the corner office

And so I started doing a Digital Declutter.

This was a Thing for me, because while I don't read many Improving Books, when I do read them it's usually with more of a touristy attitude than anything else. They have Advice and Recommendations and Five Step Plans telling you to do things and you never do them because it's an effort and you didn't feel that strongly about the subject in the first place, and it's a self-help book, dammit. Reading it is one thing, actually doing what it suggests is an admission of guilt, of something. Failure? Anyway, I'm digressing. All you wanted was for your horizons to be expanded a bit, and feeling good about reading the book is all the kick you were really after.

But this time was Different (that's the end of me Capitalising Everything, promise). I did start the declutter, though truth be told, it was sort of by accident. Enthused by the book and still thinking over what it had to say, I got on the train one night and rather intentionally decided not to check the news. Not a big thing in itself, I don't always check the news on the train anyway. But the intentionality of it struck a chord, and when I got home and sat down in the study in the evening, I intentionally didn't open up a news site, and the next morning was the same, and somehow that ended up with me thinking to myself "Is this the start of a digital declutter? Am I really going to do this? Sounds like I already am. OK, digital declutter it is".

Having decided that, I took the book's advice and jotted down the Dos and Don'ts which would define my declutter, and then... I just did it.

It's been a positive experience. I don't have a lot of spare time to start with and I wasn't whiling it all away on social media and the web anyway, so it's not like it suddenly freed up tons of time for me. In fact, halfway through the declutter, Something Came Up, which kept me so busy that my spare time dried up completely for a couple of weeks. So much so that at the end of 30 days I decided to extend my declutter for a bit longer just to prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke.

(Actually, it's been a couple of months now, and in some respects, the declutter's still going, simply because I haven't bothered to go back to many of the things I was doing before, and haven't gotten around to deciding when and how I'll approach them when I do, if ever.)

I have plenty more to say, about the book and my declutter experience. I should admit, Dear Reader, that at the risk of boring you senseless (unless you're Ronwen, in which case, it's too late), I sense a Series of posts coming along.