10 Ways To Simplify Your Life - Now!

Welcome back!

These 10 items to simplify your life, aren’t meant to be done all at once.  It’s sort of a roadmap to an overall simplification process.  Start with one of these today, and tackled another one each day thereafter.  You’ll simplify your life, and you won’t get overwhelmed by doing it.  Good luck!

1. Make a short list. I’m a huge fan of lists in general, as most can tell - but simplifying begins with prioritizing.  Take out a list and write down 5 things that are the most important to you, IN ORDER.  After that write down 5 things you want to accomplish, and 5 things you want to change.  Work on it.  And if you need motivation, remember the 5 things that are most important to you… you are also doing it for them.

2. Drop 1 commitment. We all have time constraints that we could do without.  I want you to find one regularly occurring commitment, and drop it.  Whether it be the PTA, the library board, city council meetings… drop one of your commitments and see where it takes you.  You might enjoy the free time enough to start dropping other unneccessary commitments.  You’d be surprised.

3. Purge a drawer. Shelf, drawer, closet, counter top… doesn’t matter.  We all hide junk somewhere.  Find the place that accumulates the most stuff, and go through it.  Get rid of ALL that you don’t need.  If you are undecided… place it in a box, and if you don’t open that box for 3-4 months or more, throw it away next time you clean that space.

4. Set limits. Basically, you set limits for things you do regularly: email, RSS posts, tasks, feeds, items in your life, etc. And try to stick with the limits. Today, all you have to do is set limits for a few things in your life. Tomorrow, try to stick with them.

5. Simplify your to-do list. Nobody HAS to do 20 things in a day.  Nobody.  Go through your list, and mark off the things that aren’t absolutely essential to you or your family.  I guarantee you don’t HAVE TO do everything on it.

6. Free up time. The more things you can cross off of your to-do list, or your regular commitments, the more time you have for what’s important - Self and Family.  If you can’t find 30 minutes to walk the dog, you really need to find where you can start trimming time.

7. Clear your desk. You’d be amazed at the feeling of satisfaction you get from working at a clear desk.  It’s a liberating feeling to know that you don’t have clutter poking out of every drawer.  However, it’s a tough task, so let’s break it down into steps.

• Take everything off of your desk, put it on the floor
• Go through the pile from top to bottom
• Act immediately, don’t start a new pile for different items such as filing, bills, pens… put them away as you go and the job will get done quicker.
• If you can’t find a place for it, you don’t need it.

8. Clear out your email inbox. Psychologically, this has the same effect as a clean desk.  It’s truly liberating to have a clean inbox as well.  The key?  Just delete EVERYTHING.  I use Gmail, and they have an added feature of allowing you to store your trash in the trash folder.  I clean everything out, and once a week I empty the trash.  This allows me to go back and find things I may have deleted by accident.

9. Move slower. American’s as a whole are prone to rush, and you’ll find that it’s often unneccessary.  Enjoy your food by eating slower, get that cup of coffee in the morning, take the extra 10 minutes to read to your kids.  You’ll be happy you did.  Your tasks will be their when you are done.

10. Single-task. Forget multi-tasking.  It’s largely uneffective, and it can be extremely stressful.  Handle one task at a time, and do it well.  Once it’s done, then you can feel free to move on to the next task on your list.  Too often we decide to tackle 10 things at once.  The result?  We end up having to go back and redo some things, forgetting to do others, and getting incredibly stressed about it in the process.  Not worth it.  If you can’t do one thing well, why try to do 10?

This post was inspired by zenhabits