Living the Simple Life

by Elaine St James

This is a far cry from my previous lists, but when I factor in all the activities of daily living—the things we have to do to survive, like food shopping, cooking, eating, sleeping—realistically, this is what I have time for.

  It was a tremendous relief for me to look at all the other things I’d been carrying around on those lists, and to finally get the picture that there were simply not enough hours in the day or in the week or in the year to accomplish them all, and that I was going to have to let most of them go, at least for now.

  In my experience, as people start to simplify their lives, the things that really matter naturally come to the forefront. Ideally, you reach the point where all the distractions have been minimized or eliminated from your life. The things that are important to you are so few and so obvious that you don’t even need to write them down. Instead, by simplifying you’ve been able to arrange your life so that each day automatically revolves around those things.

  If you’re an incurable list maker, be open to the possibility that you may have to cut your lists back to more realistic proportions.

  If you’re not a list maker by nature or by habit, you might find it helpful to come up with a brief list of four or five things you’ll want to concentrate on as you begin to simplify your life.

  Just don’t get carried away.

  23. Remember, There Are Only Twenty-Four Hours in the Day

  I have long been aware of the notion that there are only twenty-four hours in a day. But until I simplified, I hadn’t stopped long enough to figure out how that frequently overlooked detail affected my life.

  It’s very deceptive. Twenty-four hours sounds like a lot of time, and so it feels as though we should be able to fit into the day all the things we think we have to do as well as all the things we want to do.

  But the fact is if you work eight hours a day and sleep eight hours a night, that leaves only eight hours for everything else.

  Most of us spend roughly half of those eight hours provisioning for, preparing, eating, and cleaning up after our meals; bathing, brushing, and flossing; finding the right necktie or looking for a pair of stockings without a run in them; and if we’re lucky, cycling, jogging, or walking around the block.

  If you factor in commute time, housekeeping chores, mail sorting, bill paying, sex, social phone calls, duty phone calls, feeding the dog, cleaning out the cat’s litter box, and scheduling the next day’s activities, you can use up more than half of those four hours before you even turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper.

  If you have child-related duties or volunteer commitments, or if you spend extra time at the office or excessive time commuting, that leaves approximately no quality time with your spouse, your kids, your friends, no quiet time alone, and no time for your creative interests, which are the things the majority of us agree are the most important.

  We may believe, for example, that we can get ready to leave for the office in forty-five minutes. But the reality is that, in addition to all the things we have to do in that time to get dressed—shower, shave, blow dry, and stand in front of the closet for ten minutes trying to figure out what to wear—we also have to squeeze the orange juice, pack the kids’ lunches, walk the dog, bring in the paper, and feed the cat. And we wonder why we’re dashing out the door fifteen minutes late for the office.

  We think we can do it all. But in the reality of the twenty-four-hour day, it seems unlikely. It takes a tremendous amount of time just to keep up with spouses who want our attention, kids who need our love, employers who demand our souls, homes that take a lot of our energy, friendships that require nurturing, and our own inner cravings that need to be met. That’s enough for one twenty-four-hour day.

  For many of us, all the other things we think we want to attend to will have to wait until they start making thirty-six-hour days.

  24. Remember that Relationships Take Time

  When you’re zeroing in on what’s important to you, keep in mind that our close relationships frequently need more time than we’ve devoted to them in recent years.

  This seems so obvious, but given the fact that one out of three marriages ends in divorce and our children feel disenfranchised, it’s apparently easy to overlook. Not that inattention is the only cause of divorce, but it’s certainly a contributing factor.

  Gibbs and I have always felt that our marriage was one of our very top priorities, but we’d gradually begun to devote more and more energy to our goals without realizing that the time we had for each other was getting lost in the shuffle.

  Considering all the other pressures and the time demands that we allow to impinge on our day-to-day activities, it’s easy to get into the habit of taking our closest relationships for granted.

  I believe there’s also a subtle tendency to think that once we’ve landed the person of our dreams, we can check “get married” off our list. Then we move ahead, have our 2.3 children, and check “have children” off the list.

  Then we get so caught up in the work we do to support these relationships—and the home, the cars, the clothes, and the never-ending cultural and social and educational activities that seem necessary—that we lose sight of the relationships themselves.

  We can so easily end up with a variation of the famous Roy Lichtenstein cartoon of the 1980s. One that says, “Oh my God! I forgot to make time for my family.”

  If you’re in a relationship or have children, these are no doubt going to be a top priority. Devote some of your newfound free time to your nearest and dearest.

  25. Stop Feeding Your Ego

  A few years ago I was asked to write book reviews for one of the major book clubs. At the time, I was delighted to accept this offer. It gave me the chance to keep up with the latest books in my field of investing, and it also gave me the opportunity to say that I was doing reviews for this prestigious book club.

  While that sounded impressive, at least to my ear, the reality was that the work was intermittent, the manuscripts were often tedious, the deadlines were urgent, and the pay was lousy. As time went on, it became a major complication in my life.

  As my field of interest changed, it would have been logical to discontinue this work. But I kept doing it far longer than I should have, somewhat out of habit, partly out of feeling fortunate to have been asked to do this thing (that I didn’t really want to do), but mostly so I could continue to say, if only to myself, that I was doing reviews for this book club.

  Eventually, I figured out that if I stopped doing the reviews, I could still say I used to do book reviews for this prestigious book club, and it would carry almost the same weight in terms of ego gratification. So I finally got wise, and retired from this activity.

  Even though it’s embarrassing for me to admit this, I know from talking to people that this kind of behavior is not unusual.

  We often get into work situations, social commitments, volunteer obligations, sports routines, and other types of activities that complicate our lives. We stay in them far longer than we need to because it looks good on paper, or because it sounds good when we have the opportunity to drop it into conversations, or because in some way it meets our own or someone else’s expectations of the kinds of things we think we should be doing.

  We each have to decide for ourselves when it’s appropriate to bow out of these kinds of endeavors. This might be a good time to take a look at your life and see if there are any activities you’re involved in that are no longer serving a purpose for your simple life. Then drop them.

  26. Learn to Make Good Choices

  In order to simplify, we have to start making choices, sometimes difficult choices. And often it means saying no, even to the things we want to do.

  Shortly after Gibbs and I began to take steps to simplify, we found ourselves having dinner with some friends who were into hang gliding.

  We spent the entire evening listening to them rave about the thrill of this fascinating sport. As we sat there being seduced by yet another activity, we imagined ourselves leaping off the cliff an
d soaring silently over the beautiful hills behind our home.

  By the time the evening was over we’d promised our friends we’d meet them at six o’clock the next morning on a nearby peak to try out their gear and have our first lesson.

  All the way home we talked about how wonderful it would be to start hang gliding.

  Then we walked through the front door, looked at each other, and reality began to set in. We reminded ourselves of how little time we actually have available. We realized there was no way we’d be able to fit a new sport into our schedule, especially one as time and energy consuming as hang gliding. We knew that our short list would suffer if we did. And our short list had been suffering long enough.

  When we analyzed it carefully, we realized hang gliding was not as high on our list as we’d originally thought.

  Reluctantly, we called our friends and explained why we wouldn’t be able to join them.

  “Sorry, we got carried away. We’d truly love to meet you tomorrow morning, but we’re making some changes in our lives, and we simply won’t have time to get involved in hang gliding for the time being.”

  When we thought about it later, we realized this was progress for us. In the past, we’d have purchased all the equipment and had six weeks of lessons before it dawned on us that we couldn’t fit this new activity into our schedule.

  And all the time, we’d have been wondering why, when we were at last engaged in this wonderful activity that we both had thought we wanted, our lives had become even more complicated and stressed out. The choices then would have been to stop hang gliding and feel guilty about all the time and money we’d wasted, or to keep trying to justify the expenditure by continuing with an endeavor that we didn’t have time for.

  The need to make wise choices encompasses every area of our lives. Since we have time for only a limited amount of stuff, we need to choose wisely what stuff we’re going to allow to take up that time. Since we have only a limited amount of time to spend with friends or to engage in leisure activities, we need to choose our friends and our activities wisely.

  Take a look at your own life to see if there are any choices you might be able to make that would free up more time and energy for the things that are higher up on your list.

  27. Set Your Time Management System Aside

  If you’ve got an extensive list of all the things you want to do or feel you have to do, how do you get to a simple list?

  One possibility is to try a fresh approach.

  One of the best things I did when I went on my four-day retreat was to leave behind that time management system with the interminable lists.

  No doubt there are people who wouldn’t agree with this tactic. After all, frequently our whole lives—our goals, our aspirations, our life purpose, our priorities, our to-do lists—are laid out in those systems. And we’ve become addicted to them. We’ve spent untold dollars learning to use them, and countless hours keeping up with the process.

  But many of us have found that those systems don’t manage as well as we’d thought they would. I finally began to suspect that my lists were part of the problem.

  In addition to including all the things we think we want to do, often our goal lists reflect what we feel we ought to do. In many cases these lists are determined, sometimes without our even recognizing it, by outside influences such as career demands, peer pressures, parental expectations, family obligations, or media enticements. Frequently we’ve lost touch with what we truly want to do.

  I looked at one of the bestselling books on time management recently. The charts, lists, goal planners, and other strategies required to manage our hectic days made my head spin. It’s my belief that those systems don’t simplify our lives; often they assist us in keeping them complicated.

  Even more insidious is the subtle underlying message in many of these systems that somehow we’re missing out on life, or in some way are not doing our part if each day isn’t scheduled down to the last minute.

  I’m not suggesting that you shelve your time management system permanently, but merely that you set it aside as you figure out what matters.

  It may well be that some of those things that matter are already on one of your existing lists. That’s okay. The idea here is to let the list you’ll be forming now come from your heart rather than from your own or someone else’s expectations.

  As you reduce the stress and time demands of your hectic life, your new list may turn out, as mine did, to be not only shorter, but quite different than you expected.

  FOUR

  Some Things to Think About

  28. Simplifying Is Often Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

  One of the things Gibbs and I did to simplify was to get rid of a lot of the clutter in our lives. That was two big steps forward for us.

  It took us several weeks to complete this process and it was several more weeks before we could hold a garage sale to unload the stuff, so in the interim our living space was in a state of chaos. That was a temporary step back.

  Then, after the thrift store truck pulled out of the driveway with everything we couldn’t unload in the garage sale, we decided to move to a smaller house. Two steps forward.

  We went through another month of disruption until we could get into our new place. One step back.

  It was another week or so before we were completely settled into our small but cozy condo. Two steps forward.

  It was only a couple of months later that we noticed we were going out and acquiring things to fill it up again. Ten steps back.

  One of Gibbs’s objectives in simplifying was to have time to devote to some of his volunteer projects, and so he started reading for Recording for the Blind. Two steps forward.

  A year later he stopped one day and realized that in addition to his weekly reading, he was also now participating in the local adult literacy program and had become an active member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. He was beginning to feel overwhelmed again. One step back.

  When I made the decision to write Inner Simplicity, I realized I had found a new career possibility. A major step forward in terms of finding my life’s work.

  But I committed to a tight deadline, which meant I wrote practically around the clock during that time. Even though I loved what I was doing, it was definitely two steps back in terms of scheduling balance into my routine.

  It might be helpful to know that the two step one step phenomenon can occur on the way to living the simple life. The habits of a fast-paced life die slowly. And change by its very nature is disruptive. Even with the best planning, it may not be possible to avoid periods of upheaval and disorder—and possibly even confusion—on the way to a simple life.

  29. Be Aware of the Pitfalls of Having Extra Time on Your Hands

  Making changes in your schedule so you can free up an hour or two every morning for the next month will make it possible for you to start making some dramatic changes in your life.

  It can also be terrifying. Or tremendously challenging. You might feel guilty. Or you might want to run screaming back to some time-consuming drama so you don’t have to deal with the real issues. Or it can be all of the above.

  Keep in mind that the complications in our lives can take on a momentum of their own. They can rapidly expand to fill the time allotted for them. They can also expand to fill time that is not allotted for them. Stay focused, and no matter how strong the temptation, don’t let the latest crisis—yours or anyone else’s—eat into your newfound time.

  This is one reason to schedule some of your quiet time away from your usual setting where most of the distractions occur with predictable regularity.

  If you’re in the habit of feeling rushed and overpowered by your schedule, don’t allow that habit to carry over into your new free time. Make a concerted effort, especially in the early stages of simplifying, to stay loose and relaxed.

  You may reach a point where it feels as though it would just be simpler to continue with your hectic life. It’s clear to me now that o
ne of the reasons I maintained a complicated life was because I was afraid of what I’d have to unravel in order to simplify it. Having taken major steps to eliminate the complexities of my life, I can assure you that, even in the short run, simplifying is easier once you’ve taken the plunge.

  Also, remember we know how to move at breakneck speed, so at one level that feels comfortable. Most of us haven’t had as much practice moving slowly, so doing so with ease can be a real challenge.

  Be prepared for change. When I simplified, my whole life was transformed dramatically: I reduced my living space by more than half, I moved away from relationships that weren’t working, I let go of a lot of my limiting beliefs, I found a new career, and was compelled, ultimately, to confront a lot of my inner demons. All this can make you feel like you’re standing at the edge of a cliff.

  If you find yourself feeling uncomfortable with a lot of extra time on your hands, try to figure out exactly what it is you’re experiencing. Identifying your reactions is the first step toward moving beyond them.

  Don’t let an initial feeling of discomfort keep you from making the changes you want to make in your life. Realize that once you get into the process and actually begin taking steps to simplify, you’ll leave those feelings behind pretty quickly.

  30. Get Off Automatic Pilot

  One of the things that made it possible for me to keep going at high speed until I simplified my life was an innate ability to race through my day on automatic pilot. I think this is true for a lot of us.

  We’re used to rolling out of bed in the morning, moving quickly through our ablutions, grabbing a bite to eat while we read the paper or watch the morning news, packing the kids off to school or day care, putting the finishing touches on a report for the boss, having a final swig of coffee, then flying out the door to start our workday, without reflecting on what we’re doing.