Do Less (14 page)

Screen time is no longer limited to living rooms or movie theaters. We can watch a movie while sitting on a bus or play a video game while at a restaurant. With great Internet and media availability comes great temptation. Feeling bored or unmotivated at work? There are literally a billion things to watch or read on the Internet. Tempted to order a pizza at ten o'clock at night even though you should really go to bed? A few taps on your tablet computer and a deep-dish pepperoni is on its way.

The Internet and mobile online technology have brought us so much freedom and also so much wasted time. We've become so used to rapid-fire information, text messages flowing in, and online news headlines changing on the hour, that it's hard for us to actually focus on something or someone exclusively for longer than a few minutes. We've become so connected to our cell phones and computers that we can't relax when we're away from them. Many of us feel enslaved to all this new technology. This all-day connectedness is enough of a problem that people are now paying to go on vacations or retreats where there are no cell phones and anything that connects to the Internet is confiscated on arrival.

We don't have to let our days be driven by instant messages and hitting refresh on an Internet browser. Taking a step back from technology and being online is the first step in gaining more hours in your day. Start by honestly tracking how many times a day you check your e-mail or log into a social media site. See if you can reduce the frequency to just once or twice a day.

Align your time with your values and goals and push yourself to focus on just one task at a time, be it making a meal or folding laundry. Take the urgency and compulsion to just “check one more thing” away by putting your cell phone and laptop away and out of view when you want to focus on other things—especially people.

If you struggle with spending too much time online, if the need to be connected online hinders your ability to do things you value, start to slowly wean yourself from online activities and add in engaging no-screen-required hobbies. It may help to tell friends and family about your goals and make plans with them where you both commit to no cell phones or being online. Treat your Internet time as you would food if you were working on your nutrition or trying to lose weight. Set limits, monitor your consumption, and find alternate ways to keep yourself engaged and active.

What's the goal of all this decluttering and reprioritizing of your life and work? More time for things you love. The end result is creating time, money, and space to do things that you truly enjoy and that are of value to you.

Take a cursory glance at a current home décor or lifestyle magazine and you'll see that the number of craft or do-it-yourself projects is overwhelming. Where and how do people find the time to do all these sewing and woodworking projects? Don't they have jobs to go to? The world of blogging and sites likes Facebook.com and Pinterest.com just provide more fodder for the super-hobbyist who seems to need only three hours of sleep a night.

The pressure to do everything and have it all—the homemade sprouted grain bread, the bathroom painstakingly renovated with no help from professionals, and the rigorous amateur triathlon-training schedule—is abundant. It's also a pressure that brings layers of stress and loss with it: for every handmade Halloween costume, there is a takeout pizza dinner and a mother with bags under her eyes. No one does it all—they just show us the best of themselves in the moments they are very proud of. Accept this, understand it, and move on so you can enjoy the things you are good at and stop trying to do it all.

Hobbies should be things we do to relieve stress, relax, and feel good. One way we confuse ourselves when we try to have it all is by thinking that hobbies are required. Making your own deodorant from scratch is a hobby, not a necessity. Even exercise, a requirement for a healthy life, has to be viewed as a hobby. Those things you give your time to beyond work, sleep, and eating have to be recognized as optional. If they're not, you'll never get past this idea that you can do it all. Trust me: You don't have to hunt down dinner in the woods or train for an open-water swimming competition to have a rewarding life.

With this in mind, think about your hobbies and write them down. Include every last one of them. Those half-finished home projects and the tennis rackets you haven't used in years should be somewhere on your hobby list. Anything beyond your basic kitchen equipment should be represented on the list: cake decorating, canning, fresh pasta–making. If you own a sewing machine, sewing must be one of your hobbies. If you have a workbench with tools, home repair is a hobby. Nothing is too big or too small to be on this list.

Also include on your hobby list any obligations outside of work: committees, teams, friends, fitness, and sports. If you regularly have yard work to do on weekends, meet once a week for coffee with your mother, or spend seven hours a week driving your children to and from school, put it all on the list. This is a chance to really see the people and activities you spend your time on.

Now make a list of things that make you happy. Is one of your hobbies on that list? It should be. Your list might be as long as a dozen things. The truth? It's probably impossible for you to do them all. So pick three top choices and allow yourself the time, space, and money to enjoy them properly.

Simplifying means getting rid of what you don't enjoy so you can focus more on what you do enjoy. If that box of découpage supplies makes you feel guilty since you bought it on a whim and haven't made anything with it in the two years since, let it go. Someone else, probably someone you know, will be only too happy to take your unused goods.

Worried about the “what ifs” again? As in, what if you find the time or motivation to take up a sport or hobby and you've sold or given away all your equipment and supplies? Well, that would be a good problem to have. You could buy skis again secondhand when your schedule allows you to be a regular skier again.

Hobbies are meant to enrich your life and be special pastimes. They are not meant to be burdens that clutter your home and schedule. So keep just hobbies you enjoy regularly in your life and pass on the equipment or cancel your membership for the rest.

When was the last time you quit something? Not a diet or exercise routine, but a committee or club. If you are low on time and high on stress, consider quitting one of your obligations. Step down from your seat on the Parent Teacher Association, drop out of the Wednesday night language club that you dread every week, and even consider quitting a social media website. If you have children and are driving back and forth across the city to their music and sport practices, ask
them
to quit one, or two, or four of those lessons. Often we feel that we have to sign up for the lesson or the team when, in fact, everything is optional. You don't have to have a Facebook.com account, your child doesn't have to take gymnastics lessons, and you certainly don't have to be a part of every committee that asks you to be a member.

If it frightens you to quit or say no to something, start with a trial absence. Take a semester off, put your account on hold for a month, and tell your softball team you won't be available this season. Get a taste for what it feels like to not have every hour of your week blocked off with obligations. Find out how it tastes to eat leisurely weekday breakfasts, at the table and not in your car. This slice of the sweet and simple life, one without hours in the car and rushed meals, may convert you to the Do Less mantra.

If you're concerned about your children not participating in multiple sports and clubs, determine what they are excelling at and have a genuine interest in and then reduce based on that list. Today's kids need more unstructured time for play and exploration, and yes, even for doing nothing much at all. Overscheduling of school children, even preschoolers, is a modern problem and the result is stressed-out families and kids. Included in the stress are all the fees for classes and extra tuition that come along with these extracurricular activities. So save your kids' sanity, and your own, and place some much-needed breaks into your weekday schedule.

Do you look through the evening-class catalogue from the local college every semester but never sign up for anything? Do you diligently read all the offerings on the bulletin board at the coffee shop, wistfully looking at ads for sitar lessons and foreign language conversation clubs, but never take one of the little strips of paper with the contact information? Now that you've decluttered your life of hobbies that weren't priorities, try something new. Learning a new skill sharpens the mind and sparks creativity.

Want to enjoy your hobbies and friends more? Want to savor the taste of that expensive steak or laugh out loud at that sitcom? Start by putting your cell phone away. Most of us don't need to be available by phone at every hour of the day. And yet we are. We let phone calls and text messages interrupt the good and bad in our lives. When someone calls during a particularly wonderful or stressful moment we tend to blame our phones for interrupting us. Yet, we control our cell phones. We can turn them off or on and we can silence them.

Try it: Silence your phone. Silence it so you can engage with yourself, the person in front of you, and whatever work or activity you are giving your time to. If you turn your phone off or, even better, leave it at home, you can focus. It's not always easy, particularly when you're with people who give their cell phones a place at the table, but it is well worth it.

If you find the idea of not having your cell phone on or at hand stressful, start with small steps. Put your cell phone on silent for an afternoon and try to not check it for two to three hours. Slowly increase your cell phone–free time from there. Remember, it's okay to not answer your phone. You don't need to be available to everyone at every hour of the day. You can call people back when it suits you and you can let people know you were busy. Sleep, relaxing, and having time when you're really not doing much at all are adequate reasons to not be available by phone.

If you're concerned about what your new availability will do to existing friendships, simply let your friends in on the plan. Talk about your reasons for putting your phone away or not answering it and discuss this lifestyle change as if it were a new workout regime or a restructuring of your work hours. Also share how it benefits your friendship: You want to be more present and less distracted when you are spending time with them.

Dunbar's number is a theory that we have a limit to the number of relationships we can have. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar developed this theory based on a correlation between primate brain sizes and average social group size. For the average human it means our brain size allows us to relate to and remember the relationships of about 150 people. After that we don't have the cognitive ability to remember each person and his relationship to us and to the other 149 people. This number is just for acquaintances and colleagues. This isn't a number for an inner circle of close friends and confidants. This is the sum of names you can remember and put to faces while also recalling that they volunteer at the library.

Consider Dunbar's number when you look at your social media connections. Sure, being friends on Facebook.com might help you remember someone's name, but at what cost? If the number of people whose names and relationships you can accurately remember is 150, how many people can you have deep and meaningful and reciprocal relationships with? How many people can you give your time to and know well enough to be able to ask for help and give help in a crisis? How many people can you allow into your life and still have space and energy for your own needs and dreams? How many people can you read updates from, take phone calls from, and spend time with face-to-face? For a lot of us, that number is just a fraction of Dunbar's number of 150.

As you remove the unneeded from your life, as you declutter to get to the heart of what you want more of, as you remember the simple things that bring a lot of happiness into your life, sometimes you see that you have to declutter your friends, too. You might have to let go of a few people so you can make more room for deeper friendships and be a better friend to those closest to you. You might have to let go of people that you don't bring out the best in and that don't bring out the best in you.

Which friends do you let go of? Just as you wouldn't keep clothing from junior high school to wear or books from primary school to read, you can let go of friends that you have outgrown. Perhaps you have each taken different paths in life and they no longer converge or even run parallel. Despite no common interests and no deep-shared history or roots, you've kept up the mechanics of friendship. There may be a few indicators that you have both outgrown each other, but neither of you has come to terms with it enough to let go. It's time to let go if you feel:

• Dread when the person calls
  
• Guilt when you realize you haven't seen him in months
  
• Regret when you spend time with the person but are constantly checking your watch
  

View it as the ultimate act of kindness. You no longer need to waste each other's time.

You can also let go of negative relationships. As part of your minimalist approach to happiness, as part of your new edict to Do Less and do things well, you don't have room for people who speak negatively about you or to you. In the quest for a happy and organized life, you may have to walk away from some friendships in order to let others thrive. Even if the person has done negative things in the past, you've likely justified the friendship in one way or another, which can make it difficult to leave. How do you gently break away from a friend? Most likely the seed has already been planted. Remember, if you're not getting something positive out of the relationship, it's likely the other person isn't either.