Curate your virtual space

The virtual space is to your mind what the digital space is to your body.

If you have a lot of clutter in the room, you not only find it functionally difficult to manoeuver through it but it also affects your mind.

The same is with virtual space. If you have a lot of information clutter in your virtual space, it not only affects your capability to manoeuver through your tasks and thoughts but it has an indirect effect on the functioning of your physical self.

We take great pains to curate our physical space. A good table, incense, sunlight from the windows, objects that give us pleasure. We curate what we consume as well for our physical health. But it is often that our virtual spaces are horrendously organized, the equivalent of a corpse rotting in the center of our room through news or our sippers filled with sugary water through insta or FB. The moment we dive into that space we are pushed from one unhealthy option to the other and have to really dig out the few things that serve us. Needless to say each visit to the virtual space has a tiring effect at best and severely detrimental effects at worst.

Yet at the same time, the benefits and promise of digital tech are impossible to ignore and its impossible to go back in a time before them. Curating our virtual space, clearing the distracting and unimportant, implementing and making obvious the ones that are beneficial, ruthlessly, is the need of the hour.

Solitude Muscle

Solitude is the work out, loneliness is the body pain that one gets out of it.

When starting out, small periods of solitude can bring out the pain of loneliness. But like a work out, solitude can be extremely healthy for the mind. It has benefits that one cannot find in the company of others. The lengths of solitude are best increased gradually. The idea is to not avoid loneliness altogether but not get in a situation where it can overwhelm the mind entirely. A body writhing in pain will have trouble in walking, let alone in performing taxing activities, so is for the mind

Line of sight

Choice is not about doing but about not doing. Minimalism is about unencumbering ourselves with generalised expectations.

In any given point of time one can choose to do one from a million tasks. Its a matter of taking away the things that do not serve us and focusing on the ones that do.

We often take long winded routes to reach the destination thats in line of sight. We end up doing things that we consider are expected of us. We fail to question our actions and fall prey to our procrastinations.

One doesn’t need to be able to draw realistically to create conceptual or abstract art. One doesn’t need to finish his graduation to create a business. One doesn’t need to be rich to be happy. All these constructs are conditioned into the vulnerable parts of our mind to serve capitalistic structures at each step and ultimately distract ourselves from the one thing we are passionate about. Every diversion we take away from our goal, we become weaker in pursuing it. We lose time and energy in pursuits that serve others.

The straight road is hard but shorter and there is lesser chance to get lost. In times of doubt its better to sit empty, in silence and strategize about the challenge ahead, than to expend our energy in pursuits that allow us momentary escapes.