During the first week of spring, the temperature dipped into the twenties, the daffodils lay prostrate on the walk, and I devoted an entire day to cleaning out my files.
I usually purge them in January to get a fresh start on the year, but I had failed to do so, not only this past January, but also in January of 2011.
So it was time—past time. Too much paper never sorts itself out. The trivial and the important were jammed together, both in the cabinet and in my head.
I soon realized that my neglect to use organization as a strategic planning tool (see Wildly Organized) was symbolic of an ambivalence about where I am in my professional life.
I’d been dragging my feet on cleaning out my files because I knew it would force me to deal with endings and face up to the disconnect between where I say I want to put my time and energy and where I actually do.
I love my work and am grateful for having achieved a level of mastery in it. It is both a creative outlet and source of identity. It provides me with the opportunity to contribute to the professional growth of talented, caring people whose trust I cherish and whose company I enjoy.
Yet I have other goals—writing, being a mother and a grandmother, becoming a citizen of the world—which I can’t devote as much time to as I would like, given that I am now over the crest of 65.
I’d been dragging my feet on cleaning out my files because I knew it would force me to deal with endings and face up to the disconnect between where I say I want to put my time and energy and where I actually do.
I had to take the time to do an audit of what was in those overstuffed folders, and in my conflicted thinking, as well, so that I would have the hard data necessary to make wise choices.
I’m tempted to say that the practice of intentional selectivity is a gift of age, but as I think about it, it seems to me that the rapid pace of our culture makes it an essential practice at any age.
It comes into play just as much for the young working mother, who feels as if she’s constantly running uphill, alternating between having it all together and falling into a heap, as it does for a working grandmother.
Like a bulging file cabinet, an overstuffed life has practical consequences. We get frustrated because we can’t find what is most important to us in any particular moment, or worse, we lose it! The sheer volume obscures our priorities.
The first step when there’s no space left is to stop adding to the pile, which puts you in a holding pattern—where I was before I finally committed to sorting through it all.
But eventually, if you’re going to move forward, you’ll need to begin taking away the things that deplete you so that you can put back more of what enriches you.
I could see that my real work would be not just sorting through piles of paper, but deciding what to retain and what to release, based on what I see as my life’s purpose. I had to bring my records up-to-date with what is most meaningful to me right now.
I already knew what that was. Next to my computer is a photograph of a milkweed pod caught in the moment of bursting open to disperse its seeds. The picture perfectly symbolizes who I want to be in this phase of my professional and personal life, and the work ahead for me is simply to organize my day-to-day living around this guiding principle.
At the end of my organizing day there were two large cardboard boxes of mixed paper for the recycle bin. The files hung loosely in the cabinet with enough room between them for easy access to their contents, and the drawers opened and closed smoothly.
Next to the seed photo, I placed a short list of follow up actions to complete my process.
If someone had taken before and after pictures of my office, it would have appeared as if little had changed. But a great deal happened inside me as a result.
Now, when I enter my office I feel open, ready and even excited about what will come next in my life because I’ve made space for it.
Beverly Ryle Reply:
April 20th, 2012 at 9:55 AM
For some of us it takes a lot of work to let joy in…Bev
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