After writing about clearing my bookshelf for nearly a year and a half, last week I emptied it! The thrill is starting to fade, as I deal with the downstream effects, but let me tell you, I mentioned it once an hour the day I accomplished it.
To some of you, this may not seem like a huge accomplishment. I myself thought I could get it done in just 4 months–how deluded I was! I had no idea it would take me another year beyond that to accomplish my goals.
In many ways, achieving this goal was like achieving any other intimidating goal, like paying off a mortgage or student loans. And in other ways, it is very different.
Goals
If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.
Yogi Berra
Getting a big project done means you need to understand where you are starting from, and know where you want to end up.
To pay off a loan, this should be pretty simple: your starting point is your current balance on the loan. You will know you are done when you no longer owe money. If you aren’t sure what you owe, you might need to spend a little time gathering that information, but that’s it.
To clear my bookshelf, my goal was simple: to get rid of enough stuff that I could remove the shelf from my spare bedroom/office. I wasn’t sure about my starting point, though, which was figuring out how much stuff I had on the shelf. I used an estimate of 1 book per 1 inch of shelf space, which was a good approximation, but not a completely accurate evaluation of all the things I had to clear away.
Process
To get from point A to point Z, you need a plan. A map. A way to make sure you don’t get stuck or lost or detoured somewhere around J (or worse yet, C). For financial goals, this can be very easy (the plan, that is, not necessarily the trip) if you use tools to automate the process. I couldn’t see a way to automate my decluttering, which made it more challenging for me.
Automation is totally your friend if paying off a loan. For starters, loans are usually structured so that you already have a payoff date baked in to the payment plan. If you have a 10-year loan, guess what? At the end of 10 years, your loan will be paid off!
Whether you want to finish off your loan according to the original schedule, or possibly pay it off earlier, you can make decision fatigue a thing of the past by automating your payments. In just a few minutes, you can either set up recurring payments to your lender, or recurring deposits to a special account, meant to pay off the loan at the time of your choice.
The pain of the reduced paycheck may linger, but the pain of deciding if you are going to put extra money aside is a one time event. You suffered it when you made the decision to automate withdrawals, and now it is over.
The only time to revisit the challenge of paying down the loan is with the occasional windfall: tax refunds, bonuses, gifts or inheritances. At those times, you might again need to make the decision about putting this money towards your goal.
On the other hand, culling books and clearing clutter is a much more labor intensive process. I can’t set up a recurring weekly book donation remotely. I have to actually go sit or stand in front of the bookshelf and decide which books, which I had previously wanted, need to go.
Not to mention, the pain of setting a weekly appointment with my bookcase–ugh! For me, clearing the bookcase was to be an episodic event, occurring on days when I had time and mental fortitude to deal with the task.
Progress
When you first start a big project, of any kind, the end seems very far away. Very far.
You may have small but steady progress, as with monthly debt payments, or irregular larger progress, as with a decluttering weekend or putting a lump sum from a bonus towards your debt. In any case, in the early part of your journey, progress seems slow.
Forty books, though a large number of books to take away, is only a fraction of the 180 books that need to be cleared to clear the bookshelf. $20,000 is a huge bonus, but if your mortgage is 10 times that, it may not seem like you have done much to retire the loan.
And yet… if you keep plugging… if you chip away with one small victory after another…suddenly…
You find that your progress has snowballed. The insurmountable mortgage is now only $18,000. The Bookshelf of Doom really has only a few items of shelf clutter (not even books!) scattered over 3 shelves.
You are almost there! With one fell swoop, you can muster your forces to achieve your goal, which seemed so distant just a few months ago. All you need to do is dig into your savings or dump a few items on the floor, and there you are! Victory achieved!
And though there might have been a huge push at the end, you know there is no way that you could have gotten to that point without all the prior efforts–the ones that felt like they didn’t get you anywhere, when in fact they delivered you within sight of the finish line.
Victory
Enjoy this time. You have earned it, spending years to pay down your student loans and/or your mortgage. Or maybe 18 months to clear a bookshelf you thought would take only four.
Gloat, as long as your friends and family aren’t too put out. Maybe write a blog post.
Because you know what? The newness of your accomplishment will fade. Hedonic adaptation means your new, exciting situation will soon become the status quo. No longer will you look at your clean room, your $0 loan balance, the extra money in your budget, and be amazed by it. It will just be the way things are. So celebrate your hard work and achievements now.
Aftermath
The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Hedonic adaptation will come later.
The aftermath I am talking about comes just as you are celebrating your win.
If you are anything like me, the excitement of nearing your goal will cause a rush to the finish line. You will take money out of your vacation fund, or move decorative items onto previously tidy shelves, because you can’t wait any further to get to the finish line on your project.
[You wouldn’t do that? You are far too Spock-like for me. Carry on as you were.]
Now, here you are, dealing with the consequences. You have achieved your goal, but realize you now have to go a little further. The “just a few things” you couldn’t find room for when you cleared that shelf are now on the floor, and need to find a home. Your vacation fund is a little low, after a chunk was used to pay off your loans.
The urgency may not be there, but putting away a little more money to shore up your money stash, or spending another couple of hours tidying, is still in order.
Then you can lean back, and enjoy your spacious guest room/office in the house you own all by yourself.
Have you completed a big project recently? Does any of this reflect your experience, or is it just me and my issues?