This is the fourth and final blog post in my Simplification Series: Take Advantage of the COVID-19 Quarantine to Simplify Your Life for Good. We’ve already discussed goal-setting (Blog Post #1), simplifying your schedule (Blog Post #2), and simplifying your stuff (Blog Post #3). Now, all you have to do is maintain your new, simpler life. You’ve come this far, so here’s how to ensure all your hard work doesn’t erode away once we all jump back into life outside our homes.
To Maintain a Simpler Life, It’s All About the Checkpoints
Just as a beautiful garden will inevitably become overgrown with time, your schedule and stuff will too. There’s no stopping it, there aren’t any foolproof gating mechanisms you can put in place to ensure your life is always simple. And, your needs and goals change along the way (e.g. kids, spouses, moves, etc). So, you need to put in place some checkpoints – times for yourself to look at the life you’ve evolved and think critically about how to bring it back under control.
Schedule It!
You schedule all of your daily activities on a calendar, so why not apply the same trick to maintaining your simpler life? Schedule the following times into your calendar right now and set that entry to repeat year after year.
Simpler Life Review – Once a Quarter
Once a quarter, or, at the very least, once a year, schedule a two-hour block to review the following:
- Goals – Start by reviewing your goals. Make adjustments if necessary, but, most importantly, remind yourself what really matters. If you’re only doing this once a year, I recommend reviewing your goals during that quiet time between Christmas and New Year’s when no one else is working. This is a great time to think through what you want to accomplish next year and in your life in general.
- Schedule – Run through the next month of your schedule and make sure that everything on there aligns with your goals or makes you happy. If necessary, don’t be afraid to run through the nuclear option again.
- Stuff – Are there places in your life that are becoming disorganized? If so, organize them or schedule another time to organize them. When you walk around your house and office, does everything bring you joy? If not, consider running through the KonMarie method again. It won’t take nearly as long as it did the first time.
The Weekly Review – Weekly
I’ve been doing a weekly review since 2007, when I read David Allen’s amazing book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. One of his pieces of advice is to spend two hours each week gathering up all of your loose ends (un-dealt-with emails, notes, to dos, etc) and put them in an organized place. One of the steps in the weekly review is to review your upcoming calendar. When you review it each week, ask yourself if everything on your calendar aligns with your goals or brings you joy. If it doesn’t (and you can) cancel it. This will help you maintain your simpler schedule in between Simpler Life Reviews.
Mini KonMaries – Every Two Years
Though Marie Kondo will swear that once you organize completely, you’ll never go back to your old disorganized life, I’ve found that I need to do what I call “Mini KonMarie” sessions every couple of years because my stuff creeps up on me. Every two years, block off an entire weekend to run through the KonMarie Method. It won’t take as long as it did originally, but it’s really important to take some time to curate your stuff once in a while.
Don’t Skip Checkpoints!
One more word about checkpoints. Don’t skip them! Try not to reschedule them. If you want to maintain your simpler life, these are the most important items on your calendar! And, you worked your butt off to get organized in the first place, why throw that all away??
Gating Habits & Questions
As I mentioned above, no amount of gate-keeping will keep all of the clutter out of your life, but here are a few really powerful habits and questions to ask yourself before adding an item to your calendar or buying an item at the store.
Do This Before Buying
- Wait a month before buying something non-disposable – Impulse purchases are the worst and they erode even the best-curated space. To ensure you really need something, hold off on buying it for a month. If you still want it after a month and you can say “Yes” to the questions below, get it!
- Ask yourself whether it “sparks joy” – By now you are an expert at figuring out whether something sparks joy. If it doesn’t, don’t get it!
- Can you pay for the item with cash? – You should only borrow money for things that appreciate in value. In almost every case, if you can’t afford the item right now, leave it on the shelf.
Ask These Before Adding Anything to Your Calendar
- Will this help you meet your goals or make you happy? If the answer is no, don’t say yes.
- Is this a recurring commitment? These can be especially detrimental. Saying yes to a recurring meeting or signing your kids up for soccer three nights a week, blocks your calendar well into the future. Think extra long and hard about whether these items are really worth the cost to your calendar.
- Is this a HELL YES? I got this trick from Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. He argues that you should never do anything that you can’t say HELL YES to. A regular yes isn’t enough, we need to focus on only the things that are a HELL YES! If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no. I use this trick a lot when I’m hiring and it’s a great way to go about evaluating many of the things in our lives!
If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.
Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
The End of a Series, Not the End of an Era
COVID-19 is still out there and kicking, but this series is complete. I hope you enjoyed it and found something interesting that inspires you to simplify your life a bit more. You can follow me here by subscribing to this blog or you can follow me on Medium and Linked In. Thanks for reading!
