LEVEL 7

Progress!

Level	Achieved	Reward
LEVEL 1	Jan 01 2011	excitement of launching a new project
LEVEL 2	Mar 29 2011	hard work is its own reward
LEVEL 3	Dec 18 2011	+1 Self-Awareness
LEVEL 4	Jan 28 2012	intangible religious benefits
LEVEL 5	Sep 03 2012	a small spike in blog traffic
LEVEL 6	Dec 15 2012	hoodie upgrade
LEVEL 7	Sep 07 2013	graphics card upgrade
LEVEL 8		computer desk upgrade
LEVEL 9		hard drive upgrade
LEVEL 10		??
LEVEL 11		??
Project Complete		??

My prize has arrived! Now I can download some new-ish video games, which take up no physical space.



I've decided that for the next level, I'm going to attack my bookshelf. I've probably acquired a good number of books since this project began, so I'll give away two at a time and assume it'll end up a net benefit. When I run out of books I'm willing to part with, I'll shift over to my CD/DVD collection, which lives on a separate overflowing shelf.

I've been avoiding books so far, because books don't take up a lot of useful space: you have a bookshelf, and all the books go there. I'd rather chip away at things that don't necessarily have an obvious home, but I'm stacking things on top of the shelves, a sure sign of overpopulation. Plus, focusing on a single area seems like a good way to sprint through another level. I'm sure I have plenty of books I don't really need, anyway, and free shelf space should help the bookcases appear less cluttered.

Checking In With Jon Bon Jovi

Three hundred sixty-three divided by two is one hundred eighty-one and a half, which means that...

...we've just passed the halfway point!

*confetti*

*balloons*

*streamers*

Livin' On A Prayer

*party hats*

*cake*

*fun*

That was amazing, now let's get back to work.

LEVEL 6

These are the best posts to write.

I don't really have any interesting observations at this stage. I'm still finding enough no-brainers to keep the game alive, so the challenge (still) is to keep processing stuff; there aren't any tough decisions yet about what to keep.

I've thought of a few prizes to shoot for, too! Here's an updated chart:

Level	Achieved	Reward
LEVEL 1	Jan 01 2011	excitement of launching a new project
LEVEL 2	Mar 29 2011	hard work is its own reward
LEVEL 3	Dec 18 2011	+1 Self-Awareness
LEVEL 4	Jan 28 2012	intangible religious benefits
LEVEL 5	Sep 03 2012	a small spike in blog traffic
LEVEL 6	Dec 15 2012	hoodie upgrade
LEVEL 7		graphics card upgrade
LEVEL 8		computer desk upgrade
LEVEL 9		hard drive upgrade
LEVEL 10		??
LEVEL 11		??
Project Complete		??

I donated this old hoodie, which was in decent shape but worth upgrading...

...and replaced it with this new Portal hoodie, which I've had my eye on for awhile now.


At the next level, I'm going to put a better graphics card in my computer. Then, after that, replace my computer desk with a new one (hopefully with more storage space). Then, after that, I'm going to put a solid-state hard drive in my computer. Yes, lots of computer purchases on the horizon, but those are easy/obvious upgrades to make, and I've had those things in mind for awhile, anyway, so I might as well attach them to this project as incentives. I'll definitely come up with non-computer updates for the rest.

In the meantime, Christmas is coming soon, so I may slow down the "thinging" for a few weeks while I'm busy doing other stuff. Hopefully I can keep reducing items, and then maybe catch up on the write-ups after the holidays.

On Progress and Motivation

Progress: too slow
Motivation: too little

When I originally came up with this "LEVEL UP" idea, I was attempting to motivate myself through a form of gamification.

This hasn't been working so well, because I (just now!) realized that the inherent "reward" of reaching the next level doesn't actually motivate me; it's just a way of measuring progress in fractions. Well, it turns out I need motivation if I'm going to speed up.

I've decided to attach rewards to each of the next milestones. Of course, it would defeat the purpose to just buy something new when the whole point is to reduce the amount of things I have, but the obvious answer to that is: upgrade. If I replace some thing I have with a better/newer/cooler version of that thing, it's a neutral-count upgrade, but I get something new, too, which is (hopefully!) rewarding.

It feels a little weird to share with the world what luxuries I'm planning to buy myself, but hey, admitting your embarrassing lack of progress is part of the deal when you share your project with the world, so let's see if this helps fix it. Here's a first draft of a progress chart that I'll use in future posts once I've decided what to use as actual rewards.

Level	Achieved	Reward
LEVEL 1	Jan 01 2011	excitement of launching a new project
LEVEL 2	Mar 29 2011	hard work is its own reward
LEVEL 3	Dec 18 2011	+1 Self-Awareness
LEVEL 4	Jan 28 2012	intangible religious benefits
LEVEL 5	Sep 03 2012	a small spike in blog traffic
LEVEL 6		??
LEVEL 7		??
LEVEL 8		??
LEVEL 9		??
LEVEL 10		??
LEVEL 11		??
Project Complete		??

LEVEL 5

After posting 15 new entries over the last two days, I have finally reached LEVEL 5!

LEVEL 4 was achieved eight months ago, so I'm way behind and I'm going too slow. But I'm still going.

I'm starting to recognize that I'm getting better at just throwing things away, rather than trying to come up with a perfect use for them. I don't like to trash things that could potentially be reused somehow, but that's a challenge I'll need to overcome if I'm going to reach my goal.

I'll do a more thorough self-examination when I'm at least half done. For now, I just need to keep my head down and power through.

LEVEL 4

(3 * 33) down, (8 * 33) to go!

It's still pretty easy to find things to get rid of. Maybe not quite as easy as the first couple weeks, but I'm still dumping things that obviously needed to go. I wonder when it'll change over from "clearly clutter" to "I wish I could keep this"? That transition doesn't feel all that close yet.

What I am starting to sense, just a little bit, is that I have a little more room around here: the cumulative effect of clearing out 100 things is starting to feel like tangible progress.

Still, there's too much stuff lying around, which means I'd better just keep going!

Progress Report: 2011

The original goal was to give away 363 things in 2011. Now that it's 2012, it's time to look back and see how far I got:

70 things, or about 19%.

Okay, so not exactly as planned. But I'm just going to keep right on going in 2012, because in this case, finishing is much more important than finishing on time.

Thanks for following along, and Happy New Year to whoever may be reading!

LEVEL 3

Let's see, assuming I'm exactly on schedule, today should be... Monday, March 7th, 2011. And we'll just check the calendar, and... hey, it's still 2011! Close enough.

What did I learn in LEVEL 2?

1. It never occurred to me that taking on this project would actually make it more difficult to get rid of things. But now if I see something lying around that's eligible for the blog, I think to myself, "Hey, I need to photograph that before I can throw it out!" Then I just leave it there, probably, because photography is hard work, relative to throwing things in a garbage bag. Essentially, the blog itself disincentivizes me from dealing with junk in a timely manner. But it does allow me to write fancy words like "disincentivizes" whenever I feel like it, so that's a nice tradeoff.

2. I'm getting better at eliminating new clutter earlier in the pipeline, like (for example) immediately breaking down cardboard boxes and putting them in the recycle bin. This prevents me from having extra boxes lying around, which in itself is good progress. Even more importantly, though, it prevents me from putting other things in boxes, which is how so much clutter goes unattended in the first place.

3. Not having a car probably helps stave off new clutter, too. If somebody offers me a free coffee table, it's pretty easy to decline: I just imagine carrying it home on public transportation. No, thanks.

Here I Go Again

Yeah, I'm back. I took a big long break because... well, because I'm a slacker, I guess. No excuses!

Let's see, today is December 17th, which means that I have 15 days to get the remaining things given away and catalogued on the blog (catablogged?). That's an average of 21 2/3 items per day.

Uh, that's a lot. So much for doing one per day.

Nevertheless: onward!

LEVEL 2

As you surely recall from reading the What Is This? article on the sidebar, 363 things can be neatly organized into 11 tiers of 33 items. So, having eliminated 33 things from my apartment/life, I can proudly proclaim that I have advanced to LEVEL 2. Out of 11. Yes, Nigel: eleven.

At every LEVEL UP, I will provide a brief recap of my progress and what I'm learning. Presumably, each level will be slightly more difficult than the last, since I have fewer items left to choose from. I'm adding milestone achievements to chart my progress. Yes, it's mostly a video game metaphor.

So, how did LEVEL 1 go? Slowly. Very, very slowly. I'm finding that getting rid of things is a fairly simple job, but blogging is time-consuming, especially since every time I take a picture of something, I have to photograph it, upload the image file to my PC, re-scale it, and then upload the smaller version to the web server. Then I have to write about that thing, which is actually pretty easy in most cases.

As you can tell, I'm behind. I'm behind on the getting rid of things aspect, but I'm even more behind on the blogging component. I'll do my best to catch up (the last five weeks have been extra busy so I've ignored the blog altogether) but realistically, I may have to just admit that it's going to take more than a year to get rid of 363 things. No sense stressing out about a project that's supposed to be making life simpler.

The other major lesson from LEVEL 1 is that it's easy to get rid of things, but it's very hard to stop acquiring new things. Now that I'm spending a bit more time thinking about de-cluttering, I am all the more conscious of how the universe is constantly trying to dump its leftover junk in my apartment. The universe seems to be very serious about this plan. And so it takes a pretty serious effort on my part to prevent all that extra clutter from invading my personal space. So far, I'm not doing a very good job of holding off the new stuff. I need to keep practicing.

Anyone want a novelty mini-bat from the Louisville Slugger factory?

Shout Out to a Sister Blog

Since a lot of my traffic is coming from her blog, I should finally mention Trista's 7 Items A Week.

If that sounds like almost exactly what I'm doing, that's because we had similar ideas and each decided to start on them this year.

Her writing is amusing and concise. And there are photographs, too. Go check it out already!

Dead Rock Stars Made Me Do It

A few days ago I had things one and two ready to be disposed of. But I wasn't sure if I really wanted to make this a whole year-long endeavor, or whether I really wanted to try to keep up a blog throughout. Between the door and the car I was talking myself into just doing a little clean-up and forgetting the whole large-scale version of the adventure.

When I started the car, the radio was on. Specifically, Lynyrd Skynyrd was on, singing Simple Man. I figured that was a good sign from the universe that I should go ahead with the plan. And so I did.

Forget your lust for the rich man's gold
All that you need is in your soul
And you can do this, oh baby, if you try
All that I want for you, my son
Is to be satisfied

And be a simple kind of man
Oh be something you love and understand
Baby be a simple kind of man
Oh won't you do this for me son
If you can

True story.

Here We Go

Three hundred sixty-three things thrown away, given away, sold, consumed, or otherwise gotten rid of.

It's not really a New Year's resolution, but it's something I've been meaning to try, so 2011 seems like a good time to start. See the What Is This? page for the introduction!