5 Ways to Simplify Your Life
What does the term ‘the simple life’ mean to you? If you are in need of a little more life organisation, then the simple life may be the goal you’re aiming towards. If your goals rest in decluttering and tidying your home, then simple may mean an orderly environment, a structured routine, a less chaotic household and more a mindful approach to life.
Let’s just take a moment to check in with your wellbeing. It’s been a tough 15 months since the pandemic took hold of our lives in a way we could have never imagined. How are you actually feeling? Close your eyes, breathe in and out fully and let your mind rest on how your body feels in this very moment. Are you tense? Are you feeling stress somewhere in the body? Where exactly? On the other hand, are you feeling confident, empowered and energised with the promise of things opening up again and a sense of normality returning to your life?
Part of my role as a KonMari Consultant and Professional Organiser is to provide my clients with tools so they can live more simply. Whatever their definition is of ‘a simple life’, I think we can all agree that getting organised puts us back in the driving seat of our lives, creating new awareness and clarity. Today I would like to share with you 5 ways you can simplify your life. These suggestions are best implemented one at a time. Choose one to work on and make sure you give yourself enough time to fully embrace and incorporate the suggestion into your lifestyle (ideally 3+ weeks), before trying to implement the next. Successful habit change takes time and should not be rushed.
1. Reduce the number of choices you make on a daily basis: Various sources (including Sahakian & Labuzetta, 2013) state that we make around 35,000 decisions every day, from how and where we move our bodies, what we eat (in fact research from Cornell University has found that we make 227 decisions each day on just food alone!), deciding on future plans and whether to say yes or no to something. Reduce the amount of decisions you need to make every day. You can achieve this by limiting your outfit or lunch choices (it certainly worked for Steve Jobs on the outfit front!) and starting to create non-negotiable elements to your routine, such as always doing exercise or meditation at the same time and waking up at a set time every day.
Key Point: Reducing the number of choices you make every day provides more headspace, leading to less stress and a better ability to concentrate on the things that matter (like being productive in work and being present).
2. Split up your daily tasks using the Pomodoro Technique: This is an effective time management tool (and a method for staying focused and mentally alert) whereby you set your timer and work in 25 minute intervals with a short 3-5 break inbetween. After 4 ‘pomodoros’, you then take a longer break of 10-30 minutes. What I love about the Pomodoro Technique is that it’s adaptable: instead of the above timeframe, you could complete 45 minutes work followed by a 15 minute break for each pomodoro. Feel free to experiment with the time intervals, and choose the combination that suits you best. Using a time management tool can ensure you complete your tasks in a way that is less strenuous, and through increasing your productivity you free up more time for activities that allow you to rest, restore and rejuvenate.
Top Tip: Before you go to bed, write down the thing you’re dreading most about the next day, then do it as soon as you wake up. Some people refer to this as ‘eating the frog’. Getting your most stressful and/or time-consuming task out of the way first thing is a good tactic for reducing stress.
3. Make a weekly plan: This can be done if you live on your own or have a family. Often, for the latter, the burden to create a weekly plan falls on one person but it’s important make sure your family also join in. Every Sunday, sit down and go through your plan for the week ahead to see what everyone has coming up. This provides an opportunity to trouble shoot any issues that might arise (for example, your husband my need to go on the school run as you have an important appointment on Tuesday afternoon). Planning your week as a family allows everyone to work together to ensure life runs smoothly. As a reminder, try using a rota for the week that can be fixed to a wall or well-assessed location in the home (we put ours on our fridge, meaning everyone sees it easily and can refer back to it when needed).
Technical Tip: If your children are older, you could also try the Family wall app, which has worked well for some of my clients in the past.
4. Ease mealtime stress: While we’re on the subject of planning your week, meal planning in advance holds the key to easier evenings. We complete our meal plan each week following our Riverford order on a Friday morning. This is the time where we look at recipes, plan what we’re eating and jot down ingredients for any additional shopping we may need to complete. Our meal plan also acts as visual evidence that we’re getting a good nutritional balance. We’re extremely passionate about this at the moment as we have recently turned Vegetarian. We use a magnetic fridge planner (containing all seven days of the week) and we stick the ‘menu’ on our fridge. As the children grow older, it’s lovely to see them getting involved in the menu planning too. What we love about our meal plan is that it acts as a guide, taking away our indecisiveness and time spend every day trying to come up with three meals. We are also free to swap meals around if needed as the week goes on, when things may crop up unexpectedly.
5. Disconnect to reconnect with yourself: There are many ways you can disconnect from the seemingly endless choices and tasks that make up your day. Disconnecting properly provides a worthwhile opportunity to un-stimulate your brain.
How do we disconnect properly? By taking a break. But what does ‘taking a break’ mean to you? Most people take out their phone during their ‘break’ to scroll Instagram, watch YouTube or read the latest news updates, but this is more mental stimuli. You’re engaging your brain, instead of recharging it. The three best ‘break’ tasks are:
going for a walk
meditating
taking a nap.
It’s beneficial to allow your brain to be bored and give it some breathing room, especially when you’ve been focusing so intensely already during the day. Imagine running a marathon for one hour and then stopping for a break. Would you:
a). relax or
b). do 10 minutes of burpees?
In the same way we need to let our bodies rest, we need to let our brains have a rest too. Find an activity that suits you and helps you to disconnect.
After reading the above suggestions, which one are you going to try to implement into you week in an effort to simplify your life?