Hey, friend!I just moved. Everyone hates moving, right? It's a thing. I actually haven't historically hated moving as much as your average person. I love the (forced) opportunity to get rid of stuff. I love seeing a cleared out room where there was once clutter; I love seeing a home where there were just empty spaces. I even enjoy loading and unloading trucks. I think what makes moving so miserable is the disruption. Packing is disruption. Unpacking is disruption. Not knowing where to find things is disruption. Massive moving days are disruption. Moving takes your normal life, your normal schedules, your normal space, and turns it all upside down. This time around, I thought I had come up with the perfect plan to mitigate the disruption of moving: I planned to move everything between the old and new houses in my truck, bit by bit, using large plastic tubs. I'd save the cost of cardboard boxes, avoid the huge packing and moving day difficulties, and save a ton of money. I did save money. I was already taking those trips back and forth between the houses, and I already owned the tubs. But I, unthinkingly, increased the disruption. My new house is now composed, not of stacks of well-labeled boxes, but instead piles of stuff I dumped out of bins so I could use the bins in the next move. Instead of a few weeks of packing, a big moving day, and a few weeks of unpacking, I had week after week of gradual moving. It felt like it would never end. My life has been more awkwardly incomplete for this entire duration than it ever has been in previous moves. I tried something new and made the wrong call. Some times, it seems that our best attempts to optimize for a problem just seem to cause the same problem, from another angle. I've seen it happen in business, I've seen it happen in programming, and now I've seen it happen in moving. I wish there were a super convenient and easy maxim we could derive from this—some pithy statement I can end with. The best I've been able to come up with is this: sometimes there are costs that can't be optimized away, and no matter what you do, you're just going to have to pay them. The best you can do is to pay them in the way that makes you the most comfortable. Next time I move—if I ever move again, which I hope I won't—I know I sure will pay this disruption price with stacks of cardboard boxes littered all around the house, waiting for the day the moving truck arrives. What Else? Tighten Blog
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That's it for now! Until next time... Your friend, |