The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential...in Business and in Life
Leo Babautaamazon.com
The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential...in Business and in Life
Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential. Eliminate the rest.
The problem with constantly trying to increase volume is that it doesn’t always produce the best results. Doing a huge number of things doesn’t mean you’re getting anything meaningful done.
What you’ll need to do is do a review of your task list (method number one above) to choose the high-impact tasks, instead of trying to tackle everything regardless of how meaningful the tasks are to your life.
Principle 1: By setting limitations, we must choose the essential. So in everything you do, learn to set limitations. Principle 2: By choosing the essential, we create great impact with minimal resources. Always choose the essential to maximize your time and energy.
it helps to ask yourself the following questions: Which areas of my life are overwhelming? What would I like to simplify? In addition to the tasks I need to accomplish in different areas, do I want to limit the number of possessions I have, what information I receive, or what responsibilities I have?
That may sound like a lot, but I accomplished all of this in small steps, one thing at a time. Again, I used the concept of One Goal—I focused on only one goal at a time, and put all of my energy into it.
The lessons of the haiku, of applying limitations in order to force choices, of choosing the essential and finding the Power of Less—these are lessons we can apply not only to the tasks on our to-do lists, but to everything in our lives. If there’s any area of your life that is overwhelming you, and that you’d like to simplify, apply limitations.