Of late, #CleanYourRoom has become a meme. The idea is that if you want to change the world, fulfill an ambition or just want to feel better in general, start by cleaning your room.

It is very simple advice, but when you follow it properly, it will do wonders for your mind. Cleaning up is an act of responsibility. When you have things cluttered up in your room, it is a sign that things are cluttered up in your head too and you just want to get done with the day and sleep. In most such cases, the person will keep repeating this for days, weeks or months till the clutter in his life adds up. Get up, get through the day and sleep. This is a vicious cycle.

Cleaning up the room and then maintaining its cleanliness is an act of psychological defiance in such situations.

But it goes far more than that. After keeping things clean, you also have to make it functional. You have to decide what stays in the room, and what goes out. For that, you have to make decisions. And these decisions might seem trivial, but when you actually make them, you will feel the difficulty. That is precisely why those decisions have not been made right now.

To decide what you want to keep in your room, you have to decide on their purpose and to give them a purpose you have to define your goals. To define your goals, you need to know yourself.

Do you see how this has become such a brilliant practice? Not only the room, you will do this for your notes too. Your to-do list, your hard disc, your books, your computer, your emails, and your subscriptions.

When you keep making these decisions, you will have gained a lot of psychological clarity. You might even have to talk to other people and resolve some issues if you want to throw things out or to decide the fate of a project that is hanging in mid-air.

So, go, clean your room! Make it functional!