Spring cleaning time AGAIN?
It seems like we just finished doing this, yet here it is, time to do it again. No matter how much we try to declutter, things accumulate like so much dust on open shelves and the tops of things we can't see and can barely reach (refrigerators, armoires, picture frames). Great. Now we need to declutter -and- dust. It's never easy, and it never ends.
Like every swim coach knows, there is a physical side and a mental side to our sport. So, too, is there a physical and mental side to decluttering. Depending on your state of mind, the mental battle may be more daunting than the physical, but you need to handle both.
The end of the swim season looms before us this time of year, sometimes seeming like that special effect in movies where no matter how far you run towards your goal, you feel like you are never going to get there, it just keeps retreating into the distance. Since there is always a "next practice" or "next meet" or "next season" waiting for us, it can feel just like that never-ending road we are always racing down. And along the way we have collected a lot of clutter. Heat sheets with scribbled notes and past workouts and various other pieces of paper stack up, ribbons and medals that weren't distributed or picked up get moved to another corner or a bag or a box but still stay nearby, and how many dried-up whiteboard markers do you really need on your desk or in your briefcase?
Waiting until the end of the season to take stock and mentally or physically declutter and plan for the days, months, seasons ahead is a mistake. "No one plans to fail", they say, "they just fail to plan." When I was coaching a rapidly growing club team with Chuck Warner in Houston in the searing heat in the summer of 1980, we would come home from practice to our shared apartment, crank up the A/C, play some Willy Nelson records, and sit down with our practices to make notes on what went well, discuss what needed to improve, who made progress or needed special extra help, things like that. Every. Single. Day. If we waited until the weekend or "when we felt like it", we would have lost the freshness and clarity of our observations and collaboration. And there would have been a lot of clutter to wade through.
Jes Marcy (www.jesmarcy.com) is a professional organizer. She says that clutter is a modern challenge. In a newspaper interview with her recently it was explained that hoarding is an evolutionary challenge that we have relied on as a species to succeed. 100 years ago you had to hoard enough food and firewood to get through the winter. But not anymore. Just go online, execute a few clicks, and stuff will magically show up at the front door! (BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!) The writer of the article, Ellen Byron, states: "..we're taught to keep and cherish everything that's been given to us, that's the Depression Era mindset. We feel that if we throw something out we're a bad person." [1]
Our workspaces become piles and stacks, our home or work office starts looking and feeling more like a storage unit, and if we're not careful, we will wind up like Shel Silverstein's Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who "would not take the garbage out" [2], and become (supposedly) buried in the mass of "stuff" we are reluctant to dispose of. Most of us find ourselves in this situation because we simply have more stuff flowing in than flowing out. We will need to reverse that.
Then the mental aspect tries to slap its handcuffs on us. As we're decluttering, Ms. Byron writes, "We come across a decluttering landmine. [It] could be...anything that has a deep emotional tie to an event in our past. Then we get sucked into the emotional journey that this object sparked for us." Maybe it was that meet program that has your handwritten splits when Jenny made her first national QTs, or maybe the heat sheet where you drew a big smiley-face when Rex swam his first breaststroke event without getting DQ'd. Emotional ties are tough. You will have to make hard choices at times.
When I was in college, I was astounded that my coach had notebooks of every single workout he had written, challenge set results, best average times, meet splits, EVERYTHING, 15-20 years worth at the time. I have kept logs of all of mine, too, along with attendance notes and every little thing that I needed to make a note of. I'm not now, never have been, and never will be a digital guy with regard to coaching swimming. I like paper, I know where to find it, and I never need batteries or a power source to access anything. But it's a LOT of notebooks.
Now the pertinent point: How often do we refer to those volumes upon volumes of carefully chronicled data? Almost NEVER. Why do we keep them? Because, just like how my dad used to explain the shelves and piles and MOUNTAINS of broken tools and materials he hadn't touched in years, "Because I might need it someday. Usually within 10 days of when I get rid of it. You just wait. You'll see." I waited. I saw. In this case, Dad was right on the money. But when you need it, you have to FIND it. And that's another event in itself.
This has been a brutal year on everyone, and especially athletes in most sports, and their families. The pandemic, the social and political unrest, living with an almost apocalyptic mindset about venturing outside and (heaven help us!) MINGLING with our classmates, neighbors, teammates, and workplace friends, it's understandable how one can start to feel a little stir crazy. The winter, and especially January, is hard even in normal times when the holiday "high" evaporates and many experience what has been termed the "post-holiday blues." A little pick-me-up, something to look forward to, may be just the ticket, and it is something many of us have done with our athletes for years: A goal poster or "dream board." You make a collage of quotes, images, numbers, desired destinations or achievements, you make it BIG and BOLD, and you pay attention to it, you give it a place of importance in your daily thoughts, you give it a showcase. It helps you focus, and that in itself is a form of mental decluttering.
Having a tangible reminder of a goal helps create the belief of attainability. The anticipation of attaining a goal is very powerful, and can get us through challenging times in our lives, like now. In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, writer Anne Marie Chaker remarks that "[a] growing body of research shows that having an event to look forward to is linked to general feelings of happiness and positivity." [3]
Disney employee Tom Fitzgerald came up with this: "If you dream it, you can do it." And our old friend, Coach Bob Steele, has created a terrific set of notecards emblazoned with his trademark catchphrase, "YAGOTTAWANNA" [4]. And you do. Get busy.
====================
NOTES:
[1] "How to Tackle Clutter And Its Emotional Toll", Ellen Byron, The Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2021
[2] www.shelsilverstein.com/books/where-sidewalk-ends/
[3] "Stir-Crazy Families Beat the Winter Blues", Anne Marie Chaker, The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2021
[4] Bob Steele, Coach-Artist-Author, http://gamesgimmickschallenges1.com/
