❮❮prevnext❯❯

Melissa sometimes gets annoyed by me not properly straightening up after myself - like leaving a cereal box out, or a cupboard door hanging open, or grocery sacks out on the counter after I put the groceries away.

I know she sees it as "leaving it for someone else to deal with" but it's more a crime of omission than comission. Usually with those things my attention has pivoted - the task at hand has finished, and then maybe later there can be another task to straighten things up. And often I WILL come back to it, but it can take a bit. I guess over time I'll try to include the straighten-up as part of the main task, but it's not always easy to remember, the cues aren't there for me.

And I just realized that I pull the same trick on myself with browser tabs. It's way too easy to hit cmd-n or cmd-t and start up a new page to help work on the main task, and then there's that little hint of "maybe this will be useful in the future" that's stronger than "it's better to always have a less distracting desktop workspace".

I guess not everyone works that way? Which is why "open up all the old windows" when a browser app reopen is a welcome feature for many, but for me is jut a horror show of zombie tangents.

So maybe I can grow my way through some of this, but it's never easy to change a habit - most existing habits are there for a reason, or at least have an ongoing history. Maybe the phrase "the job's not finished 'til the paperworks done" (a bit of toilet humor in the form of commentary and bureacracy) could help as a mantra.

I guess with this there's a vibe for decluttering in general, trying to stay ever-vigilant...