O You and Finishing the Cycle

thank you kb, originally uploaded by emdot.

Last weekend I went to SF with one of my best friends -- she bought me
a ticket to the O You conference which is (hold your eye rolls)
centered around O Magazine (O as in Oprah). It wasn't an Oprah
event... it was a series of lecture-seminars from regular
contributors. I went to the Martha Beck, Suze Orman, Peter Walsh, and
Marianne Williamson seminars. Martha Beck and Suze Orman were my
favorites, but I find myself changed by one thing that Peter Walsh
said (I'll share in a sec.).

Oprah did make a surprise appearance (she'd never done it before at an
O You deal) and that was very cool. :) What I loved was seeing how the
contributors truly respected and were in awe of her.

What Peter Walsh said. It was in answering someone who said "what do I
do with paper clutter?!" (which I struggle with, too). He said think
of a load of laundry. If you were stop the laundry mid-cycle and just
let the clothes sit there in the water for a week, you'd go back to
some pretty stinky laundry and a much bigger mess on your hands. It's
the same with the mail -- if you bring it in and leave it on the
counter or pile it on your desk instead of "finishing the cycle" right
away, in a week you'll have a tub of stinky laundry.

This was a huge light bulb to me. All of a sudden I can see all of my
mid-cycle stops... aha! Finish the cycle. Finish the cycle. Finish the
cycle. Got it.