Clutter(less)

Uh... organized chaos???

“Tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”
― African Proverb

My living space is a wreck. My bedroom is a mess. My car is a nightmare. I have no time for myself let alone to straighten up....at least that's how I feel. Unfortunately, that thought process leads to failure. I am relatively minimal, we don't have a lot of stuff, but when things are never put back where they belong, it becomes pretty disastrous.Instead of spending time working on important tasks, your mind becomes distracted with the problem on hand...which is organizing. I don't know if I have some degree of obsessive (well, according to J, I do), but if my space isn't clean and tidy, I will eventually go crazy. Instead of getting work done last night, I spent 4 hrs cleaning... and I don't mean tidying, moving things around, etc. I mean that whatever wasn't needed or would never be used went in the trash, and everything else was put in its place. I guess my point is that everyone needs to make time to organize or get rid of the unnecessary stressors in the environment. I know for me, I have this thing nagging in the back of my mind, making great days stressful, until I can get to whatever was bugging me. Instead of putting off the annoying work, do it first. Now...the living space is organized and tidy. Later, when I start working on tasks, I can actually focus and accomplish that which I set out to do. Granted, I still have to clean my car...and room... but that's another day.

The interesting thing is that this concept can be applied to jiujitsu. Minimize the clutter - take out the unnecessary techniques and movements that don't help your game. Once that happens, you can focus on the concepts that will benefit your training. The saying "don't collect, perfect" applies here - instead of collecting a bunch of techniques, you should perfect the few that you do have. This is because instead of being able to do 20 different guard passes decently, you could do 3 perfectly. In a tournament situation, it's the difference between almost passing and guaranteeing the guard pass. My homework for tonight? Think about what I need to focus on and what I need to let go in order to improve my game. What clutters your game?