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Time to clean up your space — inner/outer — a messy mind and a messy living space drain vitality from your life.

Life is messy, but sometimes we contribute unnecessarily to the general messiness. The more serious case of this is sloppiness in interpersonal relations, which can mean a lack of courtesy and respect to strangers or neglecting or undermining relationships with significant others.

Depending on your situation, this could also mean withdrawing energy from others who spill their messy inner contents out on us. It can mean dwelling on the mistreatment we have received from others and preoccupation with those who have abandoned relations with us. Such people are not our concern as psychic energy spent on them is wasted energy better applied elsewhere.

Messiness, or entropy, can easily overtake our practical lives, making our living spaces and vehicles messy. We can become messy about finances, health, time management, and tasks. Don't be hard on yourself about this — it happens to all of us; just get to work cleaning things up one task or life area at a time. Always have a list-making device (a smartphone for most of us) to record any action or to-do item. Try never to hold such items in memory; get them on a list. I use an app on my phone that allows me to categorize such items and prioritize them.

Given the number of things, major and minor, I need to work on; there will always be "open loops," things that need doing. There are only so many hours in the day, so if one of my spaces gets messy while I attend to higher-priority items, so be it. It's unfortunate, but likely inevitable, that some part of my life is subject to entropy while I attend to others. Try not to get demoralized about that; just keep working on your prioritized list. For example, I'm currently revising and "cleaning up" this oracle while my vehicle and some other living spaces are a little messy. Working on the oracle is a higher-value activity, so I must put these other open loops out of mind because this task deserves total attention. My to-do list is never finished — I add new items daily as I check other ones off.

This messy aspect of life is inevitable, so credit yourself for cleaning up any part of the great puzzle of your life rather than criticizing yourself about the inevitability of open loops.

Keep asking yourself: "What's the best use of my time right now?" The answer might be a specific item on your to-do list or a high-quality social opportunity, watching a movie, reading a book, or being out in nature without an agenda. So long as you are doing something of value, accept that you will never put your life in perfect order.

When the time is right to take care of particular open loops, clean up spaces and messy relationships, or work on high-value endeavors, seize the moment. There can be a wonderful release of energy when we clean up messy areas that drain energy and morale.