Clarity Amidst Clutter
Perhaps the most unnatural skill I’ve had to learn of late is resisting the urge to clean. Honestly, it pains me in a way to even type those words - that’s how much I love clean! When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite games to play at home was organizing all of my trading cards into different piles based on various shared characteristics. I would sit on the floor by myself organizing things, for fun, for hours on end! Suffice it to say that I love order!
And yet, now I sweat every day working in an unair-conditioned warehouse, surrounded by unfinished to-do’s. Not to mention, there are trash piles everywhere! Even at home, I’ve had to accept putting my kids’ toys away into associated bins, rather than pristinely returning each of them to individual form. (The horror!)
So why resist the urge? Why not just clean? It comes down to knowing what’s most important when.
At home, that’s meant cutting down on the amount of time I’m doing chores to make more space for relationship and for sleep. In my startups, that’s meant focusing on building the businesses and creating the culture. After all, without revenue, there exists no business to improve upon! And without culture, there is no leadership to multiply my efforts.
I remind myself in the midst of the clutter, “We’re making messes right now. If there’s no mess, there won’t be anything to clean up.” The answer to all of my ideas for optimizing & cleaning is not “no” - just “not yet.” That’s taken more discipline than I imagined, but it’s helped us grow monthly sales revenue in the warehouse from $0 in January to over $22,000 in July. We’ve created a profitable endeavor that’s now on its way to recuperating investment costs. For that, I am deeply encouraged!
So I look at messes a little differently now. They are not always a problem that must be solved or a sign of irresponsibility. Sometimes, they are evidence of a clarity in priority. If nothing else, messes are a ramification of high activity, and there’s certainly some nobility and courage to that.
While an uncomfortable thought, I’m wondering if our craving for order may hold us back from the environment-changing endeavors that beckon us. Perhaps instead of asking, “What mess can I clean up today?,” we should ask, “What mess can I make?”