Dear Readers,

That’s enough organizing for now. I’d rather clutter. Care to join me in making a mess? Read on…

• Kourosh

How To Clutter

• Save everything for later–you know, for when your “might” want it
• Don’t consider what you might want it for
• In fact, never organize things by their destination
• Instead, if you do decide to organize, be sure to do so by something completely irrelevant like alphabet, color-coding, or similar.
• Use lots and lots of tags. If you don’t find something, it’s probably because you’re not using enough tags. Use more.
• Use all the metadata. For everything.
• As soon as something more interesting or urgent appears, drop what you are doing, and attend to the new thing. Now.
• Along these lines, use things as reminders for themselves. In other words, leave half-done projects on the dining room table to remind yourself about them “later”. Maybe, the discombobulated pile will inspire you!
• Pretend to trust things that you just want to trust. For example, you really want to trust your Inbox, so just put stuff there. Don’t worry about processing it until later. Right now is now. Later is later. Never mind that later never arrives.
• If you suddenly feel like there’s something in the Inbox that might be important, ignore that feeling. It’s probably nothing. In fact, avoid all feelings about your system. Heck, let’s just avoid all feelings for good measure. What good are they anyway?
• When the Inbox badge number grows too large, turn off its notification.
• Never mind, leave all notifications for everything on. Maybe that will get you going.
• Don’t write anything down. You’ve got a powerful brain. Like a supercomputer, they say. It can hold everything! Especially the important stuff. You’ll just remember it.
• If you fail, it’s only because you didn’t think it was important enough. Or you didn’t try hard enough. Scrunch your forehead, and do the same things again. This time, harder.
• Don’t organize by first creating space. Just shuffle things in place. Maybe order will appear. If it doesn’t work, shuffle harder.
• If you can’t find something, buy a new one. There’s a better chance that you’ll find something if there’s lots of them.
• Don’t worry if buying more creates visual noise. Just buy more of the other stuff when needed.
• You probably don’t have enough stationary or apps. Buy more of those, too.
• You’re probably not reading enough posts about motivation, organizing, productivity, and the latest apps. Read more.
• You probably don’t have enough time to read all of them. Bookmark more.
• Avoid lists entirely. Completely rely on inspiration and the objects in your environment to tell you what to do.
• Create lists without regard to how long they are, how many you have, or where you’d see them.
• If you find a list too long, make a new one. But don’t throw away the old one. It might still be important.
• Stay away from any and all forms of review.
• Never reassess your lists. Instead berate yourself for not doing what’s on them. If it’s not working, berate harder.
• Use many many sticky notes. If you don’t want to forget something, write it bigger. Use heavier marker for the really important stuff. Maybe use more colors.
• Put them in more places. Put them in your way. Everywhere. One of them is bound to inspire you.
• Put them on top of other reminders. Those are probably old anyway.
• Use alerts for everything. Similar to sticky notes, make them louder. Use alerts for your alerts. Don’t worry about tinnitus. Maybe it will build character.
• Create unwarranted organization. Create more folders than you need. You know, just in case.
• Add things to your calendar despite never using it.
• Add multiple conflicting appointments to your calendar. They’ll probably work themselves out.
• Use multiple calendars. Make them difficult to interact with each other or see at the same time.
• If due dates are the only things that work, use false due dates. If they don’t work, use more.
• Even better, make due dates real. Make the stakes really high. Make it so that if you fail, you fail in the eyes of your family, co-workers, and friends. Make the possible shame real bad. Maybe that’ll teach you good. Alternatively, you’ll get it done, while the messes that pile up from other things needing your attention are totally justified.
• Add due dates to tasks until they lose all meaning.
• Lastly, and most important: never pause. That would just mean you’re lazy.

That about covers it.

• Kourosh

PS Mandatory disclaimer – please don’t do these things.

PPS You could also decide to get on top of things.