In our third post of the foundation series we begin to look at choice. This is one of the aspects of the foundation where we start to make changes to our everyday and, hopefully, see some positive results.

Curation

This part of the foundation exercises can take some time to get completely correct. We are living in a time of consumer led choice – we have never had so many options put in front of us. Often we make choices without really thinking about them. As a result we amass a hoard of “stuff” that fills our homes, our time and our attention.

Curation is the effective editing of this stuff. This generally involves a lot of taking out and then selectively putting in. What we are left with is up to us and we can be confident it is what we have chosen to have. That isn’t to say these things should not be reviewed from time to time, but running this exercise for the first time can have a dramatic impact.

We are going to run through six key areas: Space (where we look at the things around us); Time (where we look at how and where we spend our time); Attention (a resource that is repeatedly bombarded with distraction); Money (it is surprising how casual we can become to cash outflow|); Energy (which is also about energy generation); and People (or how to politely only spend time with the people you want to be with).

This is such a broad area that we are coving these over two posts. In today’s post we will discuss Space, Time and Attention.

Space

Most of us have accumulated things. We store these things in our homes, in our offices even in our vehicles. I am not just talking about those of us that are hoarders, although they will benefit the most, but everyone. It is amazing how much we accumulate and hardly or never use.

To understand if we should keep any item we must consider value. We will talk about value repeatedly throughout this post. Value can be the monetary value of an item but it can also be the utilitarian value (i.e. the things we use the most, that have a function, have a high utilitarian value). It can also be sentimental value – something that we believe in – anything that can generate an emotional response can be worth keeping. Finally, there is a pleasure value – how much true pleasure do you repeatedly get from something.

Funnily enough, when running the protocols to review your things, the monetary value of an item may be as much a reason to dispose of it as much as it is to keep it. Things with high utilitarian or sentimental value are more likely to be kept.

There are many guides on how to “declutter”, “tidy up”, “upcycle”, etc. and some of these will be referred to in the bibliography. But for now, we want to keep this protocol very simple. Start with one area of your space (a room, a cupboard, even a drawer), and take every item out one by one. For each item ask the following questions:

1. What is the value of this item if I were to sell it?
2. Is this item likely to go up in value by any significant amount?
3. Do I use this item regularly (if it wasn’t there would I buy a new one)?
4. Does this item mean something to me?
5. Does this item give me pleasure (a most appropriate question when talking about art, for example)?
6. Do I have a fundamental reason to keep it (don’t throw away your birth certificate)?

We aren’t going to provide a flow-chart with what you do with each item once you’ve asked these six questions, it should be fairly obvious. For some items, selling them can be the best option, for others you may give them away. Your final option is just to throw things away.

You will need to run through all of your spaces to complete this exercise. It can take some time but it can also be worth it – uncovering lost items that you enjoy or that mean something to you; or turning things you didn’t use into cash; or giving someone else the benefit or pleasure of something that you did not use.

There are two other elements to space curation. The first is organisation. Put things in the places where you get most pleasure from them, that they are handy when you need to use them, that make your space look how you want it to look.

The second is acquisition. This is fundamental. Do not immediately fill the space with the same type of things. Before buying or keeping anything else run through the six questions above. Sometimes telling yourself “no” or giving someone else a polite “no, thank you” is the right choice.

Time

Time is more precious than money – we cannot earn more of it.

Many of us don’t really look at how we spend our time, it kind of creeps away from us. For many of us we don’t really respect the time in the way that we should, especially when we are younger and time feels almost limitless. As we get older this bubble starts to deflate, slowly at first and then more quickly as we see our time nearing an end.

There are many techniques and initiatives that people recommend to push us to consider time as a precious commodity. Differing techniques will work for us in different ways. We will refer to some of these in our upcoming bibliography and we will not go into these here.

We also will not focus on the many ways in which we can be made to be more productive. We are not focused on getting more productivity from our time in the foundation stage. Instead we are going to focus on awareness. We first need to understand how we are spending our time.

Start by keeping a detailed diary of what you’re doing with your time. It’s easiest to do this at the end of each day, when the day’s events are fresh in your mind. Chunking your time into various segments is important and we recommend the following:

• Time sleeping – this is actually time spend asleep and not time spent in bed
• Time trying to sleep – again the time it takes you to get to sleep
• Exercising – it may help to break this down into different types but that is more important when looking at Maintenance and Growth stages
• Time working – some may want to split their work day out into relevant categories as it helps them understand where time goes
• Time on social media (of any type)
• Time dealing with household admin (paying bills, arranging insurance, booking holidays, buying food, buying fuel, taking car for a service, etc.)
• Electronic engagement with friends (i.e. messages or email)
• Real social interaction with fiends
• Time reading or learning (split between fiction and non fiction or the skill(s) you are learning)
• Ablutions – toilet, shower, bath, etc
• Preparing food
• Eating food with friends
• Eating food with family
• Social time with family
• Social time with partner
• Other

There are some short cuts for some of this information (screen time on your phone, sleep applications, etc. Allocate time spent travelling for one of the purposes to that purpose. Keep your schedule going to at least two weeks but preferably for a month. If you can enter the details into a spreadsheet.

Over the course of the analysed period, you want to look at what % of your time is spent in each category. Once you have done this it’s for you to consider if it is optimum. Refer back to your Purpose and, if you answered the questions in that section, whether the way in which you use your time reflects what you value and what you want to be doing. Does it reflect how you want to spend your time.

Certainly, for many of us there are elements which we can do little about. Work, for example, may be an immutable timetable with limit ability to do anything about. For most of us, however, it can be clear that our choices of how we have spent our time is less then optimum.

The way around this is to edit out or reduce the activities that are pushing us away from having the schedule that we want. The simplest way to change this is to create your own daily and weekly schedule. Ideally you want to have a schedule split into 15 minute chunks but you can make improvements just by looking at the hours.

Once you have a blank schedule put in your absolute commitments and necessary items (work, ablutions, sleep, preparing food, eating, etc.). Once you have done this, select your priorities (the things that you value, whether on your analysed list or not) and add them to your schedule. Make commitments to keep to these priorities – it doesn’t matter whether it’s arranging date night with your partner, meetings with friends, or committing to yourself to hit the gym at a certain time.

Put into your schedule everything else that you need to fit in. You will be surprised how much time you actually have once it is scheduled properly. Finally, use your phone if you can, to set alarms for some of your key things.

For the first day, be really regimented if possible to your schedule. Be as disciplined as you can. If it isn’t working, change your schedule for the following day and carry on. It may feel like hard work but by rigorously working to your schedule and repeated reviewing you will find the optimised schedule for yourself. And you will be surprised at how different it is and how different it feels from your original time weekly routine.

Attention

To paraphrase Nhat Hahn, if we are thinking about the tea that awaits us whilst washing the dishes then what will be thinking about when we should be enjoying our tea.

It is important that our attention is focused on what we are doing, especially when we are enjoying ourselves or engaging with others. It is too easy for our attention to be somewhere else. Most of us carry around a mobile phone – an incredibly powerful device and one that is incredible at distracting our attention.

There is a theory that every engagement we have throughout the day leaves its claws in us as we suffer attention residue. Watching or reading the news, scrolling our social media or even just a conversation that we have in the morning, all can sit in our minds and keep distracting us throughout the day.

As a result of this our minds can be repeatedly distracting us from the moment, the task in hand or the individual we are engaging with. There are three key levers we can utilise to help with the issue of attention residue.

Firstly, we can control the input. If we are selective in what we expose ourselves to we can limit our distraction. Avoiding the news until later in the day (if we really want to consume it at all); checking emails on a schedule (which should exclude outside of working hours for work emails); making a schedule to have a difficult conversation (ensuring that you have the time to deal with the conversation and properly process the aftermath).

Secondly, we can focus on our perspective. Often, many of the things that sit in our minds creating anxiety are not, with a broader view, real issues. The worry that certain things create can be far worse for us than the reality of the situation. Techniques to help with perspective include the zoom out (considering the scenario as an observer of others, what would you expect to happen); the flash forward (will you consider this significant in a month, three months or a year); and the animal (stripping our ego’s away to that of an animal such as a dog, would you really feel this is important).

Finally there is the process of interpretation. Whether reverting to a Stoic teaching, a Buddhist philosophy or just engaging with a mindful meditation, we can choose how to clear out our internalised concerns to allow us more clarity to focus on what we should be doing.

Which brings us back to one of the key elements of managing our attention. Mindfulness, meditation, mental discipline – they all support us in working back to the present. Daily rituals of some form of mindfulness help train our minds to focus on the present. The more we do it the easier it becomes.

Whether you use a phone app, a written guide or work with someone in person, spending time and effort on developing your own skills to remain in the present will deliver considerable benefits over a relatively short period of time.

It will help you really enjoy that cup of tea.

Check back tomorrow for part two of Curation.