Once, I was working in my home office and had to keep getting up to collect papers, folders and other items. I had a box in the passageway that I had to walk around, and every time I passed it, one of the flaps would catch me in the side. Time and time again, I’d get up, walk past the box, get caught by the flap, and get more and more annoyed.
Why do we do this? I know the answer was to simply move the box out of the way, but for a long time I was tolerating something in my space not being right, and this was draining my creative energy.
I have found that at times, I need to remind myself to become intolerant. To look at my desk, and the one single receipt that I have not bothered to file in my in tray. To throw away the pen that doesn’t work, that is still in the pot - you know, the won that we pick up, try to use, fail to get writing with, and then replace only to begin this silly cycle the next time we need to jot down a note.
Is your phone cable all twisted, so that each time you make a call a small part of you curses it?
Have you emptied your in-tray?
How many of your pens don’t actually work?
Is that mark on the window, the one that catches your gaze each time you dream, still there?
What are you tolerating that’s sapping your productivity?
