Moving, whether your home or your office, is always a stressful time. There is so much packing to be done, even if you use professional movers, and never enough time to get everything done that you would like. And then, of course, there is always the “weeding out” process. You go through all of your possessions and determine what stays with you and what is consigned to the trash or recycling bins.
I have faced both moving situations over the past week. This past Saturday, my wife and I moved from one part of Staten Island to another. Two days later, the movers came to our offices in lower Manhattan and relocated our furniture, equipment and files—thankfully, only from one floor to another within the same building.
In both cases, I participated in the sifting through of belongings, determining what to hold onto and what to part with. In each instance, I decided that I tend to hold onto more things than I really should. In the office move, I discovered that I am not alone. We all purged files that had long ago outlived their usefulness or value. There were notes and tape recordings from years past, transcripts of roundtable discussions, and a host of photos and negatives.
As a rule, photos have great historical value; notes, not so much as the years roll on. And we have only so much physical space in which to store these items, so every so often it’s good to clean house—unless the notes and papers belong to some president or other celebrity.
In much the same way, we have only so much space in our brains to store thoughts, memories and, most important, ideas. In my 55 years of life, I have seen far too many people who store so many old ideas and thoughts in their heads that they have no room for any new thinking. I believe brains are like bodies of water. In order to keep the water fresh and clean, it must be kept moving in some way, replenished with new liquid as a snowmelt rejuvenates a river and a river refreshes a lake. How many times have you seen a pond become stagnant and brackish because the aeration system has broken down or its water supply been cut off?
The brain, I think, operates the same way. So I’ve decided to perform a periodic “brain purge,” to see whether there are any ideas I am clinging to that, like my old notes, have outlived their usefulness. I may be 55, but I still have room to grow.
When was your last “brain purge”?