“Making decisions requires energy, but not deciding about whether to decide requires even more energy.”
— productivity guru David Allen
Celebrating Discardia begins with deciding what belongs in your life and what does not. Deciding now is the best habit you can teach yourself. Once you decide, you can act – it is action that changes your life for the better.
Without decisions our lives become a constant accumulation of junk. Things pile up, usually literally. Magazines and newspapers, clothes with missing buttons, mail to read, half- finished projects, obsolete computer parts, and on and on. The problem is not that you don't know how to get rid of these things – you know how trash, recycling and the Goodwill donation box work – it's making yourself get around to it. Rather than giving yourself a hard time for it, your first Discardian act should be to let go of feeling bad about what you haven't gotten done by now. You were doing something else; it was a choice; you're a big kid; it's okay.
Now that that's out of the way, I'm not going to tell you to get cracking and change all your habits overnight. No, what I'm suggesting is that you start with a few small steps that are the foundation for bigger changes. The key to fighting entropy is simple and threefold: slow down your accumulation of this stuff, make it easier for yourself to get rid of it on an ongoing basis, and habitually decide what you want to part with.
Act as your own gatekeeper and decide what gets in. As you control the inflow, increase the outflow to rid yourself of stuff that only serves to make your life more awkward and overstuffed. Ask yourself “Why do I keep holding onto that?” and use your answer – or the fact that you have no answer – to decide whether or not it is time for that thing to move on.
Make deciding as easy as you can. The more you do it, the easier it gets. You can even have a friend come over and help, holding up one object at a time as you lounge on the sofa with a glass of wine giving them the thumbs up or thumbs down.
You can give your life a Discardian nudge any day of the year. Use your positive energy whenever you have it and allow yourself some slack when you don’t; the next occurrence of the holiday will be around soon to help you get back in gear!
Discardia 