The Journey #10: A Map of Your Brain
This is a picture I took this afternoon of the storage room in my garage. Among other things, the room contains mountain bikes, skis, a table saw, a sort of root cellar bin (we only use it during the winter), power tools, extra chairs and two tennis racquets.
The room is organized, but often messy, because it often functions as a staging area for boxes and bottles we need to recycle. And because—this is the real reason—much as I try to be organized, I constantly slip into a semi-organized state, or worse.
This, I suspect, is the true state of my brain: semi-organized. Rigid thinking makes me uncomfortable. Doing things the very same way every day makes my skin crawl. I like to be organized enough to find my keys, but not so much that I type labels for all my file folders.
So… if you want to gain insight into the true nature of your brain, try looking at the space around you; it’s a pretty good indicator.
If chaos surrounds you, chaos is probably inside you. I won’t go on and on with the analogies, but you can probably save a lot of money on aptitude tests and personality profiles simply by taking a hard look at the environment you choose to occupy.
By the way, if you want to change your environment, there are many ways to accomplish this. After many years of having a messy desk, I finally solved the problem with an out-of-the-box solution: I gave my desk away.
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