Simplify your life and do more sounds like an oxymoron to me. I guess what I really mean is doing more of what you want to do.

I’ve been on a big Peter Walsh kick lately. Peter wrote the book It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff and recently published Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?: An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More I didn’t like the latter book as much as the first but I really dig the message. 

In a sentence, I like his books because de-cluttering and simplifying my life has made me more productive and has freed up time to do more of the things I really want to do. Wow, really? That’s a pretty powerful result from a book. The concepts in “It’s All Too Much” aren’t complex but they do make sense. Having clutter laying around really zaps your energy. For me every one of those piles of “crap” represents something I should be doing. So get rid of the piles!  You weren’t doing anything with them anyway. Seriously, whatever it is that is cluttering your space throw it away. Give it away. Or if it really was important, honor the commitment and do what you intended to do with it in the first place and then get it out of the way.

Ridding my space of clutter has really launched a positive momentum I haven’t had since the first time I read Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (GTD) by David Allen. Where GTD was failing, the concepts in It’s All Too Much are now succeeding with me. It turns out, I was holding on to far too many things. Mostly old projects and failed plans, even our over-stuffed filing cabinet was hanging out in my psyche and keeping me from moving forward with what I really wanted to be doing. I don’t need more organization, I need less stuff.

It’s more than physical clutter. I know some guys that are always quipping that they wish they had time to play, take a day off from work or finish an extra project at home. Why don’t they have the time?  They do. We all do. 24 hours a day just like everyone else. We just don’t know how to set our boundaries to make sure it happens. There is too much crap,  literal and figurative, spilling out all over the place. No wonder we feel like we can’t get anything done. Take the time to stop doing things that aren’t as important to you anymore. Take the time focus on one area long enough to get it off your plate.  Many people don’t think twice about staying late at work to finish a project knowing that once it is done they can relax and focus on other things. Not many people do the same in reverse. Who stays late at home to finish up something important? Instead we push it off and hope we have more time another day.

You feel good about cleaning things up because it starts to make boundaries. Rooms or other spaces start to fulfill their purpose. They morph into something that you can live with and thrive with. Here is an example.  Like most people my garage and nearby workbench is scattered with gear, tools, and half finished projects. Things like a half-built robot-dog my son and I made out of cans, or a box full of bicycle parts that I thought I might need some day. Well I started junking it all. I made decisions about what I really needed and threw the rest away. It felt great. The momentum was undeniable. In the process, I consolidated all my bicycle tools into a forgotton toolbox and I now have a single place to look anytime I need to work on a bike.  The next thing I know I’m fitting my youngest son with a bike and training wheels and we all take a ride around the block for the first time of the year.   I found time and energy to go for a bike ride with my boys only after I started dumping the clutter that was preventing it.

Take one hour - Grab a trash can and fill it. You’ll be amazed at the positive momentum it creates.