The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life

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 te

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, highli

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?

Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel.

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 a

Cross out those two hours of television each night, and you’ll gain over half a day each week. That’s quite a windfall!

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 wa

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

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

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