Shelf Awareness

February 13, 2025

Last week, I pressed Send on the manuscript of a business and community leadership book* I had just finished, a project that consumed my every spare minute the last several months. Given that the Bills weren't in the Super Bowl, I repurposed Sunday to organize my office. In the process, I found a high-shelf box stuffed with old, tangled technology.

You know the kind: forgotten cords, chargers for 2010 laptops, obsolete adapters for iPod Nanos. Every household has a stash like this. We rediscover it occasionally, sigh, and then quickly cover it up and push it back where it came from. We tell ourselves that we don't really know how to dispose of it properly, and what if we actually need one of these cords someday? Better to keep them all, just in case. But clutter doesn’t vanish just because we stop looking at it. The more we let it pile up, the less room we have for what serves us well.

This is just as true for ideas and behavior patterns as it is for outdated technology. We all accumulate assumptions over time—about ourselves, the world, what’s possible. Some serve us well, but others become obsolete, outpaced by new knowledge, reshaped by new experiences. And yet, like tangled wires, we keep them tucked away. We don't even know they're there most of the time. Examining them takes effort, and letting go can be uncomfortable. So we let them hang around, shaping our subconscious.

Every so often, though, it’s worth pulling those ideas out of storage. Are they still useful? Do they still fit our world? When the young people in our orbits see us questioning, affirming, rejecting, and learning, they learn that revisiting how we think about things is an important part of lifelong growth. We all need space for the good stuff, so this week, please join me in a little sorting—of boxes in the attic and clutter in our minds. It will let us make room for more of what matters.

—Deb