you
2. Get disciplined about what you add and what you give away

It’s easy to add things to our closets, our calendars, our lives. Taking them away is harder.

Every day is a 24-hour closet.

If you want to add a new project or role your life-writing a book, spending time with a grandchild, learning a language — you’ve got to clear space for it. That means letting something go, paring down somewhere.

Opportunity costs

Everything you do has a cost and a benefit. The benefit, I trust, is clear. The cost is trickier to spot. It includes not only the time you spend on the activity, but also the other things you might have realistically done with that time. (Economists call this opportunity cost.)

Time spent on mundane work tasks without much value is time you’re not spending on more valuable or joyful activities. Like writing.