recent reading
Jun. 11th, 2024 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
castironSusan C. Pinsky, Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD. This would be useful for someone who hadn't read a wide variety of books on organizing, or who'd mostly read books focusing on setting up attractive and complicated systems rather than systems that prioritize function over looks. I didn't come away with any great insights, and several of her suggestions turned out to be things I did already.
I also thought some of her suggestions made assumptions about availability that aren't necessarily valid. For example, yes, getting rid of physical media frees a lot of space, and it's a great idea if you're not going to rewatch/relisten to/reread that item. (As I age, I'm also realizing that many of my old books are going to be harder for me to read in non-electronic format; that's made me reevaluate whether I want to keep the borderline cases.) But "you can just stream it" assumes that you're always going to live somewhere with good internet and that the streaming service or library will always have what you want. Or "throw out all your socks and replace with 7 identical pairs all in the same or at most two colors" -- obviously I'm ignoring that one and sticking with my bazillion pairs of hand-knit socks, which I mostly find enjoyable rather than burdensome to pair up after running the sock wash. But I also can't easily find commercial socks of the fiber content, thickness, and durability of the ones I used to buy. Yes, in theory if I get rid of a tool and then find no, I should've kept it, I can buy another...and chances are the replacement will be more poorly made than the 20-year-old item I originally had.. Pinsky's central message of "You will have a much easier time organizing your stuff if you're organizing less stuff" is valid, but "you can always replace it if you find you did need it" isn't always the case.
I also thought some of her suggestions made assumptions about availability that aren't necessarily valid. For example, yes, getting rid of physical media frees a lot of space, and it's a great idea if you're not going to rewatch/relisten to/reread that item. (As I age, I'm also realizing that many of my old books are going to be harder for me to read in non-electronic format; that's made me reevaluate whether I want to keep the borderline cases.) But "you can just stream it" assumes that you're always going to live somewhere with good internet and that the streaming service or library will always have what you want. Or "throw out all your socks and replace with 7 identical pairs all in the same or at most two colors" -- obviously I'm ignoring that one and sticking with my bazillion pairs of hand-knit socks, which I mostly find enjoyable rather than burdensome to pair up after running the sock wash. But I also can't easily find commercial socks of the fiber content, thickness, and durability of the ones I used to buy. Yes, in theory if I get rid of a tool and then find no, I should've kept it, I can buy another...and chances are the replacement will be more poorly made than the 20-year-old item I originally had.. Pinsky's central message of "You will have a much easier time organizing your stuff if you're organizing less stuff" is valid, but "you can always replace it if you find you did need it" isn't always the case.
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Date: 2024-06-13 10:40 am (UTC)