The Joy of Less, a Minimalist Living Guide (28 page)

When we have a lot of extra stuff around, sometimes we just stop “seeing” it; we turn a blind eye to the clutter, and resign ourselves to the fact that we just “don’t have enough space.” By the same token, we often fail to recognize the junk in our schedules. We sigh, throw up our hands, and complain that we just “don’t have enough time.” You know what that means, don’t you? Our schedules—just like our shelves, drawers, and closets—can benefit from a good decluttering!

Start Over by examining how you spend your day. “Dump out” the contents of your schedule: put every activity and commitment on paper, so you can see it all laid out in front of you. List everything: going to work, getting your nails done, shopping for groceries, going for coffee, doing the laundry, reading the newspaper, cooking dinner, watching television, browsing websites, driving your daughter to ballet class, playing poker with your buddies, and anything else that occupies your hours. Sometimes we move through our days on autopilot, jumping from one activity to the next without thinking; this exercise makes us “see” exactly where our time goes.

Now, imagine your ideal day. Which activities would you include, and which would you omit? Of course, you’ll probably still need to go to work and cook dinner; but would you visit the park instead of the coffee shop, or do yoga instead of surfing the Internet? How closely does your ideal schedule match your real one?

With that in mind, go through your real schedule, and start scratching out the nonessentials. In other words, decide which activities you’d like to Trash. Would the world stop spinning if you didn’t watch the evening news? Would your life lose meaning if you skipped the salon? Would your social life collapse if you missed the weekly poker game? I’m not suggesting that you give up activities you love; but rather that you examine each one, and determine its importance. You may find you’re perfectly happy to ditch a few in exchange for some extra free time. Cross out those two hours of television each night, and you’ll gain over half a day each week. That’s quite a windfall!

As you consider each activity, state your Reason for doing it. Perhaps you drive your kids to school for the conversation time, or lunch with your sister to build your relationship. Perhaps you volunteer at the local library to give back to your community. Obviously, those items belong in your schedule. On the other hand, perhaps you get manicures because your friends do, watch television to keep up with water cooler chat, or read certain magazines out of habit. Here’s your opportunity to do some purging! When we ask ourselves
why
we do certain activities, we may be surprised at the answers; we probably never stopped to think about it before. Such mindfulness helps us decide what to “put back” into our schedules, and what to leave out.

Sometimes we can feel positively overwhelmed by our to-do list. We know we have a million things on it; so we jump from task to task without rhyme or reason, tackling each new chore as it pops into our head. However, while we’re trying to do one thing, we’re worrying that we’re not doing another—and may even start to panic that we won’t get everything done. We’ve already said “no” to anything extra, and eliminated the excess; so what’s a minimalist to do?

The problem isn’t necessarily the size of the list, but the fact that we don’t know where to start. That’s the beauty of prioritizing—it gives us an action plan. Instead of drifting aimlessly (or running frantically) between tasks, we line them up and knock them out, one by one. When we set priorities, we take control of our time. We know what needs to be done, and in what order. We can then focus our energies on wiping out our tasks, rather than worrying about them.

The most straightforward way to set priorities is by ranking them. List everything you need to do, and order them from most urgent to least. For example, answering time-sensitive emails, or completing a project due in the next few hours, will rank much higher than working on your development plan or picking up your dry cleaning. Furthermore, highlight those tasks that
must
be done today. That’ll make it crystal clear what you have to complete, and prevent something crucial from falling through the cracks. Then simply go down the list like a wrecking ball, toppling those to-do’s until there’s none left standing!

Of course, the brute force method may not appeal to all personalities; some people prefer to work in more organic, non-linear ways. That’s fine; right-brainers can (and should) set priorities too. Instead of ranking to-do’s in single file, group them according to Most Urgent, Next Urgent, and Least Urgent. Then, within each group, mark each task as a Quick & Easy (Q&E) or a Slow & Hard (S&H). How you approach them next depends on your personality, schedule, and what mood you’re in when you wake up in the morning.

One strategy is to tackle the S&H’s first. That way, you’ll eliminate the most difficult and time-consuming tasks as soon as possible—rather than having them hang over your head all day. This method discourages procrastination by addressing the most dreaded jobs immediately, and leaving the lighter stuff for later on. It also rewards you with a tremendous sense of accomplishment, which can provide a real boost to your energy and efficiency. Best of all: your day will get easier as it goes along. The one drawback is the possibility of getting hung up on the S&H’s—and thereby risking the chance that your Q&E’s won’t get done.

The opposite approach is to breeze through the Q&E’s first, before diving into the hard stuff. This is my personal method of choice. I love to blast through all those little things on my to-do list, before I settle in to tackle the big ones. My mind is clearer when there are fewer tasks on the horizon (even if the remaining ones are daunting). Getting the minutiae out of the way improves my concentration, and warms me up for the challenge. Of course, this strategy is not without its disadvantages either; if my Q&E’s aren’t as quick and easy as I expect, or if something additional comes up during the day, I might have too little time left for my S&H’s.

Therefore, some of you may feel more comfortable with a mixed approach. Complete an S&H, followed by a few Q&E’s, followed by another S&H, and so on. It doesn’t matter what plan you follow—as long as you have a plan. At the very least, proceed from your Most Urgents, to your Next Urgents, to your Least Urgents; how you order the tasks within each group is entirely up to you. Arrange them by degree of difficulty, time consumption, or simply your mood—whatever system motivates you best. By setting priorities, you can tackle your to-do list in a determined and straightforward manner; and minimize the time it takes to do so!

When we streamlined our rooms, we used Modules to organize our stuff; by keeping like items together, we found we could purge, store, and access them with far greater ease. We can apply a similar strategy to our schedules: by consolidating like tasks together, we can manage our time, and our to-do lists, much more efficiently.

Consider the following scenario. You visit the grocery store in the morning to buy your food for the week. After lunch, you realize you forgot about your dry cleaning, and hop back in the car to get it. Later that afternoon, you remember you have to make a bank deposit, so you’re out the door again. That evening, your family decides they want to watch a movie, so you dash out to pick up a rental. By running your errands as you think of them, you not only waste gas—you waste time! Alternatively, imagine that before you stepped out of the house, you made a to-do list. After leaving the grocery store, you hit the dry cleaners, stopped off at the bank, and swung by the video store (since you know your family likes to watch movies on Saturday nights). By consolidating your errands, you completed them in a fraction of the time, and still had the rest of the day ahead of you.

We can apply the same principle to all of our tasks: whether it’s preparing food, doing household chores, making phone calls, answering emails, completing work assignments, or scheduling appointments. Whenever we tackle a new activity, there’s a certain amount of setup (and sometimes cleanup) involved. It may be as simple as launching an email program, or it may be somewhat more laborious—like dragging out cleaning supplies, or gathering the materials for a particular project. We may also require some mental warm-up, to put us in the right frame of mind for the particular task. That’s why jumping randomly from chore to chore is so inefficient; we must continually adjust to the new job at hand, and may end up repeating some prep work.

By grouping similar activities, and tackling them at once, we minimize the time needed for setup, cleanup, and warm-up. Instead of doing a little bit of ironing each night, do it all in one session; instead of working on a project in dribs and drabs, knock it out in as few sittings as possible; instead of returning phone calls sporadically throughout the day, schedule a block of time to make them all at once. Once you get in the groove of doing a particular activity, you work more efficiently and expertly; if you stop, it can take some time to attain that point again.

This strategy is particularly effective for dealing with email. Many of us keep our email programs open all day, so we can see our messages arrive in real time. Sometimes, we’ll even dash off immediate replies to get them out of the way. Although we feel like we’re staying on top of things, we’re letting it interrupt whatever else we’re working on. If an email pops up while I’m writing this paragraph, I can’t help but look at it; and even if I don’t answer it right away, it’s already broken my train of thought and slowed me down. It’ll take a little extra time to regain my concentration, and get back up to speed. Therefore, I find it significantly more efficient to check and answer emails during defined periods: like at the beginning and end of my workday. By consolidating this task into one block, I avoid a million little interruptions during the day, and am much more productive.

As you peruse your to-do list, brainstorm creative ways to consolidate its contents. For instance, try batch cooking—a method by which you make several meals at once (for anywhere from two to thirty days) and freeze them. Set aside one weekend per month for household maintenance—and tackle all those niggly little repair jobs in one no-holds-barred session. Do all your vacuuming, mopping, and dusting in one shot instead of cleaning room by room. Limit your errand running to one or two days per week, and knock out all your necessary trips with the minimum amount of driving. It takes a little more planning, but can free up a significant amount of time.

I once saw an interview with a prolific author who had turned out hundreds of books over the course of his career—and could write a single one in a matter of days. His secret? He had developed a computerized template for outlining his plot, and simply changed the premise, locations, characters, and other details for each new story. In essence, he had created an assembly line for books, just as Henry Ford had done for his Model T’s. Although far from the creative ideal, his method brought him great success in the genre of mass-market fiction. Such is the power of standardization!

Although I don’t condone such a formulaic approach to writing, I think it’s perfect for the repetitive tasks we face on a daily basis. After all, there’s no sense in reinventing the wheel for every item on our to-do lists. By making templates, we can complete them more quickly, more efficiently, and with a minimum amount of effort—leaving us time and energy to devote to more important activities.

A common example of such standardization is document templates. If you often need to produce paperwork with a specific format—such as an invoice, memo, or letter—save a blank version of it as a template. Then, you can dispense with all the setup each time you start a new one. Simply open the template, save it as your new file, and get right to work. This method also saves time creating webpages, making spreadsheets, and writing reports—just about any task that involves putting new data into a specific framework. It’s like having the foundation already in place when you begin to build a house.

Standardization can also be useful when answering emails. If you find you’re often fielding similar questions, make a database of common answers—then simply cut and paste the appropriate block of text when replying to them. The technique is convenient for a variety of communication: from requesting information, to providing updates on projects, to sending out confirmations or notifications to customers or clients. Just use the “standard language” for the task at hand, changing the details to fit the particular situation. You may even find it handy in your personal life—like when you’re answering ten different emails asking about your kids, or what you did on your recent vacation.

Even household tasks can be streamlined with this strategy. Take cooking, for instance. Develop a standard repertoire of dishes you can make with your eyes closed: like a pasta dish, a chicken dish, a tofu dish, and a fish dish. Then add a twist—such as different sauces and spices—for variety. I love to make a simple meal of steamed tofu and vegetables, and vary the sauce—curry, peanut, black bean, sweet and sour, or ginger and garlic—according to my particular mood or craving. The possibilities are endless, and the process quite efficient: instead of learning an entire recipe from scratch, you simply cook your standard dish and vary the topping. You can also standardize your cleaning, laundry, and grooming routines—say, by arranging tasks in a certain order—to complete them with minimum fuss and maximum efficiency.

Between work, family, and household responsibilities, most of us have a full plate. Even after we’ve eliminated the clutter from our to-do lists, we sometimes still don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done. In that case, we have to recognize that we can’t do it all ourselves, and learn to delegate tasks to others.