Turtles-Paradise

There are two approaches to everything. The first approach is the ‘super-project’. That’s when you commit to something and run at it full-tilt. It’s when you go on an extreme weight-loss diet, a clutter purge, a radical shift in your career, or a total life-style overhaul.

The second approach is the ‘little and often’. That’s when you commit to slowly replacing unhealthy food with healthy alternatives, de-clutter slowly by giving away one item a day, or gradually educate and transition yourself over time into a new way of being.

Both methods have plus points and minus points. The ‘super-project’ can be high-risk. It can be overwhelming, it can cause us to burn our bridges, and it can be difficult to sustain. It can also be a fast and effective means of forcing yourself to follow through, a kind of Phoenix like rebirth of yourself.

The ‘little and often’ method is often more sustainable, less dramatic and safer. It can be an effective means of gradually transforming your life and making sure you have really thought it through and built the necessary foundations. You slowly reduce your spending in one area. You slowly tidy and de-clutter your house, drawer by drawer, cupboard by cupboard. You commit to a ten year plan, instead of a ten day plan. You can also spend a lot of time spinning your wheels, getting rid of something just to buy two other things, reduce your spending in one area just to have it creep up somewhere else.

The Art of Routines

A routine is a habitual set of actions that is performed regularly. A routine is often done on auto-pilot. We come home, we turn the TV on, and we stick dinner in the microwave while watching Family Guy. A routine can also be a small thing that leads us to the goal we want. We could come home, switch into our trainers, and go for a twenty minute run.

The key is to make sure our routines are in line with what we want to achieve. How do we make sure that happens?

Decide on what you want

The first step is to know what it is you actually want. Do you want to start a side business? Cook more meals at home? Save 50% of your income? Be able to run a marathon? You can’t work towards a goal, until you know where you’re going. Otherwise you just go around in circles.

Figure out the little steps that get you there

Start a side-business? You need a client. Where do you get a client? Figure out a small list of actionable things you can do, and then pick a time of day to them. For example, you could send out three leaflets a day to local businesses. You could do this every morning before breakfast, or last thing at night before sleeping.

If it’s the ability to run a marathon, you need to go running frequently. If you want to lose weight, you need to eat a salad a day. And so on. You’re a smart person, you don’t need me to tell you what you need to do.

Keep it Simple

This is a blog about simplicity after all. Just pick one daily routine. Don’t start a side-business, go on a diet, commit to run a marathon, and take something to the charity shop every day. You want one habit that you do daily. Not ten habits that you forget and run out of time for.

Once it becomes habitual, you can start a new one. Around thirty days is probably good. And try giving up habits too, for every new one you bring in.

Remember you have a lifetime

You don’t have forever. If you keep putting it off, you’ll wake up when you’re seventy and realise you never did anything. But also – realise you have an entire lifetime. You don’t need to do everything urgently. Learning a new language can wait until you have your health sorted. Ten years is a long long time. You can spend a year messing around with one thing, and then move on to something else.

It’s about the journey – not the destination.

Eat well. Exercise.

That’s the simple mantra for a healthy life. You can make it complicated – eliminating certain foods, eating a strict diet, and sticking to a regimented and punishing gym-schedule. But most of us don’t have the time – and for most of us, any kind of exercise is better than none.

So here is my ultra-simple list of five incredibly simple exercises you can do – no gym membership, no equipment, and dead easy for beginners.

1. Walking

Walking is the easiest, simplest way to get some activity into your life. Walk to the shops. Walk to work. Walk to a friend’s house. Walk around the block. Walk through the forest, up the mountain, across the fields.

Walking is incredibly under-rated as a mode of transport. You can walk a lot further than you think, and it’s a lot less stressful than driving. It’s easy to fit into your day to day life too – in fact, why don’t you go for a walk right now? This blog will still be here when you get back.

2. Starjumps, squats, pull-ups, press-ups

I know. I hate repetitive, routine exercises too. So the easiest way to work the jumps, splits, squats, pull-ups, press-ups and other bodyweight exercises is to vary it up. Combine different movements. Make it playful – remember when you were a kid, and you used to just randomly run around and jump on things? Moving is fun, and playgrounds are great places to go if you just want to climb trees, have a go on the monkey-bars, and play ‘lava-monsters’.

3. Dance

Dancing is amazing. Okay, it’s not quite minimalist in that it requires a source of music, but I’m going to assume that if you can read this post, you can get onto youtube. Go find some upbeat music, and dance like you’ve never danced before. Nobody’s watching, so just let yourself go crazy.

As a variation, try some martial arts. Pretend you’re Bruce Lee being attacked by a hundred ninjas, and get those high-kicks and super-quick punches flying.

4. Yoga

You might want a mat. But you don’t need one, really. I can’t praise yoga enough, it’s one of those things that always makes me feel better, even if I just find five minutes to really stretch. I don’t need to go into much detail here, as the famous Everett Bogue has already written the best guide to minimalist yoga around. I should note that I’ve been using his routine very successfully for the past few weeks.

5. Play with some kids. Outdoors.

Children are whirlwind dynamos of energy, and keeping up with them can be hard-work. So do your local stressed out parents a favour, and take their kids for a day out somewhere. Go to a park, and play football or frisbee. Explore the woods or some caves. Play old playground games, like ‘stick in the mud’. Or just chase them around until they or you collapse!

Now here’s the catch. To make it worth doing, you need to keep doing it. So slow down. Make it a habit to walk to work. Agree to take the kids out once a week. Make Tuesday night the night you put on your sequins and turn the volume to eleven. Make yoga part of your nightly wind-down routine.

Now – wasn’t that easier than you thought it would be?

I’ve been thinking a lot about work-life balance recently. Or, more accurately, work-family-health-money-friendship-education balance.

Life has so many different parts to it, and it’s easy to let one of those parts become your sole focus. You work a great career, but let your health and personal life decline. You have a great social life, but your finances suck and your job is a soul sucker. You work out every day and eat optimum food, but you have few friends. And so on.

When our lives are balanced, we are happier, healthier, and emotionally stable. Work we enjoy, a solid friendship group, a healthy body and mind, enough money left over at the end of the month. These things – each one manageable on their own – add up to a sense of happiness, fulfillment and flow that far outweighs the benefits of focusing on one area.

Read the rest of this entry »

After I read about The Balanced Money Forumla, I started thinking about time, and how we really need a Balanced Time Formula as well. For most people, their day will be structured somewhat like this:

24 hours
8 for sleep
2 for commuting
8 for work
2 for eating
4 for television

with some variations.

Personally, I think life might be more fun if it was structured more like this:

24 hours
8 for sleeping
5 for working
4 for slow eating
1 for exercising
3 for friendships
3 for fun

Thinking about it, I decided ideally we want to spend about 40% of our time on productive activities (producing things of value, doing things of value – work that benefits society), about 30% of our time on friendships, being social, having fun, and about 30% on developing ourselves – educating ourselves, exercising, learning new skills and so on.

What do you think? How is your time currently structured, and what would your ideal breakdown be?

What could be better than rolling out of bed, putting on some fuzzy slippers and a dressing gown, making a cup of tea and sliding straight outside into the golden-grey dawn? Starting your day by turning your face to the sky, and listening to the birds sing their mating songs?

What could be better than having the time to stretch and yawn and wander, to eat a healthy breakfast slowly and mindfully? To sit alone with your own thoughts in the quiet before the traffic, before the neighbours kids, before the phone calls? To relax for more than a minute, and to turn and greet the world with a smile instead of a sleepy grimace?