“Inertia” is a word I use often when talking about organizing. Even if relatively little progress is made in the beginning stages of a project, I always want the client to know how darn important it is that they’ve broken the inertia. It’s a point that usually gives someone pause.

I’ve been waiting to write that subject line not just all year, but since the last time I was in Bali in 2002! I had the great pleasure of studying abroad in Bali for four months in 2000, and returned the following two years for a month each.

Every once in a while a quote or passage grabs me in a way that I know, if revisited often, it will actually change my actions.  This passage from Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander was one of those.  Merton speaks to the heart of busyness and the real casualty thereof: our “work for peace.”

Last month I gave a workshop on decluttering - not just offices and paper, but decluttering as it applies to everything in the house. In planning it, I knew I had to share an excerpt from a new favorite book, Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki. It gave me pause when I first read it because of all the reasons there are to hold on to things, this one was brand new to me: 

You’re learning how to declutter your space. It’s time to declutter your businesses messaging! I’ve broken my rule of no reading business books in bed, devouring Building a Story Brand by Don Miller.

Just because my sentimentality about objects has eroded over the years doesn’t mean there’s not a soft spot.  I just tend to reserve it for things with a heartbeat. Be it a filing system or a life, I live for a good transformation.