Do you sometimes feel that life is complicated? Too many decisions, too many things to consider, too many things to do. I do. I get overwhelmed with decision-making. I forget passwords to my accounts. I forget my keys and fobs. I often yearn for things to be simpler.
In their Happier podcast, Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft set a theme word for each year, which characterizes how you want to feel or be or what you want to accomplish. These words are very individual and vary among their listeners. As I reflected on this, the word that immediately came to my mind was simplify. I felt that some things in my life were unnecessarily cumbersome. I acknowledged that sometimes I overcomplicate things. I believed that simplifying would open up more space in my head, reduce my stress, and save me time to focus on things I truly enjoy and love.
So, I sat down in January and outlined how I could simplify various aspects of my life. I came up with a decent list of implementable ideas that ranged from a better system for my passwords to consolidating my retirement accounts. I wrote it down and was ready to get started.
Well, it’s July now and looking at my list I have made little progress… I am not sure why. I still feel it is very important for me to simplify, I still believe in the benefits it would bring. While I am a bit annoyed with myself for accomplishing so little from that list, I decided to channel this negative energy towards a renewed commitment to tackling this list in the second half of the year.
There are many areas that I could simplify, but for starters here are a few that I focused on:
- Finances: Managing personal finances is critically important, yet it is not always the most pleasant activity for many. My goals in this area were pretty easy, including consolidating retirement accounts, finding a financial advisor, and keeping a monthly budget among others. I not only want to simplify for the sake of time and ease, but I also hope that the ripple effect of simplicity will result in me finding more enjoyment in managing my finances going forward.
- Passwords: Is it just me or do others also feel that it is nearly impossible to remember all the log-ins and passwords we need to have these days? I hate the ‘forgot your password’ prompts. Yes, I can update the password I forgot, but it is so much time spent chasing passwords. I could write my passwords down, but that’s a little risky in case someone finds them or if I forget where I wrote them. I could create a universal standard password. I have not decided yet, but I know that a simpler solution to this could save me a lot of time and frustration.
- Decision-making: I tend to consider many things when making decisions and want to get to the ‘perfect decision,’ which can be overwhelming and sometimes leaves me with ‘analysis paralysis.’ In order to reduce the mental burden of decisions, I adopted a mantra “a quick decision is better than a perfect decision.” This may not work for everyone, but for me, it is a reminder to not overthink decisions and torture myself for days. The risk of making a poor decision is generally pretty low and I will really benefit from re-allocating the time I spent on decisions to things I love to do and enjoy.
- Automation: Setting up as many things as possible on auto-pilot has been one of the strategies I made some progress in. If there are things that could happen automatically, why not set it up that way to save brain space. For example, automatic payments are possible for a variety of things such as rent, utilities, or loans. I have done that in many areas and it has helped already. I will continue thinking of other areas where automation could be my new friend.
There is beauty in simplicity and in saving time and brain space for things we love and enjoy. I am re-committing to my list and hope to see more items crossed off and as a result more time for what I love, such as … writing more here. Simple.
