For a few weeks I’ve somewhat fumblingly kept up a beeminder goal to throw away one thing every day. The discarded item has to be something I wouldn’t have thrown away in the typical course of the day, so a food wrapper generally wouldn’t count for example. Items which would and have qualified include a bunch of old crappy hangers from my closet, large piles of junk mail which needed to be sorted and discarded, old toothbrushes, and a terrible painting that I made and kept because it’s hard to throw away your own art even if you know it’s terrible. There were many more items and some of them were piddlingly small. The hardest part of this goal is actually determining whether I’m going to give myself credit for throwing away, say, a wad a receipts from my bedside table. It just doesn’t feel very significant. But the fact is that it probably would have continue to sit there (and probably grow) without this goal, so I tend to let minor things count.
That said, I have derailed twice and ponied up the $5 penalty. Finding something to throw away can be surprisingly cognitively draining at the end of a long day. I do feel that I’m getting better at throwing things away without excessive rumination. I originally set this goal after moving several times in a short span and growing sick of how many possessions I have, so an underlying goal is to simply reduce my attachment to my stuff.
If it’s your ultimate goal to be better at throwing things out, and not just to have less stuff short-term, you’re actually punishing yourself for engaging in the desired behavior when you withhold credit for doing so (or spend any time on negative feelings as a result of doing the task), which seems counterproductive.
You might find an auxiliary habit of patting yourself on the back (or similar small reward-feeling behavior) when you do your task to be more helpful!
For a few weeks I’ve somewhat fumblingly kept up a beeminder goal to throw away one thing every day. The discarded item has to be something I wouldn’t have thrown away in the typical course of the day, so a food wrapper generally wouldn’t count for example. Items which would and have qualified include a bunch of old crappy hangers from my closet, large piles of junk mail which needed to be sorted and discarded, old toothbrushes, and a terrible painting that I made and kept because it’s hard to throw away your own art even if you know it’s terrible. There were many more items and some of them were piddlingly small. The hardest part of this goal is actually determining whether I’m going to give myself credit for throwing away, say, a wad a receipts from my bedside table. It just doesn’t feel very significant. But the fact is that it probably would have continue to sit there (and probably grow) without this goal, so I tend to let minor things count.
That said, I have derailed twice and ponied up the $5 penalty. Finding something to throw away can be surprisingly cognitively draining at the end of a long day. I do feel that I’m getting better at throwing things away without excessive rumination. I originally set this goal after moving several times in a short span and growing sick of how many possessions I have, so an underlying goal is to simply reduce my attachment to my stuff.
If it’s your ultimate goal to be better at throwing things out, and not just to have less stuff short-term, you’re actually punishing yourself for engaging in the desired behavior when you withhold credit for doing so (or spend any time on negative feelings as a result of doing the task), which seems counterproductive.
You might find an auxiliary habit of patting yourself on the back (or similar small reward-feeling behavior) when you do your task to be more helpful!