"The Power of Less" by Leo Babauta

• Simplicity boils down to two steps:
• Identify the essential
• Eliminate the rest.
• The Power of Less Principles:
• Set limitations.
• Choose the essential.
• Simplify.
• Focus.
• Create habits.
• Start small.
• There is only so much we can do or consume.
• Doing a huge number of things doesn't mean you're getting anything meaningful done.
• By setting limitations, we must choose the essential. So in everything you do, learn to set limitations.
• By choosing the essential, we create great impact with minimal resources. Always choose the essential to maximize your time and energy.
• Take a look at everything on your list and ask yourself the following questions about each one: Will this have an impact that will last beyond this week or this month? How will it change my job, my career, my life? How will this further a long-term goal of mine? How important is that goal?
• If you start by identifying the things you really want to accomplish in the next year, you can plan your tasks so that you are doing things each day to further those goals along. Choose a task from your list that will move you closer to those goals. This will ensure that you are completing tasks with the most impact, because they relate directly to a long-term goal.
• If there's any area of your life that is overwhelming you, and that you'd like to simplify, apply limitations.
• Learn to focus yourself with limits, and you'll increase your strength.
• How to set limits:
• Analyze your current usage levels and pick a lower limit based on what you think would be ideal.
• Test it out for about a week, and then analyze whether that's working for you.
• If it doesn't work, adjust to a new level you think might work better, and test that out for about a week.
• Continue to adjust until you find the right level and until you make it a habit.
• Choosing the essential is the key to simplifying--you have to choose the essential before you simplify, or you're just cutting things out without ensuring that you're keeping the important things.
• Once you know what's essential, you can reduce your projects, your tasks, your stream of incoming information, your commitments, your clutter. You just have to eliminate everything that's not essential.
• You must ask yourself in everything you do, what is essential?
• What are your values? Once you've identified these values, everything you do and choose should follow from those.
• What are your goals? If you know what you're trying to achieve, you can determine if an action or item will help you achieve it.
• What do you love?
• What is important to you?
• What has the biggest impact?
• What has the most long-term impact?
• There's a difference between the size of an impact and its long-term value.
• Needs vs. wants. This is a good criteria to use when you're trying to decide whether to spend on certain items: Which items do you actually need, and which ones are just things you want?
• Eliminate the nonessential.
• Eliminate as many non essential projects and tasks as possible.
• Simplifying isn't meant to leave your life empty--it's meant to leave space in your life for what you really want to do. Know what those things are before you start simplifying.
• Your focus is your most important tool.
• Focus on less to become more effective.
• Focus on one goal in order to achieve it.
• Focus on the task at hand instead of multitasking, and you'll be more productive.
• Focus is your most important tool in becoming more effective.
• Focus is the most important factor in determining whether you'll achieve a goal or stick to creating a new habit.
• Learn to focus on the positive.
• Multitasking is less efficient, due to the need to switch gears for each new task and then switch back again.
• First thing in the morning, work on your Most Important Task. Don't do anything else until this is done.
• When you are working on a task in a time block, turn off all other distractions.
• The only way to learn to focus on the present is to practice.
• The best way to think about being present is this: Do just one thing at a time.
• Don't do multiple things at once--just do what you're doing now, and nothing else.
• Anything can be your meditation. Make anything you do become practice.
• Creating new habits is the secret to making lasting changes that will actually improve your life.
• Create new habits to make long-lasting improvements.
• Focus on one habit at a time, one month at a time, so that you'll be able to focus all your energy on creating that one habit.
• Do only one habit at a time.
• Start new habits in small increments to ensure success.
• If the change you're making is hard to stick to, you are making it more likely that you'll fail.
• Choose something so small that success is almost guaranteed.
• Make gradual changes, in a series of small steps over time, and you're more likely to stick to those changes than if you attempt a big change all at once.
• Limit yourself to fewer goals, and you'll achieve more.
• The One Goal System is simple--you focus on one goal at a time to increase your effectiveness with that goal.
• The real focus of any project should be in getting it done. Completion. Each day, put your focus on moving your project forward to completion.
• You can't actually do projects. You can only do tasks. One of the first steps in any project, after writing out your desired outcome, is to list the tasks required to get the project to the desired outcome.
• When you start your day, choose three Most Important Tasks to complete that day. Whatever else you complete, if you complete these three MITs, you will have had a good day.
• You're not doing anything until you're doing tasks.
• On a practical level, simplifying your tasks can be the most important step you take.
• Do your MITs first thing in the morning, either at home or when you first get to work. If you put them off till later, you will get busy and run out of time to do them.
• The keys to to making MITs work for you:
• Set them first thing in the morning.
• Limit yourself to three.
• Ensure that one MIT is goal-related, or related to one of your top three projects.
• Focus on accomplishing these tasks above all others.
• Do your MITs early in the day, before you do anything else.
• When you do one of your MITs, be sure to single-task--focus on that task only.
• Limiting our tasks doesn't get anything done if those tasks are too big.
• Break things down into small tasks that can be accomplished in an hour or less--even better would be twenty to thirty minutes, or even ten to fifteen minutes.
• Beat the procrastination hurdle by making the task smaller.
• Anytime you find yourself procrastinating on an important task, see if you can break it into something smaller. Then just get started.
• Small tasks are always better than large ones.
• Flow is a state of mind that occurs when you lose yourself in a task, and the world around you disappears.
• The way to get into flow:
• Choose a task you're passionate about.
• Choose a task that's challenging.
• Eliminate distractions.
• Immerse yourself in the task.
• Instead of switching tasks, just make a note of other tasks or ideas as they come up, to consider for later.
• Focus always on simplifying, reducing, eliminating.
• Aside from your three Most Important Tasks, there are always smaller tasks you need to complete each day. The trick is 1) not to let these smaller tasks take priority over your Most Important Tasks, and 2) to do them in batches as much as possible to save time.
• Save the mornings for your important tasks, get them out of the way, then focus on knocking out your batch tasks as quickly as possible.
• If possible, avoid meetings altogether--they're most often a waste of time.
• If somethings not giving you value, consider eliminating it from your life.
• A common productivity tip is not to check email first thing in the morning, and it's good advice.
• Turn off alerts and only check email at predetermined times.
• To simplify anything, you must first become more aware of it. After awareness comes consciousness.
• I suggest that you set blocks of your day for doing uninterrupted work (without the Internet), for doing communication like e-mail or instant messaging, for doing research and other work-related Internet activities, and for doing fun stuff or just browsing.
• One of the best things I've ever done to increase my productivity is to disconnect from the Internet when I want to get focused, uninterrupted, serious work done.
• Every urge is like a wave--it builds up, then it goes away. Every urge will pass if you just wait a few minutes.
• The key to having a usable filing system is to keep it simple.
• Every time you file something, ask yourself if you really need a hard copy version of it.
• Each time someone makes a request of you and you agree to that request, you're making a commitment that will take up a part of your life.
• Eliminating the nonessential commitments is crucial, as it will free up a lot of your time, leave you with less stress, and allow you to focus on the essential.
• Learn to say "No".
• Do less during your days.
• Leave space between tasks or appointments.
• Eliminate as much as possible from your to-do list.
• Whatever you're doing slow down. Try to enjoy whatever you're doing.
• Single-task. Do one thing at a time, and do it well.
• Eliminate stress. Find the stressors in your life, and find ways to eliminate them.
• Create time for solitude.
• Do nothing. Sometimes, it's good to forget about doing things, and do nothing.
• Practice being present. Simply focus on what you're doing now, not on the past or future.
• I highly recommend that you think about your mornings and evenings, as they are two key times in your day, and they can do so much to change your life.
• A clean desk allows you to focus on the task at hand, which is the key to being effective in whatever you're trying to do.
• Always celebrate your accomplishments, no matter how small.
• Clutter is a form of visual distraction, and everything in our vision pulls at our attention.
• Reducing your desires will go a long way to reducing your need to fight clutter.
• Clutter didn't create itself. It's there because you put it there.
• Learn to move at a slower pace and you will be happier, and just as importantly, you will become more effective and productive.
• Our attention is one of our most important assets. What we focus our attention on becomes our reality.
• After you become more aware of your attention, learn to stop yourself when you begin to switch your attention.
• Stop yourself when your attention wanders.
• Choose work you love.
• A task should be challenging enough to require your full concentration.
• Clear away distractions, and focus.
• Eat slowly.
• The recipe for getting lean and fit and healthy is simple, of course, and everyone knows it: Eat healthily and exercise regularly.
• Any [fitness] plan that gets you dramatic results within a short time is a bad plan, because it is too drastic, and no one can stick with a drastic plan for very long.
• Real health and fitness come over a period of months and years. Lasting change is made gradually, in small increments, in a way that you can sustain for life.
• Start your workout plan as easy as possible until you've learned to stick to it.
• Schedule your workout time..
• When forming a habit, it's very important that you be consistent.
• Failure is not as important as starting again after you fail, and sticking with it for the long term.
• Log your eating and exercise daily.
• One of the biggest challenges in meeting any goal, whether it be related to productivity, waking early, changing a habit, exercising, or just becoming happier, is finding the motivation to stick with it.
• If you can stick with a goal long enough, you'll get there.
• Sticking with something for the long term is the true path to anything worthwhile.
• Don't start out big! Start out with a ridiculously easy goal, and then grow from there.
• You have to choose one goal, for now, and focus on it completely.
• Just start. Once you start, it is never as hard as you thought it would be.
• Squash negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones.
• Instead of thinking about how hard something is, think about what you will get out of it.
• Read about your goal every day, if you can, especially when you're not feeling motivated.
• Get help. It's hard to accomplish something alone.
• Chart your progress.
• Visualize your successful outcome in great detail. Form as clear a mental picture as possible.