Mental Spring Cleaning

I have a confession: I don’t really use Maple much.

More to the point: I don’t use much of Maple.

As an avid quote collector, I’m in Maple several times a day. Every time something quotable comes along while watching TV, I grab my phone, launch the Maple app, and record the quote. When reading I keep my tablet nearby to do the same. But, apart from the occasional Note or Thought, that’s all I’ve been using Maple for.

Until now.

Last week Chris casually suggested that I start a monthly challenge for myself, much like her 31 Days on the Porch. My initial response was reflexive and protective: “I don’t have time for that. I’m at my desk, working in the source code for Maple all day every day, the last thing I need to do is spend more screen time using the damn thing. I have way too much stress in my life right now to add that too.”

And there it was. We built Maple specifically to help people unclutter their mind, to identify and organize sources of their stress, and to help them lead better, healthier, and more attuned lives. And in the ultimate irony, as proud as I am of the tool we built to do just that, I’m haven’t really even been using it. Even though I clearly needed to.

Sometimes our rationale for avoiding things we need to do is the same exact reason we need to do them the most. It can sometimes be easier to protect the miserable status quo than to put in the effort to effect change for ourselves.

Spring is just started to show signs of life here in Virginia, so I’m going to consider this to be a bit of spring cleaning – for my mind. Each week for the month of March, I’m going to start to regularly use one feature of Maple that I currently don’t use. By the end of the month, I expect to be using the following features regularly:

• Sleep Tracker
• Stress Tracker
• Journal
• Reflections

I’ll be checking in with you guys at the end of each week and let you know how it’s going, and I’ll be paying special attention to what I’m getting out of it, personally. Hopefully we can all learn a little something from this. Feel free to play along at home, and if you do, please let me know how it’s going with your Mental Spring Cleaning challenge!

Happy Spring, and Happy Mapling!

Know someone else who could use a little Mental Spring Cleaning?  Share, Re-Tweet, Like and Pin this so they can join Scott on this challenge.