Clutter – We moved to a new house a few weeks ago and I was amazed at all the junk that we had accumulated. With two kids ages 15 and 17 one does tend to keep a lot of junk because we think it has sentimental value (Oops! My wife corrected me by pointing out it DOES have sentimental value.) I am as guilty as anyone else in the family. About 25 years ago I started collecting newspapers with notable headlines; you know all the usuals – “Kennedy Assassinated, Man Lands on the Moon, Oklahoma City Bombing, Columbine, 9/11 Tragedy” etc. (Funny how the newspapers seldom put good news in three-inch type face. But that is a topic for another day.)

I am also a bibliophile. I have books coming out of my wazoo [insert your own mental picture here]. My wife says that we could have retired by now if I hadn’t bought so many books. I have books stored in nearly every room of our house (including the “throne room” for obvious reasons). As I have mentioned in a previous post, I also love BBQ. I have a huge box full of menu’s souvenirs, and recipes from all the BBQ mecca’s that I have visited over the past twenty-five years. Bottom line, is that we have a lot of junk that we don’t really need. And one really becomes aware of that fact when you are loading it all in the back of U-haul truck.

In a recent Reuters news article Barry Izsak, head of the National Association of Professional Organizers, said "The average person feels negatively affected by disorganization in many ways: increased stress, missed deadlines, lost opportunities, that sinking, drowning feeling," Izsak said. "For the average person, disorganization and chaos simply doesn't feel good." The NAPO also argues that disorganization is costly, citing research showing that a company employing 1,000 knowledge workers, who primarily handle information, wastes $48,000 per week, or nearly $2.5 million per year, due to an inability to locate and retrieve information.

I believe that clutter can sometimes be a huge deterrent to our pursuing our passions. To be focused requires that we are literally considering only a few things. My friend Tim Redmond likes to use the analogy of the lion tamer. We have all seen the caricature of the lion tamer holding a whip in one hand and a chair in the other. Tim explains that lion tamers use a chair because the four legs of the chair confuse the lion by not giving it a single point to strike. Because the lion has to deal with the four chair legs, it becomes more tentative. We, like the lion, become tentative in pursuing our passions when we try to consider too many things at once.

If you are going to pursue your passions, you need to have a laser-like focus on what those passions are. You can’t be involved in every single activity that comes along and still be effective in pursuing your passion. Author Jim Collins says that it may be more important to create a “stop doing list” than to create a “to-do” list. That means you will have to say “no” to some very worthy causes. My friend Tim who I mentioned above also likes to joke about “the four-thousand, three-hundred and seventy-five steps to simplify your life.” That kind of sums up what many of us are dealing with. Take some time to think about the few things that you are truly passionate about. Then quit doing as many of the other activities as you can. You won’t be able to quit all activities that you aren’t passionate about. For example, I am not passionate about taking out the trash. But darn it, the house smells bad, when I quit doing that. But you will still be amazed how many low priority activities you can quit if you try. Give it a shot.

What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?