Simple

Simple is beautiful

Keeping my life simple helps me to calm down my mind and focus on my goals. Some people like to be busy and overwhelmed, they think they exist. Unlike them I truly believe that simplifying my life allows me to see well and make better decision.

Here is how I avoid complexity and enjoy my life.

Why we usually love complexity

Complexity is challenging. So we are inclined to complicate everything in order to make our life exciting. However complexity doesn’t bring happiness, it fights boredom but instead of making us fulfilled complexity makes us overwhelmed.

In companies, managers love complexity because it gives us power and control about their job and coworkers. High salaries have to be justified. Nevertheless they will be more efficient and effective making processes and structure easier to understand.

Before to revolutionizing professional environment I’m gonna tackle personal issues.

Simplify my mind

Thinking about how my stress is related to the 80/20 principle I identified :

• 80% of my stress comes from 20% of my life
• 80% of my stress comes from 20% of my relationship
• 80% of my customers requests came from 20% of my customers.

I first think “How can I get rid of this 20% that pollute my life?” Some are easy to avoid but it’s hard to disconnect from every problem (dealing with your rebellious teenager son for instance). So I decided to focus on the few things I can control and try to follow some principles.

Zen my mind

Zen attitude is trendy nowadays but I don’t speak about meditation, yoga or relaxation. I just talk about stopping to occupy my mind with low importance stuff.

First step I try to keep everything out of my mind. I have a powerful memory but trying to remember everything tire me out (and sometimes I forget things). So I write down everything….todo tasks, ideas, piece of information. I eventually setup a trustworthy system that allows me to keep a trace of everything that cross my mind. It’s a rule advised by David Allen in his Getting This Done book, put everything in you inbox in order to free you mind.

However you need to trust your inbox system (if not it’s useless since you will still be worried about forgetting anything). My system is a mix between software Evernote and my phone when I’m away from my computer. (I should use more often the Jott.com’s voice-to-text services linked with Evernote). You should find the system that fit your way of life and needs. It could be a notebook you carry all the time or your iPhone.

Disconnect with what you don’t want

Don’t hate, ignore

Sometimes the easiest solution is to run away from the source of the problem. All your issues at work come from one coworker, try to no longer work with him. One of your “friends” brings drama, stop hanging out with him (even though I try to talk before to find a solution.) …

I cannot always stir clear of every problems but some of them don’t worth energy and time I could spend to solve them.

Accept and deal with

If there’s no solution, there’s no problem.

This is a quote from The Shadoks, a famous old cartoon in France. I don’t know if my interpretation is correct but this is what I think:

Problems exist because you try to solve them. If you stop trying to solve them it’s no longer problems. You can’t apply this every time but I used to look for solution when there were no issue. I learned how to accept and deal with some of my worries. I cannot control everything, I just focus on what I have the power to change.

Simplify my environment

Everything I talked about in previous paragraphs are also applicable with objects. I never liked to get tons of bibelots that pissed me off every time I need to sweep them up. I try to keep my closet simple and useful and don’t keep clothes or stuff I don’t use anymore (move out every six months helped me to get rid of my old stuff). I’m not a huge fan of gigantic house where you spend most of your time cleaning it.

I’m a kind of practical guy who enjoy simple environment. It makes my mind peaceful and give me more time to activity that matter. Less things to think about, less things to clean or repair, just the essential.

And you? How simple do you like your life?

photo credit: moogs

© 2008 Unbalanced man.