A few years ago, I published an essay discussing this concept I often think about roughly called “messy drawer overload.” Effectively, it is this idea that everyone has nooks and crannies in their lives where they stow away many tiny little things that are hard for them to think about.
This of course applies in the literal sense as well. Perhaps you have a drawer filled with miscellaneous items including telephone bills, id cards, markers, batteries, etc. things you do not want to organize very well.
The problem – in both the physical and mental sense – is I think these messy drawers begin to weigh on us, even when we have “tucked them away out of sight.” There is this small space in our minds that they occupy and occasionally choose to invade our present thoughts.
It can be challenging to find ways to clean your messy drawers, especially when they are things you may not even know how to deal with.
I’ll share a few of mine.
The first is my health. I have no clue how my Vitamin D levels are doing. And that is of course just the start. I do not think about this all the time, but it definitely comes up every so often.
The second is my finances. I have no clue how much money I spend a month. I have no clue how that will impact me long term. I pay for everything myself. So this is really bad.
The list goes on and on…and I wish there were a better way to just abstract out these annoying little messy parts of my life to someone to look after.
Also published on Medium.