It’s similar to the problem of letting go of possessions — often we have sentimental or emotional attachment to possessions, or worry that we’ll need them later or be less secure without the possessions. Clearing out clutter isn’t always easy, because of these emotional hurdles.

Letting go of addictions to information and distractions is just as hard. We might want to let go, but when the rubber meets the road, we balk. We have urges. We falter and fall and fail.

Why is that? And how can we overcome these hurdles?

Let’s take a look at the biggest difficulties and some ideas for beating them.

1. Addiction. Information, news and distractions can become an addiction, as we discussed in previous chapters. And beating addictions isn’t easy. Even when our motivation to beat the addiction is strong, the urges we feel and rationalizations we make to ourselves can be even stronger.

How do we beat this addiction? We talked about this previously, but in a nutshell, we must beat them individually (not a whole bunch of addictions at once), figure out what our triggers are for that addiction (when do we automatically do the addiction and feel the urges), and become mindful of the triggers and our urges.

Remember that urges are only temporary. If you are aware that you’re feeling an urge, you can ride it like a wave — it’ll surge and get stronger, and then fade away. Take some deep breaths, and replace the habit with another habit — like doing pushups, going for a walk, or finding a quiet spot and reflecting. If you enjoy the new habit, you can more easily replace the old habit. Ride the urges and you can beat them, one at a time. Eventually the urges will go away and you’ll have a new habit that’s more conducive to focus.

2. Filling an emotional need. Each distraction fills a need in some way. You do the distraction for a reason. New email gives you a little feeling of satisfaction, a confirmation that you’re important. So do new replies on Twitter or Facebook or other online forums, or text messages or phone calls. Entertaining distractions fill a need to avoid boredom, or a need to rest from work that strains our mind. There are other similar emotional needs that these distractions fill, but the key is to consider each need.

What happens when we try to remove these distractions? We feel a void where they used to be. Which means we need to find a way to fill that void.

If you get satisfaction or a feeling of importance from new emails or other notifications or messages … it’s important to be honest with yourself about that. Why do these interruptions, notifications, make you feel good? Is there another way to get validation? Maybe it’s good to find recognition instead from the accomplishments and creations that result from finding focus.

If you try to avoid boredom, perhaps it’s important to find things that excite you, that you’re passionate about. Someone pursuing a passion doesn’t need solitaire or Farmville to avoid boredom.

Whatever the emotional need, be honest about it, be conscious of it, and find other ways to fulfill it.

3. Fears. As we discussed earlier, often we feel the need to stay up-to-date, with news or by checking email constantly or other similar ways of staying in touch. We fear being out of touch, being uninformed.

The only way to beat fears is to face them, and confront them with facts.

Fears have the most power when we don’t confront them, when we let them hide in the dark and exercise their quiet influence over our lives. So the key to beating these fears is to face them. Be honest — what are you afraid of?

Then shine a light on these fears with actual facts — what harm has actually been caused so far? Try to do a short test — an hour, a day, a few days, a week — and see what the results are. In most cases the actual harm will be much less than you fear. For example, try going a day without responding to email — see whether you missed anything that was truly important. By getting actual results, the fears will be shown to be baseless (in most cases, I’d guess).

More on beating fears later, in the chapter by psychologist Gail Brenner.

4. Desires. Sometimes we have trouble letting go of these addictions because of desires — the desire to be successful at something, for example, or the desire to be seen as good at something, or the desire to build wealth.

If we have a strong desire to be a successful blogger or Internet marketer, to take just two examples, we might try to connect with as many other bloggers or readers or marketers as possible, and try to attract as many followers as possible on Twitter and our blog, all of which would require lots of time emailing, tweeting, blogging, commenting on blogs, and so forth.

If the desire wasn’t there, the need to connect all the time wouldn’t be there. Now, I can’t say whether you want to get rid of the desire, but it’s important to be honest about what your desires are, what the consequences are when it comes to these addictions, and whether that’s how you want to live your life. If you’re OK with these desires and their consequences, at least you’re aware of them.

If you want to drop the desire, it’s not simple, but it can be done. I’d suggest first thinking about why you want to drop the desire — because of negative consequences — and then be more aware when the desire comes up at different times during the day. Just like addictive urges, desires will come and go, and taking some deep breaths and riding out the desire will help you get through it. Eventually, you’ll learn that you don’t need the desire.

The rest of this chapter is for management: CEOs, vice presidents, supervisors, middle managers, small employers. Bosses of all kinds. Anyone who controls the schedules of others, or has influence on the policies and office culture that determine how people work.

The Problem: Modern offices pride themselves on efficiency and productivity, but the truth is they are busy, hectic, overwhelming places (in general). Employees often work in cubicles that are surrounded by distractions, they are constantly interrupted by emails, IMs, texts, calls, notifications, calendar requests, people walking over to talk to them, outbursts in the office, meetings.

These distractions destroy focus. They lead to stress, to information overload. They fragment an employee’s day and attention, so that it becomes an extremely bad environment for creating, for focusing on what’s truly important, for producing incredible work.

Busywork isn’t important work. While an employee can be busy for 10 hours a day, keeping up with all the emails and calls and meetings and non-stop requests, they might spend the day getting nothing done of any real importance. What matters is creating, is producing the next great thing that will become the cornerstone of your business, is improving the quality of your product so that the customer takes notice, is providing truly great service. Busywork isn’t what matters, and yet it interrupts us and consumes all of our time and attention.

The Solution: Create an environment where focus is possible.

There are many such environments, but to give you a picture of what’s possible:

• The employee comes in, sits down, and figures out what matters most for today. What are the 3-5 tasks that most need to get done, that will make the most difference for the company or organization? No checking email or voicemail at this point — just quiet, and focus.
• He then sits down and, with a completely clear desk, blocks out all distractions — no phones or other mobile devices, no email, no notifications, nothing to disrupt. He works on the first task on the list.
• Later, he might go through email and voicemail and process everything that needs to be quickly processed, for 30 minutes or so.
• During the day, his focus is completely on the tasks that matter most. Very few meetings or calls interrupt these tasks.
• At the end of the day, the employee might have a short meeting with you, just to review the day, go over any problems, and perhaps agree on tomorrow’s important tasks. Meetings should be held to a minimum, as they are time-consuming and can interrupt the time needed to focus on important tasks. They should also be kept as short as possible.

This is obviously just one way of creating a focused environment, but it won’t work for everyone. There are lots of ideas that might help create such an environment, including but not limited to:

• Email-free Mondays: Everyone is free from email — banned from email in fact — for an entire day, and must work on something really important. Email-free afternoons or mornings are other ideas.
• Headphones: Allow employees to wear headphones to block out distractions.
• Let employees work from home one or two days a week, reporting at the end of such days what they got done. Allow them to work without the distractions of the office, and see what happens.
• Shut down the Internet for a couple hours a day. Disconnecting might seem alarming, but it will allow people to focus and get a lot done. If they know it’ll happen at a certain time each day, they’ll get the tasks done that require the Internet before that time, and prepare for the time of disconnection.

However you do it, creating an environment of focus rather than distraction and busywork will breathe new life into your organization.

Transforming Culture: The next question becomes how you go from the current office culture and environment to one of focus. This isn’t easy — whether you don’t have completely control over the company (you’re a mid- or low-level manager) or you are in charge but must deal with inertia and ingrained habits.

Some ideas:

1. Give out a copy of this book. You can freely distribute the free version of this book, which is uncopyrighted, or buy the digital package once and distribute it electronically to the rest of your organization, or buy multiple copies of the print book to hand out. It’s a great place to start, to get everyone on the same page.
2. Talk about it. Simply start a conversation, with your colleagues, bosses, team members. Talk about the problems of distractions and finding focus, and see what ideas emerge.
3. Institute small changes. There’s no need to drastically overhaul culture overnight. Start small, with a simple but powerful change, such as: instituting a no email, no meetings, no distractions period for one hour at the start of every day.
4. Keep pushing for small changes: reducing the number of meetings, having no-email or no-Internet hours during the day, holding retreats where people work in a monk-like, distraction-free, quiet environment, encouraging people to switch off phones and use headphones during parts of their day, suggesting that people set two or three times a day when they check email and that they don’t check email at other times, etc.

Over time, things can change, but be patient, be encouraging, be positive. And most of all, lead by example.

Often, our lives aren’t completely under our control. Sometimes, others can stand in our way, or just make things tough. Often other people can make a big impact on our ability to simplify and create. Let’s take a look at some of those types of situations, and some solutions that can help.

Service industries

If you work in a service industry, finding focus by cutting out all distractions might seem impossible. After all, you have to respond to customers pretty much immediately, and ignoring them in person or not responding to their calls or emails isn’t really an option. Someone in the service industry must be on their toes, and work non-stop, often multi-tasking the whole time.

Sure, but there are some choices:

• While you’re serving customers, do only that. Don’t also deal with other problems, if possible, or work on other tasks. Be in the moment as much as possible, dealing with each customer while fully present. You’ll do a better job for the customer and connect much more deeply on a human level. It’s hard to do well on a customer call if you’re also dealing with emails, or serve a customer in person well if you’re also looking at your iPhone.
• Try to serve one customer at a time. This isn’t always possible either, but when you can do it, it’s much better — for the customer and for your sanity levels. Deal with one customer’s email at a time, one call at a time, one customer in person at a time. When possible.
• Find some time on the job for focus. If you have other things to do than deal directly with customers, try to separate the two responsibilities, so that you can deal with customers during one part of your day and find focus during another part of your day. Even if it’s just for 30-60 minutes, clearing distractions can make a big difference.
• Find ways to reduce the load. While customer problems and requests are always important, there are ways to reduce the demands on your time. Automating is a good example — allow people to order or file something online, for example, instead of filing the orders with you manually, or find other online solutions to the things you handle on a regular basis. Putting up a Frequently Asked Questions on a website can help reduce problems and questions. Outsourcing customer calls might be an option. Narrowing your services can help. All of these are dependent on you having control over the business, but if you do, consider the many alternatives that might reduce your workload and interruptions.
• Find focus in your personal life. If most of your life is spent dealing with non-stop customer problems, complaints and requests, then you might try to find a time for calm, without distractions. Don’t be connected all the time, don’t be on the phone or doing text messages — cut off from the distractions, slow down, find solitude, and let your mind rest.

Staff/co-workers interruptions

If you have staff or co-workers who rely on you, you might be constantly interrupted (in person, by phone, via instant messages, by email) by people who need decisions made, conflicts managed, problems solved, requests fulfilled.

So how do we find focus with these kinds of constant, urgent interruptions? There are many possible solutions, and not all will apply to everyone, but here are some ideas:

• Remove yourself as a bottleneck. It’s almost impossible to find a moment of peace when all decisions, all problems, must come through you. So train others to make these decisions. Set guidelines for making the decisions so that they’d make the same decisions you would in those circumstances. Set criteria for calling you or interrupting you, so that only decisions above a certain threshold of importance will come to you. Find others who can handle the problems, instead of you. Sure, it’ll mean you have less control, but it’ll also mean you have fewer interruptions.
• Set hours of unavailability. Set office hours, or hours when you must not be interrupted except for absolute emergencies. Then you can deal with problems/requests at certain times of the day, and focus during other times.
• Delegate a backup decision maker. If you’re a manager/owner, set up a second-in-command, so that when you’re away from the office, or if you take a few hours off for uninterrupted time, problems can still be solved. Train the second-in-command so that she knows how to make the decisions appropriately.
• Set expectations. Staff or coworkers only interrupt you because they have the expectation that you’ll respond and that it’s OK to interrupt you at any time. If you change those expectations, you can channel the requests/problems to a time that you want to deal with them. For example: tell people that you only check email at 3 p.m. (or whatever works for you), because you need to focus on other work, and that they shouldn’t expect a response sooner. Or tell people that you will no longer take calls or text messages after 5 p.m., but that they should email you instead and you will respond to their emails in the morning. Or whatever works for you — the point is to set a plan of action and manage the expectations of others so that you can stick to that plan.
• Be in the moment. If you’re unable to get away from the interruptions, then learn to deal with each interruption one at a time, when possible, and give your full attention to each person, each problem, as you deal with them. This allows you to be less stressed and to deal calmly and fully with every person who needs your attention.
• Focus when away from work. If you can’t find focus at work, because of the need to be interrupted at all times, at least find time away from work when you can clear away distractions and find time for quiet, peace, reflection, reading, writing, creating.

Bosses

What if your boss is the problem — he or she won’t allow you to make the changes you need to find focus? That’s a definite problem — the boss might expect you to answer texts, emails, calls immediately, to attend meetings all day long, to be busy at all times, to work long hours, to take calls after hours and do work at night … in short, to be inundated by interruptions at all hours.

Unfortunately, there are only so many things you can do if things aren’t under your control. Here are a few ideas:

• Talk to your boss. Often, bosses can be very reasonable if you give them a compelling argument, and especially if you’ve proven yourself in the past. Sit down and talk to your boss about your desire to find focus, and explain that this will increase your productivity and creativity. Give him a copy of this book if you think it’ll help (or just email the chapter specifically for managers). Ask for some specific changes, and suggest a test period of a week or two, in which you make the changes and show the results.
• Change what’s under your control. If there are some things you can’t change, then figure out what you can change, and focus on that. If you can’t change your hours, at least declutter your desk and computer. If you must answer all emails at all times, at least learn to block other things on the Internet that distract you.
• Work away from the office. You might have the flexibility to work from home or at a coffee shop or library away from the office, or you might make a compelling argument for this change. Take this opportunity when you can, and bring a pair of earphones, turn on some peaceful music (or energizing music if you prefer), clear away distractions, and focus.
• Prove that it works. Make what changes you can, and show that it can bring results. Solid evidence is the best way to win over the boss.
• Or find another job. If your job is horrible, and your boss isn’t reasonable, or the demands are too crazy and you can’t possibly find the time to focus, it might be worth considering a change of jobs. That’s your decision, not mine, but I changed jobs at least twice when I was unhappy with the expectations, and both times it was a very good change for me.

Unsupportive people

Another problem is that people in our lives can sometimes be unsupportive, or flat out against changes we want to make. If this person is a spouse or significant other, or someone else upon whom we depend, this can make things very difficult. Nearly impossible, sometimes.

This is actually a very common problem, and I can’t give you solutions that will work in all cases. I can share some things that have worked for me, in hopes that they might help:

• Don’t force. When we try to push others to make changes, they often resist. It’s not smart to try to force other people to make the changes you want to make. Instead, try some of the tips below — setting an example, sharing, asking for help.
• Share why it’s important, and how it affects you. Communication is important here — sit down and talk to this person (or people) about why you want to make these changes, why it’s important to you, what it’ll help you to do. Share the positive effects as you make the changes, and also share the problems you’re facing. This type of open communication can help persuade the other person to get on board with your changes, if done in a non-pushy, non-judgmental way.
• Enlist their help. When you ask someone to change, they will probably resist, but when you ask them to help you change, that’s much more likely to succeed. Try as best you can to make it a team effort — working together is a much better proposition than working against each other.
• Set an example. If the other person doesn’t want to change, that’s OK. Make the changes yourself, and show how great it is. If the other person is inspired by your example, that’s even better. Often leading by example is the most persuasive technique there is, but dont’ be disappointed if the other person doesn’t decide to follow your example. Be happy with the changes you’ve made yourself.
• Change what you can. If the other person is unsupportive, there might be limits to what you can change. Recognize these boundaries, and work within them.

‘The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time.’ ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Parents might have the most difficult challenges when it comes to finding focus. Whether you’re working all day and coming home to your kids, or you stay home taking care of all the household needs and very demanding children, there’s almost never a quiet moment, almost never a time when you can relax, find focus, attain inner peace.

I’m a father of six children, so I know. Kids tend to turn up the volume on life, increase the chaos of this already chaotic world by an order of several magnitudes. And while I’ve found that it gets easier as kids get older, it never gets easy — they still need you to drive them around a million places, to help them with a million problems, to meet their basic needs and more.

That’s OK — chaos and work are some of the joys of being a parent. But what if we want to find focus and still be awesome parents? There’s the challenge, and I’d like to offer a short guide to doing just that.

The Challenges

The biggest challenge is that parents wear many hats: we have jobs, have a household to run with its unending tasks, have personal things to do (workout, read, hobbies, etc.), possibly have civic commitments (volunteer, serve on a board, work with the PTA, etc.), and yes, we have children to raise.

How do we balance these commitments? How do we find focus in one, when we are constantly being pulled at from the others? In my life, for example, I try to focus on work but have children in my home/office who want my attention. When I spend time with them, there’s the temptation to check email or Twitter. When I want to spend time alone, the siren’s call of work and the neverending call of my children make focusing on my solo activity a challenge.

Technology presents yet another challenge. Parents these days are connected more than ever. Not only are we online more than ever before, we now have devices that keep us connected wherever we go: iPhones and Androids and Blackberries and iPads and laptops and iPod touches. While our teenager is texting us, we’re getting work emails, along with requests from our civic commitments, and a notification of a blog post about our favorite hobby.

Children make a parent’s attempt to find focus a bigger challenge than usual. People without children aren’t likely to understand this, so we’re not given breaks by our bosses or colleagues — saying that you had to take your kid to the dentist, or that your baby kept you up all night crying, isn’t likely to get you off the hook. After all, we signed up to be parents, didn’t we?

Still, it’s uniquely difficult: there isn’t a minute, it seems, when our kids don’t need something, or have a problem, or want attention, or have an appointment or practice they need to be taken to. And if there are moments when they’re not requiring our attention, often we’re thinking about things we need to be doing with them, for them. We’re thinking about what we should be doing but aren’t: reading to them more, taking them to parks to play, teaching them to build or garden or write, working on craft projects, taking them to museums, handing down the key lessons in life.

It ain’t easy. But you knew that.

One Approach

With so many hats, an effective way to find focus is to segregate your roles. Block them off into separate chunks of your day or week. And then focus on each individually, whenever possible.

So set aside certain times of your day for different roles, and block out distractions from the other roles.

An example:

• Early mornings: wake early, before the kids are up, and spend time with yourself. Go for a run, meditate, do yoga, read a novel. Or use this time for creating: draw, design, write, etc.
• Mid mornings: When the kids are up, help them get ready for school, get yourself ready for work, get lunches packed, etc. This is your time as a parent, and don’t do anything work-related. Talk with your kids if you find a moment.
• Later mornings: Set aside for work. If you work from home, don’t do any household duties.
• Afternoon: Do the household duties. Or more work.
• Late afternoon: Spend time with kids. Block out work.
• Early evening: Some personal time. Let the kids do their homework, and you focus on yourself.
• Late evening: Read to your child, spend a little quiet time with her, put her to bed.

Obviously this is just an example, and won’t work for everyone. You’ll need to find the schedule that works for you. Perhaps you work best in the evenings, or you can’t do any work until your spouse gets home to take care of the kids, or you need to spend time with the kids all morning. There’s no One Size Fits All when it comes to parenting, but to the extent that you can block off your day, it helps.

You’ll also need to be flexible. It can be a problem when someone is so fixed on a daily routine that disruptions to the routine — a last minute meeting, a call from your kids’ school that your daughter is sick — will cause anxiety. As parents, of course, we learn to adapt, to deal with interruptions and changes. We need to calmly accept changes to our schedule, but as we switch to a new role (parenting, work, personal, civic, etc.), we need to learn to do only that role, again to the extent possible.

Very Young Children

I should note that it’s harder for parents of babies and toddlers. The younger the child, in general, the more demanding on your attention the child can be. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule, of course, but in my experience (I have six kids), it gets easier to focus on other things as the child gets older.

So how do you segregate roles and find focus when your child is young and always demands your attention? It’s not easy, I’ll say that. The best solution involves both parents pitching in, and giving the other a break once or twice a day. So instead of both parents taking care of the child, they take turns, and one gets some quiet time for a walk, reading, work, creating, hobbies, exercise. Then they switch.

Of course, there are also naptimes. If your baby is so young that you’re not getting very much sleep, you’ll probably want to rest when your baby rests. But otherwise, take advantage of naptimes and get some “you” stuff done. Take advantage of the quiet times, too, in the early morning before your child is awake, and at night when the child has gone to sleep.

Another solution is to get help: a professional babysitter, daycare for half a day, one of your parents who might be retired, a neice or nephew who is trustworthy and has a couple hours after school. While some of these solutions will cost some money, it might be worth the expense. You might also find another parent who needs help, and swap babysitting.

On Technology

Parents who are used to being connected in some ways might be better off by learning to embrace disconnection.

Imagine you’re taking a walk in the park with your child … it’s a lovely day, and it’s the perfect quiet moment between you and your young one. Then your phone beeps, and you know you have a new email. Well, you’ve been waiting for something from the boss or client, so you have the urge to check. It’s just going to take a few seconds — no problem right?

Well, it’s a problem. This small distraction takes you from the moment with your child, and back to the world of work. It ruins it, even if only slightly. It also teaches your child that this email is more important than she is — you can’t make the effort to be totally present with your child, because of important work emails. That’s not the best message to send.

I don’t mean to be preachy — I’m guilty of these distractions from time to time too. But it’s something we should become aware of and if possible, take measures against. Turn off the phone, shut off notifications, and be present.

When you’re at home, you can be on the computer all the time, while your child is calling for attention. Turn the computer off for stretches of time, and give your undivided attention to your child. When it’s time to work, or create, find a way to do so without the interruptions of children, and focus. But the rest of the time, shut off the computer.

‘Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.’ ~Antoine de Saint-Exupe

For years now I have been working on living a simpler life — in my personal, family and work life. It’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done, in many ways:

• A simple life is less stressful, more sane, happier.
• Simpler living is less expensive, which helped me to get out of debt.
• I’m able to focus better when I work, leading to a more successful career than ever (by far).
• I free up time for my family, and for the things I love most.
• I’ve rid my life of things I didn’t like doing.
• I have fewer possessions, leading to a less cluttered home and workspace, which I love.

And those are just a few of the benefits. When it comes to finding focus, simplifying is a great place to start. When you simplify, you remove the extraneous and allow yourself to focus. You might say that simplifying is a necessary part of finding focus.

This is a short guide to finding simplicity.

Simplifying your life

What does a simplified life look like? There’s no one answer. While some might go to the extremes of living in a cabin in Alaska or on a tropical island, others find simplicity in a city while working a job with the hectic pace of a stockbroker. The key is to find what matters most to you, and to eliminate as much of the rest as possible.

A simpler life probably means fewer possessions. We allow ourselves to accumulate possessions through years of shopping, receiving gifts, and so on, until we’re overwhelmed by it all. We are strongly influenced by advertising to acquire things, but we don’t have a good system for getting rid of them. Freeing yourself of clutter leaves room for thinking, for focus.

A simpler life means fewer commitments. This is difficult, as commitments accumulate over the years just as much as possessions do, and the result is that we have no time in our lives for what really matters. Getting out of the commitments you already have is the painful part: it requires saying “no” to people, disappointing them in some way. In my experience, they’ll live, and life will go on. And when you’ve eliminated many of your commitments, you’ve freed up so much of your time for things you truly love.

A simpler life means less distractions, less busy-ness, less clutter … and more space for what matters most to you. You free up time for work you’re passionate about, people you love, hobbies that make you happy. Time for solitude, for thinking. And that’s a good thing.

Simplifying your work

Simplifying work is very similar to simplifying your life in general, but a bit more “productivity” oriented of course. Let’s start with this question: what does it mean to simplify your work?

It can mean a lot of things, including:

• Clearing the clutter of your workspace, to give you a distraction-free and more soothing space to find focus.
• Focusing less on busy-work and more on important work that has a high impact on your career and business.
• Working on fewer projects and tasks so you’re less busy, and more focused.
• Narrowing the scope of your work so you do less but do it better, offer less but offer better things.
• Eliminating streams of communication, news, distractions.
• Creating the work life you want, rather than one that is a reaction to requests and needs of others.

For me, that means waking in the morning and deciding on one thing that’s most important for me to work on. It means spending less time on email and other distractions, and more time on creating and important tasks. It means having a distraction-free workspace and time and room for thinking. It’s a work life that I love, and recommend to anyone.

A simplified work life can be difficult for a couple of reasons, though:

1. You have to learn to say “no” to others. By saying “yes” to every request from others, you allow all your time to be taken up by tasks that are important to others, not necessarily to you. Saying “no” means being tough, and valuing your time above all else. It can be uncomfortable to say “no” sometimes, but the result is more room for what’s important, and less busy-ness.

2. You should also try to learn to do less. This is difficult for most people, because we’re taught that doing more means we’re more productive, and if we look busy, people will think we’re productive and important. And yet, it’s not true. Being busy doesn’t mean a thing, other than we’re stressed out. We could be busy doing meaningless tasks. Doing important work is what true productivity is all about, and that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re ridiculously busy. Focus on fewer but higher-impact tasks.

How to get started

With all of this clutter in our lives to simplify, it can be overwhelming, daunting, to even get started. Don’t let that stop you — getting started is more important than doing everything at once, or starting in exactly the right place.

There are two things I’d recommend you do to get started — and you can choose which one to do first, as it doesn’t matter really where you start:

1. Pick your life’s short list. It’s crucial that you take a step back and figure out what’s most important to you. I suggest taking half a day off, or even just 30-60 minutes. Get outside and take a walk, or go to a coffee shop, and allow yourself to think. Big picture stuff: what do you love most? Every person’s list will be different — my list was: spending time with family, writing, reading and running. Pick just 4-5 things, even if there are lots of other things that also seem important. Now make a longer list: what else is in your life that’s not on the short list? Once you’ve done these things, you’re done with the Big Picture stuff — the next step is to start eliminating commitments that aren’t on the short list. Do the same for your work life — what’s most important, and what doesn’t make your short list of most important projects and goals?

2. Start clearing clutter in one spot. Physical clutter can be overwhelming, which is why you should just pick one small spot, and clear that. You can get to the rest later. It might be the top of your desk, or if that is super messy maybe just one spot on top of your desk. It might be a table-top or part of a counter or shelf in your home. It doesn’t matter what the spot is. Here’s how to start: first clear off that area and put everything into a pile to the side. Now sort through the pile quickly, making three smaller piles: stuff you use and love, stuff you can donate, and trash. Sort quickly and ruthlessly — everything should go in one of the three piles. Then throw the trash away, put the donate stuff in a box to be dropped off to a charity, and put the stuff you love and use neatly where it belongs. Everything should have a permanent home. Done! Slowly expand your decluttered zone.

How to systematically simplify

Once you’ve gotten started with the two things above, take this newly found momentum and keep it going. You don’t need to do it all at once — 20 minutes a day would do wonders. Small steps, one at a time.

Here’s what I’d do, in little chunks:

1. Take 10 minutes a day to clear another small area of clutter. It could be another area on top of your desk or a table, it could be a drawer, a shelf, a counter, a small area of the floor, a wall that’s covered in papers in your office. Follow the sorting method above. Expand the decluttered zone daily.
2. Take 10 minutes a day to simplify your commitments, what you do, and what comes in to your life. Just simplify one or two things a day. If you choose a commitment to eliminate, simply call or email someone, letting them know you can no longer serve on this committee or that board, or coach this team or play on that one, or work on this project or that. If you choose to simplify what you do, cross things off your to-do list that aren’t on your short list — sometimes that means emailing someone to let them know you can’t work on it because your plate is too full. If you choose what comes into your life, you might eliminate an email newsletter that you get daily (or all newsletters), you might pare down your blog reading list, or unsubscribe from a magazine, or stop using a social service or forum that doesn’t add value to your life.

In this way, one little chunk at a time, you’ll eventually clear a lot of the physical and mental clutter in your personal and work life, and things will get simpler over time.

Next chapter: a simple system for getting amazing things done

‘Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.’ ~Alexander Graham Bell

Many of us grew up in the age of multi-tasking, where you couldn’t call yourself productive if you weren’t a good multi-tasker. We learned to always have several balls in the air at once — while writing something on the computer, we had a phone call going, we were writing something on a notepad or paper form, we were reviewing documents, sometimes even holding a meeting at the same time. That’s the productive worker, the effective executive.

When email and Instant Messaging and blogs and the rest of the Internet came along, multi-tasking went haywire. Now we’re expected to do 10 things on the computer at once, still with the paper, phone, and meetings going, along with texting and Blackberry Messaging. Multi-tasking is no longer about being productive — it’s a way of living.

It’s not a sane way of living, however, and it’s not necessarily the most effective way of working either. A few notes on why:

• Multi-tasking is less efficient, due to the need to switch gears for each new task, and the switch back again.
• Multi-tasking is more complicated, and thus more prone to stress and errors.
• Multi-tasking can be crazy, and in this already chaotic world, we need to reign in the terror and find a little oasis of sanity and calm.
• Our brains can really only handle one thing at a time, and so we get so used to switching between one thing and another with our brains that we program them to have a short attention span. This is why it’s so hard to learn to focus on one thing at a time again.

A single-tasking life

Imagine instead, a single-tasking life. Imagine waking and going for a run, as if running were all you do. Nothing else is on your mind but the run, and you do it to the very best of your abilities. Then you eat, enjoying every flavorful bite of your fresh breakfast of whole, unprocessed foods. You read a novel, as if nothing else in the world existed. You do your work, one task at a time, each task done with full focus and dedication. You spend time with loved ones, as if nothing else existed.

This is summed up very well by something Charles Dickens once wrote, “He did each single thing as if he did nothing else.” This is a life lived fully in the moment, with a dedication to doing the best you can in anything you do — whether that’s a work project or making green tea.

If you live your life this way, by this single principle, it will have tremendous effects:

• Your work will become more focused.
• You will become more effective at your work.
• You’ll become better at anything you do.
• Your time alone will be of better quality.
• Your time with your family will be much more meaningful.
• Your reading will have less distractions.
• You’ll lose yourself in anything you deem worthy enough of your time and attention.

How to live a single-tasking life

It sounds nice, but how do you live a life like this? Is it as simple as saying you’re going to do it, or is it impossible? Somewhere in between, of course, and like anything worth doing, it takes practice.

Here’s what I’d recommend:

1. Become conscious. When you start doing something, become more aware you’re starting that activity. As you do it, become aware of really doing it, and of the urge to switch to something else. Paying attention is the important first step.

2. Clear distractions. If you’re going to read, clear everything else away, so you have nothing but you and the book. If you’re going to do email, close every other program and all browser tabs except the email tab, and just do that. If you’re going to do a work task, have nothing else open, and turn off the phone. If you’re going to eat, put away the computer and other devices and shut off the television.

3. Choose wisely. Don’t just start doing something. Give it some thought — do you really want to turn on the TV? Do you really want to do email right now? Is this the most important work task you can be doing?

4. Really pour yourself into it. If you’re going to make tea, do it with complete focus, complete dedication. Put everything you have into that activity. If you’re going to have a conversation, really listen, really be present. If you’re going to make your bed, do it with complete attention and to the best of your abilities.

5. Practice. This isn’t something you’ll learn to do overnight. You can start right now, but you’re not likely to be good at it at first. Keep at it. Practice daily, throughout the day. Do nothing else, but practice.

Single-tasking productivity

While the above tips will apply to work tasks as well as life in general, here are some tips focused more on productivity at work:

1. Pick just a few tasks each day. While you might keep a longer master list of things to do, each day you should make a short list — just 1-3 things you really want to accomplish. Call this your Most Important Task (MIT) list. These should be extremely important tasks that will have a high-impact on your life.

2. Don’t do anything else before doing the first thing on your short list of MITs. Don’t check email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, online forums, news sites. Start your day after making your short list by working on your first MIT.

3. Clear distractions. Shut off phones, close the browser if possible, close your IM program if you have one, even disconnect your Internet if you can stand it.

4. One task at a time. Keep things simple, focused and effective by single-tasking. Focus on one task until it’s done, then move to the next.

5. If you feel the urge to check your email or switch to another task, stop yourself. Breathe deeply. Re-focus yourself. Get back to the task at hand.

6. Keep on your MITs until you’re done. Then you have time for email, paperwork, routine tasks, etc. Or if you have the time, pick another set of MITs.

7. If other things come up, note them on a piece of paper or small notebook. These are notes for things to do or follow-up on later, or ideas. Just take a short note, and then get back to your MIT. This way you don’t get sidetracked, but you also don’t forget those things you need to remember later.

8. Take deep breaths, stretch, and take breaks now and then. Enjoy life. Go outside, and appreciate nature. Keep yourself sane.

Keep a very short to-do list, clear distractions, do one thing at a time, until the list is finished. That’s single-tasking productivity at its essence.

On Multi-projecting

There’s a distinction between tasks and projects that should be made in any discussion of mult-tasking. Doing multiple tasks at the same time is less effective than single-tasking. But doing multiple projects at once is sometimes more effective than only one project at once.

Sometimes it’s necessary to work on multiple projects — even if you are in complete control of your work, which is not true for many people. If you only work on one project at once, often you are held up because you’re waiting for somebody to do a task or reply to you with necessary information. What happens then? Or what happens if you’re collaborating on a project but while someone else is doing their part, you don’t have much to do? In these cases, it would probably be a waste of your time if you just waited, and worked on nothing else.

So multi-projecting can work — you get one project going, but while you’re waiting on something, you can switch to a second or even third project. All the time, you’re only working on one task at a time, until each task is done, however.

Do note that there’s a danger in taking on too many projects at once. I’d suggest taking on as few projects as possible. If you can do only one project at a time, without getting stuck in waiting, then do that — it’s much more effective and you’ll get your projects done much faster. But when you must wait, you can switch to a second project. Again, work on as few at a time as you can get away with.

Next chapter: the power of a smaller work focus

‘It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?’ ~Henry David Thoreau

Many of us do this — we have our email inbox open most of the day, and most of the time, our work is right there, in the inbox. It’s where we live, communicate, keep track of tasks, do our work, organize ourselves.

Unfortunately, it’s not the best way to live and work. You’re constantly getting interrupted by new messages, and so we’re at the mercy of the requests of others. A new email comes in, and so we must stop what we’re doing to check the new email, and possibly respond. Even if we don’t respond right away, whatever we were just doing was interrupted.

This is the opposite of focus, and nothing exemplifies the need for focus better. Sure, you’re always in touch, always up to date, always on top of things. But you have no focus, and you’re buffeted in all directions by the winds of your email (or Twitter, Facebook, IM or other communication channels). It’s also hard to prioritize when you’re living in a sea of emails — every new email become important, and that makes choosing our tasks carefully an almost impossible task.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Get your task list out of your inbox. An email inbox is a bad todo list, because it can’t be prioritized, emails can’t be renamed to reflect the tasks within them, emails have multiple tasks within them, and there are always new emails coming in. Instead, choose a simple to-do list and as you process your email inbox, pull out the actions to the to-do list. A notebook or index card works fine, as does a simple program such as Taskpaper or Things, or even a text file in Notepad or TextEdit or Notational Velocity. If you set up a keyboard shortcut for your to-do app or file, it just takes a second to copy and paste a to-do from an email.

2. Do email only at pre-appointed times. You’ll need to experiment to find the schedule that works best for you, but try to stick to it rather than constantly checking your inbox. Examples might be: check email 5 minutes at the top of each hour, or just twice a day (say, at 9 am and 3 pm), or once a day at 10 am, or twice a week. Again, these are just examples — your needs will dictate the best schedule for you, though I would suggest trying a less frequent schedule than you think you need and seeing if that works.

3. Do your work with your email closed. When it’s not a pre-appointed time to check email, have it closed. This principle, by the way, also applied to any other forms of communication, such as Twitter, Facebook, IM, forums, etc., as well as other distractions such as games. Close them all when you’re going to work. In fact, close your browser or at least all the browser tabs you don’t need for that specific task. Now work without distraction for at least a short period.

4. Choose your tasks wisely. Once you’re out of your inbox, you can prioritize. You can decide what’s important, because you’re no longer at the mercy of the requests of others. What’s the best use of your time? What tasks will have the most impact on your life and work, rather than just seeming urgent right now?

Next chapter: the value of distraction

‘Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.’ ~German proverb

Many of us are slaves to the news, to the need to keep updated with what’s happening in the world, in our business niche, with our friends.

We are information junkies in some way: we watch TV news all the time, or entertainment news, or keep up with lots of blogs, or our RSS feed reader, or Twitter, or Digg or Delicious, or email, or one of the many news aggregator sites.

The need to keep up consumes much of our day, and creates a kind of anxiety our minds barely register.

What is this need based on? Why can’t we get free of it?

Actually, we can get free. I’ve done it in my life, to a large extent. Let’s examine the two questions.

What is this need based on?

In short: fear.

If we really think about it, we’re not gaining much by keeping up with all this information. How is it adding to our lives? How is it helping us to create, to live happy lives, to do what’s most important to us, to spend time with our loved ones? If anything, it takes away from these things.

Let me repeat that point: this obsession with keeping up with information takes away from the things that are most important to us.

But we try to keep up because we’re afraid:

• we might miss something important, and seem ignorant
• we might miss out on an opportunity
• we might not see something bad that we need to respond to
• something bad might happen to us if we aren’t informed

These fears seem reasonable, until we test them. Then we can see that they’re not really grounded in anything other than societal norms, and a “need” created by media corporations and similar companies.

How to break free

Two ways: 1) examine each fear individually, and 2) test them.

When we shine a light on our fears, they lose power. When we test them to see their validity, they will usually fail, and we can overcome them.

Let’s shine a brief light:

1. We might seem ignorant. Really? How often do people quiz you on current events, or laugh at you for not knowing? Maybe some times, but even if it does happen, so what? Let others be fueled by this need, and let yourself focus on things you care about, not what others think is important.
2. We might miss out on an opportunity. Possibly. There are always going to be opportunities we miss. But more likely are the opportunities we’re missing because we’re letting our days be consumed by trying to stay up to date. When we do this, we lose time we could be using to pursue exciting, real opportunities.
3. We might not see something bad that we need to respond to. If something really bad is happening, we’ll know. I hear things on Twitter, even if I only pop in once in awhile, and friends and family will always tell me about a storm or economic collapse or something similar. Sure, this is relying on others, but if they’re going to tell us anyway, why worry about keeping up ourselves?
4. Something bad might happen to us if we aren’t informed. This is highly unlikely. I’ve been uninformed — tuned out from the news and other information I don’t want — for a few years now. Nothing bad has happened to me. Instead, good things have happened because I’m free to create, to focus on what makes me happy.

The next step is to actually test the fears. Do this by tuning out of the news or whatever information you try to keep up with, for one day. Then see if any of your fears came true.

If not, feel free to read the news you want, peruse the websites you follow. Then try a second test of two days — see what happens. Keep repeating this, but extending the test, until you can go a couple weeks without staying up to date. Then see if your fears are true.

Testing will show you facts. You’ll see if something bad happens, or if you appear ignorant, or if you miss out on big opportunities. You’ll also see whether you are freer to live the life you want.

Next chapter: how not to live in your inbox

‘Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.’ ~Lao Tzu

We have developed a fairly urgent need to respond to many things: emails, Tweets & other social network status updates, instant messages, phone calls, text messages, blog posts, blog comments, forum posts, and more. This need to respond gives us anxiety until we’ve responded, but unfortunately, there is a never-ending stream of things that require your response.

If we allow these messages to force us to respond, almost as soon as they come, then we become driven by the need to respond. Our day becomes responsive rather than driven by conscious choices. We flit from one task to another, one response to another, living a life driven by the needs of others, instead of what we need, what we feel is important.

You don’t need to respond.

Think about why we feel we need to respond to everything. Often it’s just a compulsion — we’re so used to answering messages that we have developed an urge to respond. Often it’s also out of fear: fear that people won’t think we’re doing our job, fear that we’ll lose customers, fear that we’ll miss out on something important, fear that people will think we’re rude or ignoring them.

But what if we weaned ourselves from this compulsion? And what if we addressed these fears?

1. First, imagine that you’re free from the compulsion. What would it be like? You’d choose what you’re going to do today, and work on the important things. You could still respond to emails and other things, but it would be because you decided it was important to communicate something, not because someone else sent you a message and you felt compelled to reply. You’d be much less stressed out, because you don’t feel like you need to get through these piles of things to respond to, or worry about people trying to contact you through various channels.

2. Next, address the fears. Think about what specific fears you have — are you afraid people will think you’re rude? Are you afraid you’ll miss something? Are you afraid you’ll lose customers, or get in trouble at work? Figure out what your fears are — there are probably more than one. Now address them with a tiny test — go without responding, just for a few hours. What happened? Did you lose anything? Did you miss anything? Did someone get offended? If nothing bad happens, extend this test — try half a day, or a full day. See what happens. In most cases, nothing bad will happen at all. In a few cases, something negative might happen, but it’ll be pretty minor. You’ll realize that your fears are mostly ungrounded.

3. Finally, start weaning yourself. If you agree that being free of these compulsions would be a better way of living, start moving towards this life. Again, try just a small test — a couple hours every day when you don’t respond to things. Set a time, after this “response-free” block of your day, when you do respond. This way, you’re in control — you decide when to respond. Eventually, you might increase your “response-free” zone to half a day or more, but start small.

Next chapter: let go of the need to stay updated

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.” - Lao Tzu

One of the unshakable tenets of success and productivity literature is that you need to have goals in order to be successful.

And from this tenet comes all sorts of other beliefs:

• You need to set goals the right way (such as the SMART method).
• You need to break goals down into actionable tasks.
• You need to have deadlines and timeframes.
• You need to make goals the focus of your day.

I know this, because I’ve believed it and lived it and written about it, for a long time.

Until recently.

Until recently, I’d always set goals for myself — short-term and long-term ones, with action lists. I’ve made progress on each one, and accomplished a lot of goals. And from this traditional viewpoint, I’ve been successful. So no argument there: goals work, and you can be successful using goals.

But are they the only way?

More recently I’ve moved away from goals, broken free of the shackles of goals. I’ve liberated myself because goals are not ideal, in my way of thinking:

• They are artificial — you aren’t working because you love it, you’re working because you’ve set goals.
• They’re constraining — what if you want to work on something not in line with your goals? Shouldn’t we have that freedom?
• They put pressure on us to achieve, to get certain things done. Pressure is stressful, and not always in a good way.
• When we fail (and we always do), it’s discouraging.
• We’re always thinking about the future (goals) instead of the present. I prefer to live in the present.

But most of all, here’s the thing with goals: you’re never satisfied. Goals are a way of saying, “When I’ve accomplished this goal (or all these goals), I will be happy then. I’m not happy now, because I haven’t achieved my goals.” This is never said out loud, but it’s what goals really mean. The problem is, when we achieve the goals, we don’t achieve happiness. We set new goals, strive for something new.

And while many people will say that striving for something new is a good thing, that we should always be striving, unfortunately it means we’re never satisfied. We never find contentment. I think that’s unfortunate — we should learn how to be content now, with what we have. It’s what minimalism is all about, really.

And if my philosophy is to be happy now, with enough, with the present, then how are goals consistent with this? It’s something I’ve tried to reconcile over the last few years, with some success.

So if we are content now, and we abandon goals, does that mean we do nothing? Sit around or sleep all day?

Not at all. I certainly don’t do that. We should do what makes us happy, follow our passions, do things that make us excited. For me and many people, that’s creating, building new things, expressing ourselves, making something useful or new or beautiful or inspiring.

So here’s what I do, instead of setting and achieving goals:

• I do what excites me. Each day. I wake up, and work on things that I’m passionate about, create things that I love creating.
• I don’t worry about where I’ll be (professionally) in a year or even six months, but where I am right now.
• I don’t make plans, because they’re an illusion — you never know what will happen in a year or even six months. You can try to control what happens, but you’ll lose. Things always come up, sometimes good and sometimes bad, that will disrupt plans. Instead, I’ve learned to go with the flow, to not worry about things that disrupt plans but worry about what to do right now. This allows me to take advantage of opportunities that come up that I could never have planned for, to work on things I couldn’t have known about, to make decisions about what’s best right now, not what I planned a few months ago.
• I don’t force things, but do what comes naturally.
• And I focus on the present, on being happy now.

This has taken me time — letting go of goals is a scary and uncomfortable thing, but if you let them go gradually, it’s not that hard. I’ve slowly adapted the way I work, and learned to work in the moment, and go with the flow of the world that surrounds me (online and off).

It’s a beautiful way of working. And not incidentally, I’ve accomplished even more this way, without making that a goal. It’s a natural byproduct of doing what you love.

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” - Lao Tzu

Next chapter: finding simplicity