The Trouble With Stuff

One of my inspirations for the 100ItemChallenge is American productivity guru David Allen. His Getting Things Done system has been useful to me over the last few year for, well, getting things done. The key to GTD (as us aficionados describe it) is to have tools to handle "stuff".

Here is how Allen defines "stuff": "...anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn’t belong where it is, but for which you haven’t yet determined the desired outcome and the next action step." This amorphous "stuff" is one of the causes of the stress and anxiety that many of us suffer from on a daily basis.

The GTD system is a bit too complex to really do justice to here, but the basics are:

1. identify all the stuff in your life that isn’t in the right place (close all open loops)
2. get rid of the stuff that isn’t yours or you don’t need right now
3. create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values
4. put your stuff in the right place, consistently
5. do your stuff in a way that respects your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment
6. iterate and refactor mercilessly

So how does this tie in with the 100ItemChallenge? Quite neatly as it happens. David Allen recognises that untamed stuff saps energy and is damaging to mental and physical health. In the 100ItemChallenge we're saying that all the unnecessary stuff we have around us is equally draining, both emotionally and financially. By taming our stuff we can release both energy and money, to invest in life experience rather than material possessions.

Interestingly, one of Allen's tips has been very useful recently - he suggests that if you see something that you want to buy then you should delay purchase for a month. After a month, if you still want it, you should go ahead and buy it. However 80% of the time the desire will have left you and you'll save a bit of money (which you could put into your savings account). Using this technique stopped me from buying an iPad (and yes, the money I've saved has gone into the savings account.)