Alas! We have a guest room in our house, and it is always filled with random stuff except on the rare occasions when we have guests and have to clear it out. And it … occasionally … happens that I’ve said to myself “so at time T I will do Useful Thing X” but then somehow when time T arrives I fritter it away rather than doing the Useful Thing.
So I fear that the pressure to fill vacua with random stuff applies not only to literal vacua but also to things one’s designated a purpose for but without sufficient actual (mentally and emotionally salient) need.
Vacua filling in this article is referring to the planning aspect, and how some plans are better than no plans. The act of following through is another challenge altogether, and maybe certain behaviors can be considered to better increase discipline.
For example, books like Atomic habits assert “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” If this is the case, maybe rather than filling vacuums for their own sake, you should instead create habits that fill them.
All in all, in your example at least that room is quickly able to turn into something of value (a guest room) whereas one that is purely a mess will be much harder to convert into something of use. Additionally, filling vacua randomly with useless things will probably be damaging, so finding some balance is of course important.
Alas! We have a guest room in our house, and it is always filled with random stuff except on the rare occasions when we have guests and have to clear it out. And it … occasionally … happens that I’ve said to myself “so at time T I will do Useful Thing X” but then somehow when time T arrives I fritter it away rather than doing the Useful Thing.
So I fear that the pressure to fill vacua with random stuff applies not only to literal vacua but also to things one’s designated a purpose for but without sufficient actual (mentally and emotionally salient) need.
Vacua filling in this article is referring to the planning aspect, and how some plans are better than no plans. The act of following through is another challenge altogether, and maybe certain behaviors can be considered to better increase discipline.
For example, books like Atomic habits assert “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” If this is the case, maybe rather than filling vacuums for their own sake, you should instead create habits that fill them.
All in all, in your example at least that room is quickly able to turn into something of value (a guest room) whereas one that is purely a mess will be much harder to convert into something of use. Additionally, filling vacua randomly with useless things will probably be damaging, so finding some balance is of course important.