Josh Evnin

Cleaning House

I cleaned my room this morning just after I woke up. That is a semi-standard thing for me to do on a Sunday morning. I hadn’t cleaned, or even set up, my room since moving in nearly a month ago, so it was definitely heavily needed. There’s just something so refreshing about having a clean space to be in. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the kind of person who cleans and cleans and cleans, but when I am in my clean room I am generally in a much better mood. Why is that? I wonder.

Here’s one hypothesis: So basically, our brains are order-making machines (I’m not trying to say that our brains are machines, cause that’s a whole different debate). Any time we are confronted with a set of details, facts, objects, etcetera, our brain tries to understand the objects with reference to one another. In a cluttered environment, we are so busy trying to make sense out of all of the objects that it is difficult to focus on anything else. When you’re in a clean environment, it is much easier to focus on the things that you want to focus on. My point? Clean your room, you’ll think better 🙂 Agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear your opinion on this debate…comment it!

I’d like to give a hearty congratulations to all of my friends who graduated this weekend. It’s a huge accomplishment (though it may not seem that way) and you should be proud of yourselves. You are brilliant! Here’s to Cindy, Clara, John, Nava, & Puneet (yes, you too). Congrats!

I have felt so tired today. I think it’s due to the fact that I went to bed at 5 in the AM on Friday night/Saturday morning. Had to help people celebrate the end of finals week. Life’s rough 😉 I’m definitely paying for it today though. I’m always really tired 2 days after staying up late…does that make sense? I’m generally fine the day after staying up late, but the second day is always much more difficult.

Ok, I must sleep. This will be an interesting week at work…I’ll be conducting some usability sessions toward the end of the week. The beginning of the week will be dedicated to gathering materials. Hopefully I’ll do some climbing this week too. To all you fellow Jews out there, have a fantastic Shavuot, which I totally forgot about until I was reminded this evening!

In

3 responses

  1. sally Avatar
    sally

    I think a clean room makes your life easier/more efficient in general(unless it’s opposite day, of course). It’s been my goal this whole year to organize my room but for every step forward I take, I revert 2 steps back. Some people are major packrats, and by “some people” I mean me. I long for the day when I don’t have to waste precious time in the morning sidestepping all the clothes slash books slash bags slash boxes slash chargers on the floor. I think that we should have a “clean-out day” where we gather all the stuff that is theoretically dispensible but not in practice and see if someone else has genuine use for said items. E.g. the 12 pictures of flowers that I saved from my free calendar that I think are too pretty to trash or even throw in the recycle bin. They are currently (and have been for the past 1.8 years)stashed under some instruction booklets in a cubby on my desk. I think they could brighten your workspace, don’t you?

  2. p Avatar
    p

    google.com/ig worked! It will let me see the top 9 email messages, but it won’t let me read them. Now I need to figure out a way to see the contents of the messages.

    I’m using your blog as a means of communication because I can’t email. Hello world.

    Josh response: that’s cool…messages here are filtered through my inbox first, so it’s a good way to communicate. If you want, tonight we can set up a page like jMinder where you can send messages to people and they can send messages to you without you having to login to anything. The downside is that it will be open on the internet, so anyone will be able to view your messages, but at least you’ll be able to communicate with the outside world.

    I can consult for others with a minimal fee 😉

  3. Erik Avatar
    Erik

    Josh, an easy way to password protect things on your web site is to use the Web Protect thingy in Cpanel… not sure if that would help.

    Erik

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