When I started the Happines Project, I vowed to work on dressing better. Day in and day out, I wear jeans and running shoes, or khakis and running shoes, or yoga pants and running shoes, usually with a long-sleeved, v-neck white t-shirt (the t-shirt is another story).

I had vague dreams of dressing in attractive, grown-up outfits and tried to make a shift, but somehow I could never change.

I know, “Be Gretchen,” but I thought it would be nice to be a slightly more nicely dressed Gretchen.

Finally, I remembered to apply one of my Twelve Commandments (see lefthand column): Identify the problem.
What was the problem? Why did I never want to dress more nicely?

Answer: because I do a lot of walking every day, and always try to walk more whenever possible, so I like to wear comfortable shoes.

This should have been obvious, but somehow it wasn’t. Once I identified the problem, I realized I had to decide between a conflict in priorities: more walking or more fashion?

I choose more walking, almost every day. Now that I see running shoes as an expression of a choice, instead of a sign of a lack of style, I don’t care about upgrading my look.

Yesterday I did need to dress up a bit, so I wore flat loaders with a proper outfit. For most people, I realize, loafers count as comfortable shoes. Let me say that NOTHING beats running shoes.

By the time my day was over, I felt far more tired and footsore than I usually do.

So, if you’re feeling exhausted at the end of the day, if your feet and legs ache, if you feel drained from daily life, try switching shoes.

Obviously, many people don’t have an option to wear running shoes all day. But if you could wear running shoes, but don’t, give it a shot. I predict you will get a serious happiness boost.

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I like to cruise around the many great blogs that deal with the subject of productivity, or as it’s often called, GTD, “Getting Things Done.” I’ve gotten great ideas and inspiration from blogs like Zen Habits, Dumb Little Man, and Getting Things Done. They often manage to be funny as well as useful, always a plus.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day (or Quiz Day).
This Wednesday: Quiz: Are you at risk for clutter mentality?

Because one of my hobbies is helping my friends clear out their clutter, I’ve noticed that there are several very distinct kinds of clutter.

By identifying your particular brand of clutter, you gain insight on how to cure it. If one of these statements sounds like something you’d say, you’ve diagnosed yourself.

1. “This is perfectly useful, I can’t just throw it away.”
It’s good to have useful things around the house, but you don’t need them in massive quantities. I have a friend who has an entire kitchen drawer filled with the little ketchup packets that come with take-out food. If you can’t bear to throw useful things away, look for ways to give them to people who need them. I had a shelf packed with those glass vases that come with flower arrangements – too nice to toss but too many to use – so I gave them all to the flower shop on the corner of my street.

2. “One day, this might come in handy.”
True. But there’s a cost to having empty shoe boxes, glass jam jars, flattened packing boxes, and half-filled cans of paints piled around your house. Ask yourself: how much would it cost to buy this item, if I needed it? Do I need to keep more than one of this item? How often does something like this come into the house?

3. “I bought this doodad to help me get organized.”
Ironically, I’ve noticed,folks with the worst clutter problems often react to their clutter by buying more stuff: racks, fancy hangers, the device that sucks the air out of plastic bags that hold clothes. Beware! You should always attack a clutter problem first by GETTING RID of stuff rather than by trying to ORGANIZE stuff.

4. “This is a precious memory.”
College t-shirts. Baby outfits. Your father’s old desk. We all keep items out of pure sentiment, and that’s okay – to a point. Ask yourself whether one finger-painted blob masterpiece from your son’s nursery school years is enough, instead of two huge boxes full. If you need a memory prompt, consider taking a picture of an item. Store such items so they’re out of the way, rather than keeping them in active closets or drawers.

5. “I’m saving this for my children/grandchildren/when I get another dog/when I lose weight.”
Be wary of saving things to be used in the hazy future. Some things are absolutely worth keeping, but they’re exceptions. Do you really think your now-seven-year-old daughter will one day want to wear your pantsuit from 1990? Is that junky, dusty plastic toy going to appeal to your as-yet-unborn grandchildren? If you got a new dog, you’d probably want a fresh dog bed, and if you lost a bunch of weight, you’d probably decide to buy a new pair of jeans.

I’ve discovered that clearing clutter is one of the easiest and productive ways to give yourself a quick mood boost. If you can’t face a closet, tackle a drawer. If you can’t face a drawer, clean out the fridge. Try it.

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Now for a moment of blatant self-promotion…Father’s Day and Graduation Day are coming up. Might I suggest Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill as a gift? For a description, read here. Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is in paperback now, and if that doesn’t seem substantial enough for a gift, consider pairing it with Churchill’s fantastic, funny, beautifully written (and rare for Churchill, one volume) memoir, My Early Life.

Both books are perfect either for Churchill aficionados or for people who know nothing about WSC. If you don’t know anything about Churchill, run out and read SOMETHING, because he had an unimaginably interesting, exciting life.

Everyone who tries to do something creative knows the frustrating feelings of being blocked – or not having enough time to make progress – or working so sporadically that you can’t maintain your focus.

One solution is Creativity Boot Camp. You tackle your project in an intense, concentrated way, and push yourself far harder than usual.

I saw this when I wrote a novel in a month. That’s right, a novel in a month. A passing acquaintance told me about Chris Baty’s book, No Plot, No Problem! in which he lays out a program for writing 1,167 words a day, to produce a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, while keeping your day job. (50,000 words is about the length of The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye.) I immediately went to the bookstore, bought the book, and started three weeks later. It was a fantastic experience.

I saw the same recommendation in one of my new favorite books, Scott McCloud’s brilliant Making Comics. He recommends “The 24-Hour Comic”: “Draw an entire 24 page comic book in a single 24-hour period. No script. No preparation. Once the clock starts ticking, it doesn’t stop until you’re done. Great shock therapy for the creatively blocked. Over 1,000 artists have given it a try so far.”

If you’re intrigued, check out the websites National Novel Writing Month and 24 Hour Comics.

A friend of mine just started a blog and was having trouble meeting her goal of posting two or three times a week. My advice to her was, “Post every day.” Although she thought this was crazy, she recently told me that writing every day helped a lot.

I think the Boot Camp approach helps the creative process for several reasons.

 Because you’re racing, you don’t have time to listen to your internal editor criticize every move. You just put something on the page and keep moving, instead of sitting, paralyzed.

 Progress itself is reassuring and inspiring. Panic tends to set in when you find yourself getting nothing done, day after day.

 Because you’re so focused on your project, you begin to make deeper connections and to see more possibilities, instead of being constantly distracted by outside concerns.

 Because of the intensity, you can hop in and out of the project, without having to take time to acclimate yourself. I have a writer friend who’s married to a painter, and she says their test for working well is when they can sit down and work if they have a spare ten minutes.

 You lower your standards. If you’re producing a page a week, or one blog post a week, or one sketch a week, you expect it to be pretty darned good, and you fret and fuss about quality. Often, however, folks get their best work from grinding out the product.

 Practice, practice, practice. My novel was terrible, but I think the sheer doing of it helped my writing, just the way practicing scales helps a pianist. The more you practice, the better you’ll become.

 Because you have a voracious need for material, you become hyper-aware of everything happening around you — and ideas begin to flood your mind.

 You can use this approach even if you’re working on a creative project on the side, with all the pressing obligations of a job, family, etc. Instead of feeling perpetually frustrated that you don’t have any time for your project, you MAKE yourself make time — for a specific period.

 It’s fun! I don’t have the urge to climb mountains or run marathons, but I got the same thrill of exertion from writing a novel in a month.

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Now for a moment of blatant self-promotion…Father’s Day and Graduation Day are coming up. Might I suggest Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill as a gift? For a description, read here.

Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is in paperback now, and if that doesn’t seem substantial enough for a gift, consider pairing it with Churchill’s fantastic, funny, beautifully written and (rare for Churchill, one volume) memoir, My Early Life.

Both books are perfect either for Churchill aficionados or for people who know nothing about WSC. And if you don’t know anything about Churchill, run out and read SOMETHING, because he had an unimaginably interesting, exciting life.

One of my idiosyncrasies is a compulsion to take notes. I’m always copying down quotations, making odd lists, gathering examples in strange categories. I have a huge document in my computer: “Notes.”

It takes a lot of time and energy, and I used to discourage this impulse in myself. It seemed pointless and self-indulgent. But following my first commandment to “Be Gretchen,” I started to let myself take notes–and take pleasure in it.

One reason to allow myself to do it is that I enjoy it. For some reason, I like acting like I’m working on a permanent research project. Also, taking notes helps me read better, with more focus and retention.

The crazy thing is that once I said to myself, “Okay, Gretchen, take all the notes you want, it doesn’t matter if you need those notes for anything,” I realized for the first time how USEFUL these notes have been.

How had I convinced myself otherwise? My first book, Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide, grew out of my huge body of notes on these subjects. When I had a chance to write Profane Waste about my obsession with people’s destruction of their possessions, the only reason I could pack it full of fascinating examples was that I’d been taking notes for years.

So I’d been very foolish to tell myself that I was wasting my time. Note-taking just didn’t look “real” to me, so it didn’t register as valuable, despite the ample proof that it was.

Here’s an example of the kind of notes I take. One section of my notes is a reaction to an observation by physicist Niels Bohr: “There are trivial truths and great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”

I started playing with this idea.

–Out of sight, out of mind. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

–Birds of a feather flock together. Opposites attract.

–You’re never too old to learn. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

–“Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.” Lord Chesterfield
“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” G. K. Chesterton

Then I took some of my favorite “truths” to see what their opposite would hold.

–“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Tolstoy.

–“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:21.

–“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton.

–“There is no love, there are only proofs of love.” French saying? (That’s what I remember, but haven’t been able to track it down.)

–“Happy wife, happy life.”

And look, I’ve found another way to use my notes: for my blog. Zoikes, why is it so hard to “Be Gretchen”?

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Most people might not necessarily expected to be interested in a blog called Exceptional Dental Practice Management — Linda Zdanowicz’s blog about her thoughts on her life and work as a dental practice administrator. But I love reading Linda’s reflections on trying to be a better person and a better dental administrator. Her thoughtful examples are drawn from the world of the dentist’s office – which is familiar enough to be understandable, but exotic enough to be interesting. Reading her blog really gives me a boost to try harder to do better, myself.

“To do any thing, to dig a hole in the ground, to plant a cabbage, to hit a mark, to move a shuttle, to work a pattern, –in a word, to attempt to produce any effect, and to succeed, has something in it that gratifies the love of power, and carries off the restless activity of the mind of man. Indolence is a delightful but distressing state: we must be doing something to be happy.” –William Hazlitt

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My earth-shattering happiness formula incorporates Hazlitt’s observation as part of my final element: to be happy, we must think about FEELING GOOD, FEELING BAD, and FEELING RIGHT, in an ATMOSPHERE OF GROWTH.

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Secret Agent Josephine is a fun read, with kicky photos and graphics. I just noticed the great offer — if readers send in five facts about themselves, “Josephine” will pick one entry a month for a free web graphic. I’m off to try to figure out five things about myself…