escape to insanity

For some reason or another, my big thing right now is GTD and efficiency/productivity. While I haven't actually read the flagship book yet, it's definitely on my list (there are a few other books in line ahead of that one). In lieu of a physical book, I've busied myself with reading up on all the latest and greatest the vast world wide web has to offer on the subject.

One of the related-slash-included topics I've been following like mad is something called lifehacks - the idea of finding clever and innovative ways to simplify your life. If there were a single guiding principle behind lifehacks, it would be this:

Work smarter, not harder.

(There are some really great resources out there if you're interested in lifehacks - most notably Lifehacker.com, 43 Folders, and Stepcase Lifehack.)

Along the way, I came across something called The 100 Things Challenge. Here's the gist of it, from the source:

I'm going to only keep 100 things. All the rest gets purged. Sold. Given away. Traded ;-) Some how, all the other things will no longer remain in my possession.

Yep. The goal was to streamline his personal possessions to no more than 100 items in order to reduce the amount of clutter and required cleaning. The beauty of this challenge is that there are no rules - you tailor the challenge according to your own need. For instance, basic necessities aren’t included in the purge - the loaf of bread and jug of milk in the fridge don’t need to be thrown out to spare your favorite stuffed animals. For couples, shared items aren't cut, so don’t give away your family car. You don't necessarily even have to make it 100 things. It can just as easily be 500 things, or 38 things. Whatever.

So I’m going to give it a try. I'm going to keep it as simple as possible, and as flexible as possible. I'm going to, over the course of the next two to three months, systematically go through everything I own and decide whether it's worth keeping or should be tossed/recycled/donated. It shouldn’t be that hard - in the course of moving several times over the last several years, I've already streamlined most of it. Excluded from my purge:

• Consumables like food, juice, etc. I'll be cutting back on soda, but that’s not really part of the challenge.
• Basic necessities - cleaning supplies like handsoap, paper towels, toilet paper, etc.
• My computer and its immediate peripherals, power cords, and the like.
• My car. I may want to drive it off a cliff right now, but that's not really going to happen. It stays.
• Existing collections. That means my DVD collection stays intact, as does my CD collection, and the vast amount of LEGO pieces I've managed to accumulate since my childhood.
• Furniture. I don't have much to begin with, so what I have needs to stay.

Pretty much everything else is fair game. One of the other (fairly obvious) rules I'm going to go by is that separate things that act as one will be counted as one - like the DVD player with its power cord and A/V cables; the player isn't much good without the cables, and vice versa.

While I’m going to aim for the 100-thing mark, there’s no guarantee I'm going to hit that, and that’s okay. I haven't even started yet, so I'm not even sure yet how much I own to begin with. I'm going to try to post my progress as I go.

If you're looking to streamline your life and reduce your clutter, you may want to give it a whirl. I'm certainly interested to see how it'll turn out.