Do You Spend Too Much Time Looking for Things You Can't Find? Solution Revealed.

A resolution that I often follow, and that has been surprisingly useful, is “If I can’t find something, clean up.”

Over and over, I’ve found, if I can’t find something, I just start tidying. Almost inevitably, the lost thing turns up.

When I can't find an important email, I clean out my inbox, and I find what I need. If I file the papers that have stacked up on the edge of my desk, I find that form that I lost.

Maybe I engage more actively with my surroundings, maybe my vision is sharper…I’m not sure why.

Before I hit on this resolution, I often made my office or my apartment messier during a search. For some reason, my search felt more thorough if I was moving things out of their places. Not so!

Also, even if I can’t find what I’m looking for, my desk is somewhat tidier, so that’s a bonus.

Another solution: As I clean up, I focus my efforts in the area where I last saw the object or where the object is supposed to be kept.

I got this tip from my friend Samantha Ettus. Her book The Experts’ Guide to Doing Things Faster: 100 Ways to Make Life More Efficient includes a section by lost-objects expert Michael Solomon, who reports that most objects are right in the vicinity of where they’re supposed to be, or where you last remember seeing them. This sounds so obvious as to be laughable, but somehow it’s very helpful advice. Repeatedly I’ve found that after turning the apartment upside down looking for something, I eventually find it more or less where I originally thought it should be–but somehow I missed seeing it.

Finding lost objects is such a small aspect of life, but it can drive you crazy. One study estimated that the average American spends 55 minutes a day looking for things they can’t find.

And, as Samuel Johnson observed, “It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible.”

How about you? Have you found any good strategies for finding things that are misplaced?

For most people, to a surprising degree, outer order contributes to inner calm (more, really, than it should). If this sort of thing interests you, I write a lot about this subject in The Happiness Project and Happier at Home.

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Gretchen Rubin is the author of the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, The Happiness Project and Happier at Home. She writes about happiness and habit-formation (the subject of her next book, Before and After) at gretchenrubin.com. Follow her here by clicking the yellow FOLLOW button, on Twitter, @gretchenrubin, on Facebook, facebook.com/GretchenRubin.

Photo: Stewart Leiwakabessy, Flickr