I'm kind of obsessed with organizing myself. Figuring out how to do that is an ongoing, fascinating process, and good blog material, I think. In today's episode, the myth of the Big Cleanup™.

I previously said that it's a good idea to put some small cleaning-up things off so that they don't interrupt your flow. There's a big danger to that: you tend to leave more and more things in a messy state, and pile them up, thinking that you'll get to all of them someday and clean them all up. The thing is, you never actually reach that day, you keep putting it off the whole pile collectively. You tell yourself, "I will clean that thing properly, when I have time for it", but you never actually do it.

The trick here might be to clean up things in small increments. Don't take on the whole pile and set about cleaning it all up; just chip away at it, little by little. After you start, you might find yourself on a roll, feeling good about the cleanup process, and finish the job (which is great), but that's not your initial goal. To get started easily, you might do this when you're procrastinating for something else, like a project with a deadline.

This idea occurred to me only recently, and so far I've had good results. I think it's a keeper. :)