I’m probably more obsessed with containers than most people. I like having my things organized and ready to use, but I also like the constraints. If there’s something I like (for instance: board games), then I might be tempted to get… let’s just call it “way too many.”
But if I start with a container – a shelf, a box, a backpack, whatever – and say “this is my container for X,” then I can easily lock that in within my brain as the hard limit on how much of X I can get.
This works for time as well as space, more often than you realize. We start committing to things as if time wasn’t a hard limit, as if we could shove more things into the back of that hour the way some of us try to shove more things into the back of the closet.
You can’t, in either case.
The Opportunity Machine 