3 Simple Actions to Simplify Life
Today’s tips are not about how to better organize the garage or what you should do with your husband’s baseball card collection. I want to talk about you. Sure it is good to simplify your environment and the areas in which you live. Sometimes living in a messy environment adds to your psyche and can quickly discourage you. I want to talk today about simplifying life on the inside. Which is the best way to simplify life in general.
Everything begins on the inside. How you view your life and if you have real joy is coming form the inside. Your ability to get things done on the outside is directly linked to your ability to focus on the inside. Follow these steps and discover how to simplify your life.
3 Simple Actions to Simplify Life
1. Reduce the Intake - We are bombarded on a consistent basis with information overload. Don’t get me wrong, information is power, but too much information is robbing us from being great and doing great things. I have a bent for learning. In fact, when I took a Strength Finders test, Learning was at the top. I am not saying that you are better off to remain ignorant in life.
All I am saying is that how you simplify your life is to reduce the volume of information that you allowing yourself to take in. It is no different then eating too much. We walk around with brain indigestion and bloated thoughts. Find an area in your life where you taking in too much information and do something refreshing instead.
2. Reduce the Distractions - The ability for you to focus on a single task is absolutely critical if you are going to be successful. Do you find yourself constantly pulled in many directions? I know that I do. If you are going to simplify your life you have got to figure out how to reduce the distractions that surround you. Now, it is not always easy to do, but it can be done.
The first step is awareness. Most of do not realize how many times we are stopping a task to start another one. We are like the circus act of “spinning plates.” We operate everyday in emergency mode. Whichever plate is wobbling the worse gets our attention and then onto the next plate and the next plate. It never stops until our work day is done.
Grab a notepad. This particular technique has worked well for me. Basically, whenever someth9ing comes to my mind with the potential to distract me, then I write whatever is nagging me on the notepad and determine to forget about it until I am done with what I am doing.
Get a timer. This is the one tip that has absolutely catapulted my productivity and kept me from distractions. I bought a simple time management software called The Action Machine. It has a nice interface and it is super simple to use. Every morning I put in the task that I want to accomplish for the day and how long it will take me to do the particular task. Then, when you hit go, you are on a race with the clock. Being a super competitive person, I want to accomplish the task before the timer goes off. It helps me to focus and avoid distractions and just simply take action. You can find a demo video of the software here: Demo Video.
3. Reduce the Output - Now this is the one that many people fight against. We think that the more things we are involved with the more things we are getting done. However, a divided focus never stands. When your mind is cloudy with too many priorities at the same it is difficult to see any significant progress.
We mistakenly believe that the more we are multi-tasking the more we are getting done, but that just isn’t true. Jumping from one unfinished task to the next will actually drain you mentally. Instead choose one major task that if you put 100% focus on you will see unbelievable results. It just feels better to move one thing from 0% completion to 80% completion then it does to see a 5% increase on 10 different things.
Give yourself a personal challenge this week and choose to sharpen your focus and resist the urge to multi-task and you will see what I mean. These are the exact steps that I have used to simplify my life.
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Yeah too much multi-tasking is a killer – I now find that I get a lot more done if I just focus on a few of my websites at a time – looking at the whole list results in no action at all
Lis Sowerbutts´s last blog ..Is It Worth Trying to Make an Income Online?
Absolutely…also knowing the difference between incoming producing activities and low producing activities that we can waste time on is important as well.