Here you go, the five ways to simplify your life, add joy to your days and take some pain out of your human experience.
1. Health
Don’t eat bad things and try to walk 10,000 steps a day. Does it have to be any more complicated than this? Eat a lot of green veggies and avoid sugar.
I use a product called Vega One to make tasty protein shakes. I wake up and have one. I have another one at work, I go home and eat dinner and I avoid stuff that I know is bad. Sometimes I eat all kinds of bad stuff and I love it, and I’m never sorry because 90% of the time I eat simple, healthy good things.
2. Relationships
Only associate with people who make you better. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
Take what people say at face value, waste no time trying to decipher their ulterior motive. Keep it simple.
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
3. Productivity
Don’t procrastinate! Just start. I know easier said than done so let me teach you a hack that has cured me.
Think about every other time you have procrastinated over and tell me that this doesn’t sound familiar. You put it off, you finally started and then in the wee hours you had to admit two things to yourself:
First, you’re enjoying the work and it isn’t so bad and secondly, you wish you would have started earlier because now that you are into it, you see all the things you could have done that you no longer have time to do. Right?
Why did you have to wait until the 11th hour and then suddenly you could get going? Fear.
You stall and delay and sharpen pencils and water the flowers and avoid your work for as long as you can until finally, at long last, the consequences of not getting your work done outweigh the consequences of you doing the work.
Suddenly, there is no wiggle room. You have no choice, and so you start. The reason you didn’t start the moment you were assigned the task was your fear of success, not failure. What are the consequences for you if you start now and use all the time you have so that you’ll do an amazing job? You’ll be expected to do it again.
This is why you stalled in the first place. Your Lizard brain conned you into settling. You squandered your time which gave you the convenient excuse of not having enough time to do what you’re capable of, which is to make something great.
We stall until our fear of success is overcome by our fear of failure.
Solve this by moving the deadline further ahead. I use a timer, and I’ll sit down and get as much work done in 15 minutes as I can. I race against that 15 minute deadline as though I am in the 11th hour and then I take a 5 minute break, then repeat the process. Sounds too simple, I know, but it works.
When you first get the task, set your alarm and start. It’s amazing what you can blast out in 15 minutes. You’ll find you will create your best work with none of the usual, too familiar stress.
Procrastinating makes everything harder. Harder is the opposite of keeping it simple.
4. Work
Focus 80% of your time on top 20% of your activities that generate 80% of your results. Delegate everything else. As I have said already, you need to schedule time off, you need to schedule time to read.
5. Work/life integration
There is nothing worse than being on vacation and thinking about work and vice versa. As an entrepreneur, I find this state of mind the most frustrating, I literally hate it and I know that is a very strong word. It’s also accurate. I hate it.
You probably became a business owner because you didn’t like being told what to do, you wanted to be the boss. Most of us are unemployable.
Here is the irony: the more structure you have, the more free you are. Block out your year, your months weeks and days. When are you on vacation? When are all the holidays going to happen that disrupt business? When are you booking in some long weekends?
I get my year written out, then I focus on the quarters, months, weeks and days. It’s not that hard, and it is very liberating. It also helps you avoid over committing to projects etc.