I’ve Never Had So Much Fun Cleaning Out My Closet
My closet before!
I truly believe I’ve found my spirit animal — it’s Marie Kondo.
I’ve written before about her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. But this week I finally got around to listening to the entire audiobook and I have to admit I’m a convert (mostly.)
Now I understand why she’s such a rockstar in Japan and why there is a waiting list to work with her!
In her book, Marie explains that she started “tidying” when she was 5 years old. Like a classic middle child she did it to get attention and praise from her parents. Since then, for Marie, tidying has become a celebration. She even dresses up for the event.
Marie says everything you own wants to be of use to you. Isn’t that such a nice way of thinking about it? That was a huge mindset switch for me. Read more
Get More Organized Now with Harvesting Happiness
I was kindly invited on as a guest to the Harvesting Happiness Show. We talked about my book, Listful Thinking and how you can use lists to live a happy life.
The show also featured Daniel Levitin who talks about the science behind getting organized.
He touched on a few scientific reasons why multitasking is bad for you, which made me so happy to hear as multitasking is such a pet peeve of mine. But unfortunately it’s such a classic pitfall that so many people fall down!
The interview is embedded below, but you can also click here to listen to it. It’s 58 minutes long, so I would recommend breaking it up and listening in chunks. Or it could be good if you have a long drive. If you want to skip to my part I start around the 31 minute mark. Enjoy!
Make This List to Get More Out of Your Day
From CEOs to janitors, we all have the same problem – we don’t have enough time.
In fact, when you think about it, time is an equalizer. That’s because we all only get 24 hours.
Even the President is forced to squeeze all his tasks into that 24-hour time frame.
So how do we do it?
I recently visited the Google headquarters with my husband in Mountain View, CA. Our gracious guide Gopi Kallayil discussed this conundrum with us as he showed us around the gorgeous campus.
At one point he asked us, “If you only had one hour what would be the next one thing you would do with it that would maximize the quality of joy, presence and life?”
It’s a great question for unveiling your true priorities.
Often you’ll be surprised by how little time you dedicate to the things you would put at the top of that list. Read more