There’s a small toy box on my desk.
It’s wooden, chipped at the corners, painted the kind of yellow that’s either cheerful or desperate…depending on the day.
Inside, there’s nothing remarkable. A keychain. A ticket stub. A tiny ceramic cat missing an ear. Each one, a moment I once decided was worth keeping.
We all have one, don’t we?
Not always made of wood. Sometimes it’s digital. Sometimes emotional. A quiet archive of proof that we were there, that we did the thing, that we mattered.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the way we collect our lives.
How every email, every file, every perfectly aligned cell in Excel is just another way of saying, Look, I tried.
It’s noble, in a way.
We want to be reliable. Diligent. Documented. We build our certainty the way kids build castles, one brick of effort at a time.
But then comes the part we don’t talk about: When the castle starts closing in.
When the proof becomes pressure. When every little record feels heavier than the joy it was meant to preserve.
That’s when life starts feeling less like a collection and more like an audit.
You start to realise how much of your day is spent proving instead of living.
Proving you worked enough.
Proving you’re informed enough.
Proving you’re okay.
And somewhere in the middle of it, the question shifts from “What am I achieving?” to “Why do I feel so tired all the time?”
The truth is, order isn’t peace.
Clarity isn’t meaning.
And perfection? That seductive little checkbox has never been a synonym for joy.
Quality of life isn’t found in the files we save; it’s in what we dare to delete.
It’s the courage to close the laptop while it’s still light outside.
To stop organising and start living the thing you’re documenting.
To know when “enough” is actually… enough.
Because life, like audit, isn’t about showing evidence.
It’s about understanding why the evidence matters.
So I opened my toy box this week.
Took out the ceramic cat, the ticket stub, the keychain.
And I didn’t throw them away. I just… looked at them.
And for the first time, I noticed how light they actually were when I stopped needing them to prove anything.
Maybe that’s the lesson:
We’re not here to catalogue our lives.
We’re here to feel them.
To live a version of “documented” that isn’t stored in folders, but in quiet, unmeasurable moments of being present.
The toys will gather dust either way.
But we don’t have to.
Until next time,
Christiaan
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We’ll be showing how the Toolbar helps you clear the clutter, find what matters, and make space for the good stuff again in your work and your week.
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