Buying things that I only need has been a practice that I'm doing ever since I learned how to make money on my own. If lots of decorations around the house make other people relaxed and refreshed after a long day outside, then in my case, it adds more headache to see them around my space. Instead of having a peaceful rest when I got home, I got more agitated and sometimes lost my patience when something triggered my mood swings as I'm very sensitive when I'm stressed. Honestly, I'm not the one who values material things that don't have a greater purpose in my daily life. I even threw my phone sometimes when I used up all of the patience I allocated for the day. Not a commendable action, I know, but I can't function well if I don't lash it out. Those things around my space that don't have much of use to me are my shock absorber.
Photo by Pixabay.
The kind of table I wanted in my space, but I need to have more space in my room before I can have this.
To maintain a peaceful mood, I only placed things that I often use around me like a powerbank, phone charger, books, sanitaries or anything that I couldn't throw out of a whim when I'm not in a mood. Organizing my things above my study table and around the room also helps to alleviate the melancholy feeling or the stress I'm having. It's therapeutic for me to have a neat and organized room, even my phone's home page and app drawers to widgets. I like downloading launchers with a minimalistic design and an organized app drawers for easier navigation.
Messy, loud, and crowded environments are my distractions. Messy spaces make my thoughts a lot messier. Even simple problems could frustrate me because I can't think well of what to do. Instead of thinking straight, I always have diverted my attention to something else unintentionally and sometimes it gets out of control until the time wherein I couldn't do my tasks properly or I haven't done anything useful at all. That's why a neat, clean, organized, and spacious room is what I need. Crowded and noisy spaces only caused disoriented thoughts to me.
Photo by Dmitry Zvolskiy
Whenever the venue isn't up to my preferences, and this happens sometimes actually, then I'll just plug my earphones in and raise the volume up, and listen to music while I do my tasks. There could be times that there would be energetic kids and visitors where I have to entertain unnecessarily where my work was cut off in between every time, of course, after that my focus will not be the same anymore. So when this happens, I'll find a place outside where I can stay for a while like public parks, coffee shops, or at a bench in the annex of the mall facing the sea in the distance. Surely, there would still be distractions all around me but at least there wouldn't be some unnecessary interactions to do since everyone has their own business to deal with. A cup of coffee and earphones is all I need at my table so I could finish my tasks without distractions.
That's how a minimalist lifestyle of mine was derived from, where less objects or people around me, the more it affects my efficiency. Sometimes I even wonder if I'm working already in the future. Maybe I'll just accept work from home jobs where I only deal with one client at a time or teach classes online wherein I can't see the faces of every student and I don't have to deal with their enthusiasm personally inside a room where I'm the only human, a computer, and other working equipments needed. With this idea, if things didn't go my way, then a Polar Bear will be awakened from its hibernation and the mood swings goes on and on for the whole day.
