LESS IS MORE

One of the best feelings in the world is the basic, natural rhythm of being on vacation. The uncomplicated elegance feels like a cosmic gift. Waking without an alarm, having a slow breakfast, lingering with a good book, exploring your surroundings, taking a nap, and getting dressed up to go somewhere exciting for dinner.

Released from your everyday responsibilities, life simplifies. You have time to think. You get to choose where to put your energy. Simplicity creates space to breathe, notice, absorb, and appreciate.

Back at home, under the watchful eye of the work calendar and the clock, this simplicity retreats into the shadows, something you long for but cannot coax out into the open. The more you strive to check off the last items on your list so that you might then relax and slow down, the more comes at you. Until eventually it seems that simplicity might only exist in that other dimension, where you can put life on hold for a while and just be.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”. – Ferris Bueller.

But there is an opportunity for simplicity in everyday life. It is not accessed by giving up things, but rather through focusing on what is truly important. A life stripped of the extraneous leaves only what is essential. When you have a bit more time and energy for those essentials, even the mundane can feel a bit lighter. The day feels less intimidating and burdensome. Focusing on fewer tasks allows more time for creativity, strategic thinking, and better execution. And accomplishing your must-do tasks more easily, with more energy to spare, leaves room in your day for the joy-filled things that add meaning to your life.

Pruning the Excess

One of the most common issues my clients face is how they can lead a less overwhelming life. Modern life moves quickly. We consume information at a staggering rate. The estimated daily volume stands at 74 GB, or more than 2x the levels in 2009. An educated person living 500 years ago would have been exposed to that same amount of information in an entire lifetime. For further context, 74 GB of information is equivalent to 16 high-definition movies. Of course, you don’t absorb everything you are exposed to. The human brain comes equipped with a fantastic filtering system, and you will only process about 1% of what you take in.

What creates the overwhelm is the exposure itself. In the US, we consume over 12 hours of media per day on average. We accomplish this seemingly impossible feat by multi-tasking, like surfing the internet while watching TV.

This reveals a powerful pathway to simplicity. Slowing down requires intention and persistent “pruning” of behaviors that don’t contribute their fair share to your wellbeing.

That doesn’t mean giving up social media. But it does mean using it in a more focused way. Streamlining your consumption of media requires honing the skill of awareness.

Examples of intentional use of media are checking in on your Instagram feed for a focused and finite amount of time as a form of entertainment or to catch up on the events of the day in the accounts you love to follow, watching your favorite TV show without “surfing” endlessly through programs that don’t truly interest you, or listening to podcasts that educate and entertain you about a personal area of passion and curiosity.

Rocks and Sand

Another common conversation I have with clients about simplicity revolves around lowering expectations of what can be accomplished in a day. Most tasks take a bit more time than you imagine.

For example, clients will often plan 45 minutes of exercise, but only block out an hour to do it. That seems logical from a distance. But in practice that exercise session has more moving parts.

You have to detach yourself from your current task before you can transition into getting ready to exercise. If you’re looking to complete that email you’ve begun writing, it can easily take an additional 5 – 10 minutes. Then it’s time to change clothes. And as you start to change, your body reminds you that a bathroom break might be a good idea. If you’re taking a Peloton class, don’t forget to grab a water bottle, get logged in, and choose the class you want. And afterward you’ll want to shower and change back to your work clothes. Just like that a 45-minute session becomes 90 minutes or longer.

And on it goes throughout the day. You plan a long list of “to do’s” and the day is gone before you blink, and long before the list is finished.

An effective strategy for planning less is doing the important and/or difficult things first. The reasoning is that by focusing on fewer, more meaningful or essential tasks you will actually have the time and energy to get them done.

This system is sometimes referred to as focusing on the big rocks versus the sand. The big rocks are what you most want to accomplish today. The sand is all of the other stuff that can get in the way by quietly taking away your “extra” time, leaving no room for the rocks. Put the big rocks in your container first. Then you can put the sand into the space that is left.  

Achieving Elegance

Simplicity offers the chance to achieve a kind of elegance in your life. This is something achieved not by mercilessly cutting tasks from your day, but through refinement of your choices.

Define and then cut away the excess, and you are left with the most essential and life giving. In that space, doing the everyday tasks like paying bills fits just a little better into your plans. And doing the mundane will be balanced by some other, truly life-giving task that you have intentionally given yourself the time to enjoy.

At day’s end, you will have a feeling of accomplishment by having done what was elemental for your mental and physical health.

Photo by Margarita Shtyfura on Unsplash