Is chaos increasing in your life? You are not alone – the whole universe is affected. These 11 techniques will help you towards a simpler life.
Pfff – can this be simpler?
Entropy is everywhere: if we do nothing, life will only become more chaotic.
Systems in this universe – including your life – tend to become more and more complex .
We can (temporarily) reduce entropy, but that does not happen automatically.
Removing chaos from your life is like building a sandcastle in the surf – eventually you lose it to the sea, but you have a lot of fun in the meantime.
If we want to live a simpler life with less stress, we must constantly work on this. Then it is important that we set up habits and systems that help us every day to tame the chaos , to keep an overview and to increase simplicity.
These 11 techniques have helped me for years, maybe they will help you too.
Let’s see.
1. Tidy up your house
If you live in an empty room with no stuff, you never have to tidy up and you never lose anything. Cleaning is also fast!
It’s just not very practical.
It does show how it works: the more stuff you add to the empty room, the more complex the situation becomes .
- Clean up more
- Cleaning more
- Lost more things
- More anxiety and stress
- Move and put back more
- Less physical and mental space
- More hassle to move
- Etc.
You make your life easier with less stuff . But it’s a balance – too little can actually complicate your life.
For example, life is simpler with a can opener when you want to open a can. But nobody needs three can openers.
The question you want to ask yourself at home (and for the rest of your life) is simple:
“What is essential for a good life?”
The rest can go.
Just start small: scan your environment, find something that is unnecessary and get rid of it now.
That cleans up nicely.
2. Clean up your digital clutter
All those documents on your desktop don’t make your life any easier. The same goes for that mailbox with 1,402 unread messages.
Digital clutter is no different from real clutter: eventually you ‘have’ to do something with it . And in the meantime, it makes your life more viscous than it needs to be.
A tidy digital environment is an extension of a tidy home. Especially if you spend a lot of time on your devices.
For example, now walk through your smartphone and find at least one app that you can delete.
Advanced Challenge: Delete the Facebook, Instagram, Reddit or Tiktok app (or all of them!) 🚀
3. Reduce your screen time
Speaking of devices – if a simpler life is your goal then it helps to dose your screen time .
Of course, we first look at your smartphone. But maybe it’s also your laptop, tablet, television or game console for you.
We receive most of the stressful messages through our screens . Bad news, shocking posts on social media, YouTube videos or Reddit posts that concern us (negatively), drama or all kinds of unnecessary input via group apps, an endless stream of (unnecessary) notifications, work emails in your spare time – it doesn’t stop.
Bring a little more ’80s into your life and reduce your screen time step by step. Recently I described the steps I took:
Now dive into your screen time stats and see which apps gave you the most notifications last week. Simply silence one or more of these apps completely – nice and quiet.
4. Decide what matters most
If you know what you want, you know what you can cut.
When I know I want to travel towards the sun, I no longer have to orientate myself on ski suits but only on swimming trunks – it makes my life easier.
Making a decision instantly makes your life easier . Even if you don’t make the ‘perfect’ choice.
So you can ask yourself, “What does my ideal life look like?”
Write the answer to this question directly in your diary, notebook or a notes app.
Focus your attention on the things that bring you closer to this ideal, and try to give less and less time and attention to the rest.
5. Give yourself a simple and clear goal
With a concrete goal you immediately make your life simpler.
Suppose, in my ideal life, I do half an hour of yoga every morning before the kids wake up.
A concrete goal can then help me to achieve this. For example, I set a goal of learning my morning yoga habit within 30 days .
Such a goal immediately spurs me to action:
- I’m going to delve into getting up earlier and set my alarm a little earlier.
- I also go to bed a little earlier and adjust my evening routine.
- I’m taking some steps to make my attic suitable for a nice yoga routine.
- I streamline my evening and morning routine to make this habit easier (I lay out clothes, unroll the mat, fill a bottle of water, etc.)
- I’m going to look for some tips for a suitable yoga routine that helps me on the points that I find important. Based on that, I put together a standard routine that I’m going to try.
- I start with my new habit, and adjust based on what I learn.
- I track my progress and feel motivated to get used to this new habit within 30 days.
A goal helps you put your ideal life into practice . It helps you focus, making your life simpler.
Now think of a simple goal you can set to achieve one aspect of your ideal life.
6. Streamline your life for more simplicity
Often there is something you can do to reduce ‘hassle’ and ‘trammeling’ in your routines.
By streamlining your life you can save a lot of time and aggravation and make your life easier.
For example: thanks to a few key hooks in the hallway, we never lose our keys again! A stupid example perhaps, but a great pleasure for me every day.
You make a process clearer, simpler and reduce friction.
Look for a small optimization that you can do today to streamline your life, so that you move more easily towards your ideal life.
7. Practice gratitude
Gratitude simplifies your life because its opposite is the cause of almost all of your frustration .
Gratitude feeds contentment and joy. This makes you feel good and you don’t have a constant tendency to change everything.
Dissatisfaction does the opposite: it pushes you to action . And much of that action actually makes our lives more complex because it is often focused on ‘more’: buying more things, doing more things, making more money, etc.
There is nothing wrong with wanting something and working towards it. But it is important to realize that this can also cause complexity in your life.
Satisfaction is often much more efficient .
If you can feel grateful for your current smartphone, you feel less inclined to order a new version. This saves you a mountain of money, so you can save more, work less and feel more free.
Not upgrading is likely to have a greater positive impact on your quality of life than upgrading.
Especially because you quickly get used to your new smartphone, so that you are back to square one ‘satisfaction-technically’.
8. Simplify your agenda
A simpler life with less stress contains a lot of ‘play space’ – space that is not blocked with all kinds of activities.
We feel that a rich and complex life full of outings and “nice things” is optimal. But, as with anything, too much of a good thing can become stressful.
For example, I used to fill my week so often with fun things that it ironically stressed me out .
Now we like to provide enough unstructured time. Time that can be spontaneously filled with activities that we find fun and important.
Take a look at your agenda and research at least one way to create more leeway now.
9. Practice mindfulness
Your life doesn’t start when you ‘finally’ achieve your goals. Your life is here and now .
This is it.
This it always has been and always will be. The rest is just a story in your mind .
Mindfulness actually makes everything simple, because it helps you realize how simple life is when you don’t take your thoughts so seriously.
You can increase mindfulness by practicing mindful meditation on a regular basis. You can also practice more mindfulness throughout your day – for example, when you read this article.
10. Simplify your diet
Healthy and simple food makes your life simpler because it helps you to be healthier and more energetic.
Health complaints are an enormous source of unwanted complexity . Healthy living can help you prevent, reduce or solve health problems.
Eat simple, healthy dishes. Do not eat too much and not unnecessarily often. And if you really want to make it simple for yourself: pick up intermittent fasting .
Eating nothing sometimes turns out to be surprisingly simple:
Grab – when you get hungry – for example, just a piece of fruit or some (unroasted, unsalted) nuts.
Much simpler than a croissant. 🍎
11. Surrender to life
Complete surrender is the ultimate – and most advanced – form of simple living.
It works very simply: instead of resisting reality, you decide to embrace life – just the way it is.
You stop fighting against that which is .
It’s challenging, because we constantly wish life were different than it is. And that wish causes us stress, frustration and discomfort because we have no influence on reality .
Things are just the way they are, not otherwise.
Because if they should have been different, then they were different. And they are no different, so apparently this is just the way it should be.
The more times you manage to get to this place, the simpler your life becomes:
- You see that you are good as you are , including the sides of yourself that you don’t like and including your desire to change those sides of yourself.
- You understand that the feelings you experience are allowed to be there , even if they feel uncomfortable. You also see that you can find them uncomfortable.
- You understand that things can and should happen , even if you don’t agree. At the same time, you realize that you can disagree with that event, even if it doesn’t change the situation.
- You accept that you do not always have the solution to every problem . Instead of feeling frustrated at your lack of knowledge or power, embrace the opportunity to learn and grow.
- You understand that not everyone will always agree with you , and that’s fine. It’s okay to disagree and still be respectful and understanding.
- You see that life is not always fair and you will be disappointed at times . But instead of getting angry at the world, accept this situation as part of life.
- You realize that you are not perfect and that you will make mistakes . But instead of punishing yourself for these mistakes, embrace them as opportunities to learn and grow.
It is also called radical acceptance .
It’s beautiful stuff, although it’s not always easy.
You will naturally get better at it the more you practice mindfulness. And your mindfulness grows almost naturally when you reduce your screen time, pushing your life in this direction and creating more unstructured time.
You don’t get a simple and stress-free life as a gift – you have to do something for it because chaos is the norm. But with smart choices and strategic habits, you can keep entropy at bay a bit.
And that’s well worth it if you ask me.
So – did you already delete those social media apps? 😉
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