Simplify your Life

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Do you still have an active item on a three-month-old "To Do" list? Are you too busy to sit with your family over tea in the evening? Do you suffer from "hurry sickness" - always in a rush to get somewhere but seldom enjoy the moment? Do you give excuses by blaming on time? If answers to these questions are YES, you need to simplify your life.

Major contribution to your "Stress" and "Lack of Time" today is the choices-overload in the market. And in time to come it is going to increase. When I was kid:

1. there were broadly just two categories of milk - Cow & Buffalo with no nutritional facts table. Today the choice is to have Full Cream, Toned, Double Toned, Zero-Fat etc. with the nutritional facts table mentioning calorific value, fat content etc. And one can get "Stress" in selecting from choices.

2. there was just one wheat flour which we used to get after finely grinding the wheat from flour mill. Today there are nearly about 50 choices in the market to pick from.

3. there used to be just one channel on TV - Doordarshan, instead Doordarshan used to be the TV. Today there are 150 channels with the options from TATA Sky to record other channel while viewing some other. Here TATA Sky is capturing the market of people suffering from "Stress" and "Lack of Time" and "Indecisiveness" in what to view and what not to on the TV.

Million Dollar question is "Were you happy then with less or no choice, or are you happy today with multiple choices?" In my opinion don't ignore the options, but downsize them to fit your need.

Fix the level of your satisfaction, and decide the one out of choices. Today if I ask you to search something on web using the best tool, you'll immediately go to Google without looking for options, and run the search in no time, because you have downsized and picked Google as your best search tool.
And if I ask you to go to Super Market, and bring the best potato chips, you'll go to the rack of chips, and will look around and will take more time to pick the best potato chips because you have not downsized on the existing options.

So my dear to get out of the stress and give yourself more time, Simplify your work, downsize your choices, and just don't sit after doing it once. Repeat it at some frequency (say 3-4 months) as by then new choices will be there in market to compare with.

To measure on if you are simplifying or not, you can ask these questions to yourself:

1. In your Job Role with the current company what are you simplifying for the Business?
2. In your relationship with people what are you simplifying for them?
3. How many things were you able to downsize out of choices last month?

If you don't evaluate and downsize on what is the best for you out of choices, anything will satisfy your need.