This may be a personal opinion, but I believe that in order to keep your life running smoothly, it needs to be as free from clutter as possible. Clutter, in any form, is something that causes chaos and disorder.
Every ‘thing’ that surrounds us take some portion of our attention. Every ‘thing’ demands attention.
This goes for everything. Crap laying around in our house. Crappy cluttered code. Things you have to remember all the time. Files scattered around your file system. They are all things that demand attention from you when you encounter them (or think about them).
For me to be able to truly concentrate and focus I need my environment to be ‘clean’. I am not talking about germs and stuff, i am talking about clutter-free. I need my house to not have crap everywhere. I need my desk not to have lots of stuff floating around. I need my head clear of thoughts and worries.
When things are clean around me, the work I do tend to also be cleaner and better. I feel more comfortable and more ‘zen’. I can most certainly focus better.
Try it out!
So, I want you to try this out. I have a couple of exercises to get things clean and good:
Clean your house
Don’t just move everything out of the way, but throw away anything that you don’t actually need. The things you really need to keep, but don’t need to use all the time, stove them all away. Only have the essentials around you.
Keep your desk super neat. You don’t need all those papers, glasses, cables and whatnot laying around. They just distract you. Keep your phone and tablets away too. You only need a few things to work. Try to only have that on your desk.
In general I think it’s good to throw away as much as possible. We tend to gather a lot of stuff that we don’t really ever use. Those CD’s with old software will probably never actually get used. Do it aggressively and do it often.
Clean your File System
Take a good look at your files on your hard drive and in your dropbox (or whatever cloud storage you might use). You are probably storing a ton of crap you will never ever use. Delete it. It’s practical also, because you will find your files easier that way.
Try to delete as much as humanly possible. You can back up some stuff on an external hard drive if you are afraid that you ‘might’ need it. Honestly, you probably won’t. But get it our of your way!
Clean you head
This is not a one-off thing that you do. This is a very nice practice that will keep you productive and calm. Sit down and write down everything that you know you must do. Write down every idea that you have floating around in your memory. Get all your worries written down. If you keep all your thoughts in writing instead, you will free up your mind to do work and also to be more creative.
You can come back to your thoughts you have written later. You don’t need to deal with it right now. But you know where they are and can feel safe that they won’t disappear.
Every time you think of something new you have to do, write it down immediately. Every time your think of some idea, stupid or not, write it down immediately. That way you won’t forget, and you keep your head clean.
Then what?
Take a breath. Close your eyes and feel the ‘zen’ feeling coming over your. And then get your ass to work. Craft that beautiful code!
With life and mind clean and clutter-free, you can more easily focus on what you need and want to do. You can more easily get into the mindset of clean and clutter-free code. You can also feel good about relaxing, because everything is in order.
Follow me on Twitter: @gjermundbjaanes