There is something almost all of us underestimate and almost all of us are too lazy to do. Cleansing. Not the big clear-out once every five years when there is nowhere left to step, but regular, calm, almost invisible cleansing.
Cleansing the mind of extra thoughts and worries. Cleansing the heart of what is long gone but still lies on it. Cleansing the space around us of things that no longer serve us.
It seems like a small thing. In my view it is one of the most important habits a person, a team or a company can have.
One thing, many names
Different professions have long been talking about the same thing in different words.
A doctor would call it hygiene. Nobody considers brushing their teeth a heroic act. It is just daily. And nobody waits for a toothache to start.
A technical expert would call it maintenance, scheduled and preventive. An aircraft is not repaired after it falls. It is inspected on schedule, while everything still works.
An engineer who looks deeper would call it technical debt. Ward Cunningham introduced the image in 1992: "Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite... The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt." And further: entire engineering organizations can be brought to a stand-still under that debt load.
Eastern philosophy speaks of karma. Put simply: every action leaves a trace, and the traces accumulate until we do something about them (karma).
Hygiene, maintenance, technical debt, karma. The essence is the same: what is not cleaned regularly does not disappear. It accumulates, and sooner or later it sends an invoice with interest.
Cleansing the mind
The mind is like a desk. If something is put on it every day and nothing is taken away, in a month you cannot work on it. Unfinished tasks, promises to yourself, worries about what might happen, replaying old conversations. Each such thought takes a little attention. Together they take almost all of it.
What helps me:
- Get everything out of your head onto paper. Tasks, worries, ideas. What is written down stops spinning.
- Split it into "I can influence" and "I cannot". The first goes into the plan. The second I let go.
- An evening review of the day. More on that below, because the technique is two thousand years old.
- Silence. A walk without a phone does more for the mind than another hour of news.
Cleansing the heart
This is the hardest. Throwing things out of a closet is easier than throwing out an old grudge.
Resentment toward a former partner. Anger at someone who left the company long ago. An unspoken "you let me down back then". Five years have passed, the other person may not even remember. But in my heart it still lies there, taking up space.
The Buddhist Dhammapada describes it precisely: "'He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me.' Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred." And: "Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal."
The Apostle Paul gives very practical advice with a deadline: "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath". Do not carry it even until tomorrow. Jesus ties forgiveness to prayer: "And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses". And the psalmist asks: "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me".
For me, forgiveness does not mean that what happened was fine. It means I no longer carry it with me.
Cleansing the space
Now the simplest part and, oddly, the one we are laziest about.
Look around. How many things did you buy "just in case" and never use? How many have you outgrown: clothes, books, a hobby that once excited you? How much lies "for memory" in a box you have not opened in ten years?
A separate category is things from the past that could be valuable to someone else. A child's bicycle, tools, books, a laptop that still works. For me they take up space. For someone else they might be exactly what is missing. Giving such a thing away is cleansing and kindness at once.
Jesus says: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal". And Ecclesiastes reminds us there is a time for it: "A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away".
Practical examples
Home. The one-year rule: if a thing has not been needed once in a year, decide what to do with it. Keep it consciously, sell it, give it away or throw it out. And a "to give" shelf for everything that could serve someone else.
Business and the company. A company has its own closets. Products and services nobody buys but we keep supporting. Processes that lost their meaning long ago. Reports nobody reads. Meetings held because that is how it has always been. Rules written for a problem that no longer exists. Clients we serve at a loss and everyone knows it. Once a quarter I ask: which of these would we not start today if we were starting from scratch? Those are the candidates.
Relationships. This is delicate, but honest. Some connections hold only on habit. Meetings after which I always feel worse. Conversations where one side only takes. Cleansing here does not necessarily mean breaking up. Sometimes it is enough to change the distance. Sometimes it means finally saying what should have been said long ago.
Digital space.
- Email. Unsubscribe from newsletters I do not read. Archive everything older than a month that does not need a reply.
- Files. The desktop, the Downloads folder, ten versions of "final_final_v3". Once a month, in order.
- Subscriptions. Services that charge me monthly and I do not use. And social media follows that add only noise.
- Access. Former employees, contractors, old integrations with access to company data. This is no longer just tidiness, it is security.
- Phone. Apps I have not opened in six months.
Cleansing starts with yourself
One idea I see in almost every tradition: cleansing starts not with others or the world around, but with yourself. And it is regular, not one-off.
- Christianity. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye". Your own eye first.
- Buddhism. The Dhammapada opens with exactly this: our state is shaped by our thoughts, so the first thing to clean is our own mind.
- Shinto. Japan has misogi, ritual purification with water, and harae, purification rites. And ōsōji, the big cleaning at the end of the year, to meet the new year clean.
- Islam. Wudu, ablution before prayer. Not once a year, but before each prayer, several times a day.
- Judaism. The mikveh, ritual immersion. The weekly rhythm of Shabbat, and the jubilee year when you "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof": debts forgiven, land returned, a fresh start.
- Hinduism and yoga. In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (2.32), shaucha, purity of body, speech and mind, comes first among the five niyamas, the personal observances.
- The Stoics. Seneca describes his evening habit: when the lamp is taken away, "I pass the whole day in review before myself, and repeat all that I have said and done: I conceal nothing from myself, and omit nothing". And he tells himself: "I pardon you this time: see that you never do that anymore". In a letter to Lucilius he warns that you cannot escape yourself by changing place: "You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate".
- Confucianism. The Great Learning builds a chain: to order the state, order the family; to order the family, first cultivate yourself. Self-cultivation comes at the root of everything.
- Fasting. In the Christian tradition, Lent is a yearly season of cleansing, of consciously giving up what is extra.
Different centuries, different languages, different gods. The shared conclusion: cleansing is not an event but a rhythm. And it starts with me.
My observation
This is not a scientific claim, just what I see after years of working with people, teams and companies.
People who do not cleanse themselves and the space around them very often do not move any further. They may work a lot, plan a lot, talk a lot about change. But nothing new has anywhere to come in: the space is taken by old things, old grudges, old processes, old people.
And it is very important to get rid of parasites. Parasite thoughts that eat energy every day. Parasite feelings that live at our expense for years. Parasite people...
How to make it regular
The biggest mistake is waiting until it "piles up" and doing everything at once. That does not work with teeth, aircraft or code. Cleansing should be a rhythm, not a heroic effort.
The rhythm I suggest:
- Daily, 10 minutes in the evening. A review of the day, like Seneca's. What I did, what I said, whom I need to forgive, whom to ask forgiveness. Clear the desk, physical and on screen.
- Weekly. Inbox to zero or close. Task list reviewed. One day of rest, your own Sabbath.
- Monthly. Subscriptions, files, one closet or one shelf. One thing to give away.
- Quarterly. In the company: processes, reports, meetings, rules, access. What would we not start today?
- Yearly. Your own ōsōji. A big review of home, work, relationships, goals. What I carry into the new year and what I leave behind.
A ritual helps it stick. Same time, same place, same sequence. A ritual removes the question "should I do it today". You just do it, like brushing your teeth.
What this is not
Cleansing is not minimalism for the picture. I do not need an empty white room. I need everything I have to serve me.
It is not coldness toward people. Letting go of a grudge does not mean forgetting the lesson. Changing distance does not mean hating.
And it is not a one-off campaign. If I stop after a big clear-out, in a year I am back where I was.
Instead of a conclusion
We badly underestimate regular cleansing. It is boring, it gives no quick result, it is easy to postpone until tomorrow. But it is exactly what makes room for the new: new thoughts, new people, new work, a new version of yourself.
A few questions I would love your answers to:
- What thing, thought or grudge has been lying with you longer than it should? What stops you from letting it go?
- What in your company would you not start today if you were starting from scratch?
- What thing in your home could be valuable to someone else?
- Do you have your own rhythm of cleansing: daily, weekly, yearly? What works in it?
- Have you noticed that after cleansing, something new appears in your life?
Share in the comments. I am genuinely curious.