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.

• 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 the 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. 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: finding focus, for parents

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: finding simplicity

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: single-tasking and productivity

We are info 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.

It consumes much of our day, and creates a kind of anxiety we’re barely aware of, this need to keep up.

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 info. 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 info 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

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 (read My Story for more). 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 sad — we should learn how to be content now, with what we have. It’s what minimalism is all about, really.

And if minimalism is being 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 limited success.

So what would a true minimalist do instead? 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 to 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: you don’t need to respond

Our reading habits have changed because of the persistence and ubiquity of online distractions. We read shorter, faster, more frequently, but longer reading is dwindling. Focused reading is harder.

One effect is that we’re reading fewer books and longer articles, and more blogs and shorter articles. Another effect is that any research we need to do is filled with distractions — landmines when it comes to getting work done.

However, it’s not impossible to read or do research with focus. Just harder.

How to read longer pieces without distractions

There are two keys to reading longer pieces or books: 1) clearing away everything else, and 2) shutting off the Internet.

Without those two things, you’ll always have distractions. Even if you do manage to do those two things, the siren’s call of messages and other updates are still tempting.

For reading longer articles or blog posts, I’ll put the article/post in a separate window, without other tabs to distract me. I’ll expand that window to cover my entire screen. And then I’ll turn off the Internet, so nothing else calls while I read.

Then I just read, until I get to the end (or until I realize this article isn’t worth my time). I don’t switch to another window or program until I’m done.

There’s something peaceful about this process. It’s saying: I have nothing else to do but read this one thing. Nothing is going to interrupt me, and I can just focus on enjoying this reading.

Book reading is the same way. If you’re reading a physical book, you need to put away your laptop and mobile devices, and shut everything off. Find a quiet place, and just read. If you’re reading an ebook, clear away everything else but your ebook reader.

Then you settle into the reading, and enjoy it. Bask in the luxury of reading without distractions.

How to do the research necessary for focused creation

Research can be more of a challenge, because you need to be connected to find information, usually. You’ll want to do Google searches and then follow links within the first batch of articles you find, and so on. The nature of research tends to require link-following.

Here’s the method I suggest for more focused research:

1. Close email/IM/social networks and other distractions.
2. Do your initial search, and open up your initial batch of articles/pages.
3. Skim these articles/pages, looking for links to other articles you might need to read. Open those links.
4. Repeat with the new articles, skimming and opening links as necessary. Do this until you have all the articles open you need to read.
5. Read one article at a time, using the method in the previous section — opening that article in its own window and hiding everything else. Read through the article, and take any notes necessary. Bookmark the article if necessary for later reference.
6. Repeat, taking notes and bookmarking one article at a time. When your research is done, you can do the actual work, using the focus techniques for work in the other chapters of this book.

Next chapter: letting go of goals

Distraction, in most cases, is the enemy of focus, and so if we want to get anything done, we must learn to find at least a modicum of focus, some of the time. But that’s not to say we should banish distraction, every minute of the day. What’s needed is balance.

Distraction is important for a few reasons:

• Our minds need a break — being focused for long periods of time is stressful and we need to alternate focus with periods of relaxation.
• Distraction can take our minds off a troubling problem, and that can often lead to our minds working on the problem in the background, in our subconscious.
• Distraction can lead to inspiration — by reading other things, new ideas can be sparked, or we can find motivation.
• Distraction is fun. And in fun, we often find things we truly love. Let yourself be open to these new paths.
• Distraction can lead to better focus, once we go back to focusing.

So how can we incorporate healthy distractions, but still find necessary focus? The secret is balance: conscious, purposeful balance.

There are lots of ways to find balance. The key is to think about what you need to focus on, when your peak focusing hours are, and try different styles to find a method that works best for you.

Some ideas:

• Block off a few hours a day (all at once or broken into 2-3 parts) for focus. Let yourself do email and other communicating during the others parts of your day.
• Work in intervals. Focus for 10-15 minutes, then do 2-5 minutes of distraction, and repeat.
• Try a 40-20 split for every hour: 40 minutes of focus, 20 minutes of distraction.
• Disconnect completely for large parts of your day, and have certain periods just for distraction.

Again, these are just some ideas. You’ll have to find the method that works best for your work needs and personality.

Next chapter: focused reading and research

Let’s break this problem into three smaller problems:

1. too many tasks
2. tough to prioritize
3. tasks compete for your time

And with that, let’s discuss three strategies for dealing with these smaller problems.

1. Reduce your tasks

If you have too many tasks, the solution is to simplify your task list. Take 10 minutes to list everything you need to do — now just pick the 3-5 most important tasks. All the small tasks will go on a “do later” list, and you’re not going to worry about them now.

A good way to deal with the smaller, routine tasks that must be done (check email, pay bills, fill out paperwork, and so on) is to schedule a block of time later in the day to deal with them — perhaps the last 30 minutes of your day, or something like that. Early in the day, focus on the important tasks.

2. Choose the task that excites you

Now that you’ve simplified your task list, look at the 3-5 tasks left and pick one task. Just one.

How do you pick? Choose the task that most excites you, that feels compelling, that you’re most passionate about.

If you’re dreading the task, put it aside for now, and pick something more interesting.

If you have several tasks you’re excited about, you might also consider which task will have the biggest effect on your life. What will make the biggest impact?

3. Single-task

Now that you’ve chosen one task, put the others aside for now and just focus on that one task.

Clear away all distractions, including your mobile device and the Internet. Just have the application open that you need to work on that task.

Now get to work. Throw yourself into it, and do it for at least 10 minutes. After that, you can take a break, but try to immerse yourself for at least 10 minutes.

And have fun doing it.

Next chapter: creating an uncluttered environment