Keep it simple to avoid stress

Speaking for myself, complicated stuff causes me stress, and I’m pretty sure the same is true for most people. This is why I have made it my life’s work to reduce complexity and make things as simple as possible. For myself and for others.

The trouble is that ‘simple’ means different things to different people. Nevertheless, there are a couple of considerations that might help with keeping things as simple as possible:

“Don’t overthink it, just do it”. If you are the kind of person who considers every angle of an issue before getting started, I would suggest to let go of this for a moment. It’s sometimes better to just do something and be done with it, irrespective of the level of perfection you manage to do the job.

“Perfection is the enemy of simplicity”. Following from the previous item, it makes sense to consider perfection in this way. Ultimately, you want to make things simple, not perfect. First of all: get it done. Finetuning can come later.

“Items in storage complicate your life”. This is particularly true if you are having trouble visualising the stuff you own if you cannot see it in front of you. It seems simple to shove something to the back of the closet, but it will most certainly come back to bite you when you least need that. Make decisions straight away to either use or discard completely. Storage only applies to seasonal items, nothing warrants long-term storage.

“Out of sight, still in mind”. Speaking of storage, I often hear people say that the stuff in their loft weighs on their mind. They know full well all their things are up there, and will have to be dealt with properly at some point in the future.

Simplicity has different shapes, and one of them is to make sure nothing is pushed ahead of you to be dealt with later. Every single one of those unmade decisions will become harder as time goes by.

Here’s your task for today: Sit down with a cup of coffee/tea and take a moment to figure out if you have postponed any such decisions. Do you have a loft full of stuff that is really just taking up real estate without paying rent? Or are you hanging on to clothes that ‘one day you will fit in again’? What kitchen gadgets are sitting in the back of the cupboard and are never being used?

If you can, take decisions now and act: sell them, donate to charity, gift to friends or – in extremis – bin it.

I wish you happy thoughts and good luck.