No one would argue that most of us do too much. Our days are filled with energy outputs that don’t add up to anything, or yield. With our lives filled with noise and endless, mechanical “doing” our minds get really fuzzy on what stays, what goes, what matters, what doesn’t. So how do we dial back and reduce the nonsense?
The piece below answers this question (for starters)…
“So let’s start with the basic idea. In order to thrive you need to do fewer things not more. We are forever writing down lists or thinking up things we wish we could be doing but don’t have the time to do. We are adding to our lives when we should be subtracting from them.
I have loads more time to do things I really want to do now than I used to because I stopped doing almost everything else. And I mean almost everything. Some of those things were hard to stop because I thought I had to do them. Even at your job you will find that if you just stop doing most things, nothing bad will happen. Your boss might even notice how much more effective you are!
I recommend (and use myself) a two step approach to cutting out the unnecessary:
- Stop doing something completely and see what happens. Life is an experiment and so try some elimination experiments; some big ones. It may be scary but the risky ones are the ones that provide the big payoff.
- If you absolutely cannot stop the activity completely, apply the 80/20 rule. If there ever was a time for the 80/20 rule it is this. The 80/20 rule basically says that you get about 80% of the effect for 20% of the effort. Therefore if you can live with 80% of the results, then 80% of the effort you have been expending is unnecessary.”
–Excerpted from “What is Truly Necessary?” by Stephen Mills, The Rat Race Trap
Now for the part that isn’t mentioned: Dialing it down and creating space in your life has a way of bringing up a lot of unprocessed feelings. To the degree that you can handle it, just naming and feeling what they are has a way of magically and exponentially lightening your load.
Don’t take my word for it, try it…
Try doing nothing.
Feel what that feels like, and watch what happens…
(p.s. Try doing nothing every day for a week and let us know how it went for you!)
