But wait... there's less!

The Project had this short but revealing story on a study of work hours. Turns out that the perfect amount of working hours per week is 25. Working about this amount increases your brain function, your productivity, your free time and your happiness. What was interesting was the talk afterwards by the hosts. Comments like "but who's going to pay the mortgage?" and "you get the same pay" indicated that the biggest obstacle is in our heads. Australians have the largest houses in the world. The only reason we get such big and expensive houses is to ' keep up with the Joneses '. But that doesn't actually make us happy. It doesn't make up working an extra 2 days each week. If we could free ourselves from traps like this, we could set up our lives around things that actually make us happy. Such as having 4-day weekends.

Today we're doing some cleaning up of the apartment, so this quote about clutter is quite pertinent. Clutter is the physical manifestation of unmade decisions fuelled by procrastination. Even as I look around the desk where I type this I can see examples of that. Perhaps that's why it feels good once we do get around to clearing the clutter. At tidy home (or office) with less mess is appealing - but perhaps it's mental as well as visual. The satisfaction of completing the things we want to do is such a good feeling. So much better than staring at physical reminders of half-finished (or not yet started) actions.