Decluttering is so hard! I know, you would think it would be simple. Just throw stuff away, right? It is so much more complicated than that. Decluttering involves bumping into who you are, who you want to be, sometimes who you once were.
There are 3 principles at work here: the endowment effect, sunk cost fallacy, and the IKEA effect.
The endowment effect allows us to overvalue our things. It’s partly responsible for why people overprice their homes when selling or overprice items at a garage, rummage, or estate sale. We assign more value to our stuff because it’s ours. Those items are part of our memories, part of who we are. It’s hard to learn that your stuff isn’t as valuable as you thought it was. It’s deflating.
Sunk cost fallacy allows us to hold onto things longer than we should because of the investment we made in it. I know, ouch. If something is expensive, we assume it is valuable. And maybe it is, or was at some point. Free yourself from keeping academic things out of guilt. I give you permission.
The IKEA effect allows us to attach meaning onto things we create. This is a big one. I’m sure you have a special place in your heart for your dissertation, your research, your articles. They are or were a part of who you are and who you wanted to be. It’s okay.
This doesn’t mean that you have to toss all your academic stuff the minute you sign a job offer. I still have some of mine. I’m not suggesting you purge all your stuff. But go through it, relive it, if you want. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s nothing to run away from. (By the way, you’re not running away from academia just because you’re leaving. More on that later). Hold on to the things you truly treasure, not the things that make you feel guilty. Don’t let your stuff bully you, especially not academic stuff.
By the way, I still have my dissertation. I graduated in 2016; it’s 2021, and I still have it. It’s a great document, if I may say so myself. I revised a little of it over the years and I still get an idea or two sometimes. But I did get rid of a lot of books that I either never read, don’t remember, would more than likely never pick up again, or didn’t enjoy. Because why keep it? No one is auditing my bookshelf.
Lastly, decluttering takes time. I have gone through my books at least 4 times and will more than likely go through them at least once more. Even though your old, academic self is changing, you are still you. Make room for all the great things to come from life on the outside.
Below is a photo of one of my bookshelves. Yes, that is another bookshelf beside it. This empty bookshelf was once full of books. It took me a few weeks to get this bookshelf completely clear. I still have boxes of books and papers to go through. This bookshelf won’t be staying here. It feels good to have the mental and physical space for new things.
For more on the 3 principles in this article, see https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-modern-brain/201909/how-cognitive-traps-make-it-harder-let-go-our-stuff
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