Thursday, April 08, 2021

'Na mestye'

In Russian, 'na' can mean 'on' or 'in' and 'mestye' means place - put them together and you have 'a place for everything and everything in its place'.

if you have that coldly analytical mind which never gets anything wrong and your system is near-perfect, this post is not for you.  For the other mortals, this is just a reminder.

Write it on paper

1.  Storing information online should be minimised, certainly not on cloud, better on desktop, unless you have some encryption system.

2.  All passwords on one sheet of paper and that paper always in the same place.  Downside is naughty people coming into your home.

3.  All disks and sticks in a different place ... yet the same 'different place'.

4.  The Big Book, a sort of diary.  I don't have, instead 1/8 of an A4 page as a stack, itself always in one place.  And written on sheets always in the same pile , no matter how old or irrelevant.

5.  Danger in that is security of course.  Analyse in real terms what level of security you need and why.  Nothing going in my stack in that place affords any intruder much at all.

6.  Every time you come home, every time before going out, check the stack - what have you forgotten?  Keep all old stacks in a different place - all old stacks in the same 'different place'.

At some stage, you'll have to force yourself

Routine is brutal, yet it can save inordinate amounts of time. The enemy of routine is 'just', as in, 'I'll just leave them here for now.'


Which is the second enemy expression - 'for now'.  There is no 'for now' because something always comes up, from a phone call to something you remembered to do.

Over and over - if you come home, if you finish one task and are ready to go onto another:

1. Empty ALL pockets from your trip out, directly into the central place for those particular items


2.  Do not have one place but a few - spread the possible places you can lose things.  Make them different, e.g. the raffia box for something, a small cardboard box for another, a tin for another.  And never change that.

3.  Do NOT 'just' 'put them here for now', unless high contrast colour and inconvenient for you in the extreme.  For example, there's a corner of my bed that if I leave something there, sooner or later I'll knock it to the floor in passing.

4.  You're NEVER in too much of a rush to pause and think - 'na mestye' I say to myself over and over.  Na mestye, Jimbo.  Ruthlessly.  No Ruth to be seen anywhere.

5.  Check you emptied ALL pockets, not just most.

Your walk-out routine

Before I go out for the least reason, including taking the rubbish down, my routine is:

1.  Do the personal things, e.g. wash, taking care of biz.

2.  Cellphone in its cover in one pocket, same pocket every time, away from keys and suchlike.

3.  Keys in their pocket.

4.  GTN spray in the pocket where the handkerchief is.

5.  Card cover in a different pocket.

6.  Shopping list in its pocket, also coin and other items, plus pen.

An example is that I will not even go outside my door to speak with anyone without 2, 3, 4 - minimum.  No excuses, tell whomever it is you'll be a moment.  Never alter it.

Don't curse yourself for errors - just adjust the routine

I have a quite incomplete list of people's birthdays but it IS being added to now and then.  If an incident occurs over it, add it to the list.  Don't curse but adjust - you are human, you err, just adjust for next time.

2 comments:

  1. Seems a few cultures have the declutter culture. Here's Sweden's version "dostadning" https://theconversation.com/swedish-death-cleaning-how-to-declutter-your-home-and-life-90253

    Reminds me of the WEF push to convince us we'd all be happier if we own nothing and look to the state for all our needs. Working our backsides off for Them in return for their "generosity", of course.

    That said, clutter makes me uncomfortable. How about some organised chaos?

    ReplyDelete
  2. A lot of this is just a 21st Century update on Guy Code.
    Unspoken, yet needed to be said.

    ReplyDelete

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