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ThePowerof+LESS++编辑打印版 “ BABAUTA HAS E A POWERHOUSE OF ONLINEPRODUCTIVITY FOR GOOD REASON: HIS MANTRAWORKS.”—TIMOTHY FERRISS, AUTHOR OH THE #1 NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLERTHE 4-HOUR WORKWEEKThe Power of LESSthe fine art of limiting yourself to theessential. . . in business and in lifeLeo BabautaLeo BabautaCONTENTSIntroduction vPART I: THE PRINCIPLES1. Why Less Is Powerful 32.The Art of Setting Limits 113. Choosing the Essential, and Simplifying 174. Simple Focus 255. Create New Habits, and the Powerof Less Challenge 336. Start Small 39PART II: IN PRACTICE7. Simple Goals and Projects 458. Simple Tasks 579. Simple Time Management 61CONTENTS10. Simple E-mail 7111. Simple
8312. Simple Filing 9113. mitments 9914. Simple Daily Routine 11315. Declutter Your Work Space 11916. Slow Down 13117. Simple Health and Fitness 14318. On Motivation 159Acknowledgments 171About the AuthorCreditsCoverCopyrightINTRODUCTIONTHERE HAS NEVER BEFORE been an age in which wecould get so much done so quickly. There also has neverbefore been an age in which we were so overwhelmedwith information and tasks, so overloaded with e-mails andthings to read and watch, so stressed by the incredible demandsof our lives.For many people these days, work is a constant stream ofe-mails, of news and requests, of phone calls and instant mes-sages, of papers and notes and files. The day starts with anin-box full of e-mails, and ends with an in-box just as full,and each e-mail represents a request for information or foractions that we don't have time to fulfill. We are drinkingfrom a fire hose of information, with no idea of how to reducethe flow.It's stressful and wasteful. And if we stop to think about it,it's not how we want to spend our lives.FINDING CALM IN THE CHAOSWhat's the alternative to information and task overload? Must wefollow the example of Thoreau, and build a cabin in the woods,shutting ourselves off from society and modern technology?I propose a middle ground: one where we can still enjoy ac-cess to vast amounts of information, still have mu-nication when we want it, still get things done quickly—but onein which we choose how much we consume and do. A simplerlife, but one in which we plish the things we want to plish.The solution lies in setting limits to how much we consumeand do. It lies in making the most of our time by focusing onthe most important things, instead of everything. Picture a lifein which you have a fairly peaceful workday, where stress levelsare minimal, where you're able to focus on your work. hat you only do a few tasks, but they're chosen so that they have themost impact. You plish major goals without the stress of doingeverything at once.It might sound idyllic, but it's definitely achievable. I've doneit using a system that's very easy to implement.It es down to making choices.SIMPLICITYI'm a firm believer in simplicity. My life is better when I sim-plify it, when I cut down on the noise and I'm able to enjoy thethings I love. My work is better when I cut out the distractionsand I'm able to focus. My writing is more powerful when I caneliminate excess words and use only those words needed to con-vey my core ideas.Simplicity means a lot of things in different contexts. Forsome, it means going back to using raw materials instead ofmanufactured ones, building and making everything yourselfinstead of buying it, doing everything yourself instead of rely-ing on others. While that definition holds a lot of appeal for me,the simplicity I seek in my life is simplicity in what I do. Doless, not more, but achieve more because of the choices I make.Simplicity boils down to two steps:1. Identify the essential.2. Eliminate the rest.In this book, we'll talk about a lot of ways to apply those twosteps to various areas of your work and personal life, but we'e back to those two ideas: Focus on the essential andallow everything else to drop away.It'll make you much happier, less stressed, and perhaps sur-prisingly, more productive.HOW IT WORKED FOR MEOnly a few years ago, I was over my head in debt, with a workschedule that rarely allowed me to see my family and had mestressed to maximum levels every day. I was overweight andunhealthy, I was eating fried and fatty and salty and greasyINTRODUCTIONfoods every day, I wasn't exercising, and I was a smoker. I wasunhappy at work and going nowhere, fast. My life pli-cated, and I didn't have time for the things I loved.So I made a choice: I decided to simplify. I decided to makepositive changes. It started with quitting smoking—I focusedon that first, and only that. I poured all of my energy into thisone goal, and an amazing thing happened: That focused energyallowed me to break through the initial barriers of quitting,which I'd failed at numerous times before.Beating that barrier helped inspire me to new goals and hab-its, and I used the same method on each one: I'd focus all of myenergy and attention on that one challenge, and the barrierswould break down. I'd focus on one goal at a time (I call it my&One Goal&) and not try to plish everything at once.Through this method, over the last several years, I've beenable to:1. Take up running2. Begin eating healthier3. anized and productive4. Train for and run two marathons5. Work two jobs and double my e6. e an early riser (I wake at 4 a.m.)7. e a vegetarian8. Complete two triathlons9. Start a essful blog—Zen Habits10. Completely eliminate my debt11. Save a substantial emergency fund for the first time12. Simplify my life13. Declutter my home14. Lose forty-plus pounds15. Write and sell two essful e-books16. Write the first draft of a novel17. Quit my day job and work from home18. Start a essful second blog, Write To Done, for writers19. Publish this bookAnd I've done all of that while raising and making time forsix beautiful kids.That may sound like a lot, but I plished all of this insmall steps, one thing at a time. Again, I used the concept of OneGoal—I focused on only one goal at a time, and put all of my energy intoit.My blog, Zen Habits, which documents how I've reachedthese goals, is now in the top fifty blogs in the world, with morethan sixty thousand subscribers and about two million readersa month. Many of my readers have asked me how I can do somuch, given that I have the same number of hours in the day aseveryone else. My answer: It's a matter of placing limits, andfocusing on the essential.THE SIX PRINCIPLESOF SIMPLE PRODUCTIVITYPart I of this book will explore the six guiding principles of thePower of Less—the ideas that will help you to maximize yourproductivity while simplifying your life. These Power of LessPrinciples will reappear throughout the book:1. Set limitations.2. Choose the essential.3. Simplify.4. Focus.5. Create habits.6. Start small.In Part II of this book, the Power of Less in Practice, we'lltake a look at practical tips for implementing these principles inkey areas, from your work to your personal life.WHAT THIS BOOK WILL DOFirst, let me tell you what this book won't do: It won't teach youexactly how to write a novel or run a marathon or quit smoking.This isn't a how-to manual to do any of that. This is a how-tomanual on how to simplify and focus on the essential. How todo less while plishing more. How to focus and use thatfocus to achieve your goals, no matter what they are.It's about limitations rather than volume.Each chapter of this book is designed to teach you how tofocus on less and to use that focus to be more powerful in dif-ferent areas of your life. You'll learn to simplify what you do, toreduce the volume of your tasks and projects munica-tion and information. You'll learn to reduce the clutter in yourlife so that you're less stressed and more productive. You'll learnhow simplicity can be extremely powerful and how to use thatto plish your goals, one at a time.You'll learn how to create a more tranquil workday and envi-ronment, no matter where you work.This is a book about less, and how focusing on less can transform yourlife.And it's not an abstract book, either: It will give you verypractical advice about how to put the concept of less into action,every day.Part IthePRINCIPLESoneWhy Less Is PowerfulWE LIVE IN a world where, more often than not,more is better. We are after more money, to buybigger houses and cars, and more clothes and gad-gets and furniture. We need bigger shopping malls rather thanthe small shops of yesterday. We consume more, and we pro-duce more, and we do more than ever before.At some point, however, we run into limits. There is only somuch we can do or consume. There are a finite number ofhours in a day, and once we reach that limit to our production,we can't do more. Many people see these limits as problems,while others see them as a challenge: How can I squeeze moreinto my day? If I manage my time effectively and learn to bemore productive, can I get more done in the limited number ofhours available to me?The problem with constantly trying to increase volume isthat it doesn't always produce the best results. Doing a hugenumber of things doesn't mean you're getting anything mean-ingful done. In fact, it's so hit-and-miss that it's almost likeplaying a game of roulette: If you do enough tasks, one of themis bound to pay off big.It doesn't work that way. Doing more things means you'relikely to do a lot of unimportant things, and you'll be over-worked and stressed at the same time.Imagine two reporters working at a newspaper: One goes fora high volume of articles each week, and the other decides to doonly one. The reporter writing thirty articles a week scans a vastamount of sources for any little bit of information that's re-motely interesting, turning each into a short, quick, and fairlylimited article that doesn't get much attention. His editor ispleased by the amount of work he's doing, and he gets rewardedwith praise.The second reporter decides that if he's just going to do onearticle this week, he'd better make it count. He spends half ofthe first day researching and brainstorming and thinking untilhe chooses a high-impact story that he knows will knock people'ssocks off. It'll be an article that wins awards. He spends twodays researching it and another couple days writing it andchecking facts.Guess what happens? Not only does he produce the best ar-ticle of the week, but it es an award-winning article, onethat the readers love and that gets him a promotion and long-term and widespread recognition. From that article, and otherslike it, he can build a career. The first reporter was thinkinghigh-volume, but short-term. The second reporter focused onless, but it did much more over the long term.That's the Power of Less.THE LESSONS OF THE HAIKUThe fairly popular form of Japanese poetry known as the haikuhas a couple of interesting lessons to teach us about why less ispowerful. The haiku, as you may know, is usually a nature-re-lated poem of just seventeen syllables, written in three lines(five syllables, then seven, then five). A poet writing a haikumust work with those limitations, must express an entire ideaor image in only that number of syllables. It can be a dauntingtask if you have something important to convey.So the haiku poet has a couple of choices: He can quicklywhip out seventeen syllables and have pleted haiku in a or he can carefully choose only the essen-tial words and images needed to convey his idea. And this sec-ond choice is what creates some of the most powerful poetry insuch a limited form—choosing only the essential. So the les-sons we can pick up from the haiku are the first two principlesof simple productivity:Principle 1: By setting limitations, we must choose the essential.So in everything you do, learn to set limitations.Principle 2: By choosing the essential, we create great impactwith minimal resources. Always choose the essential to maxi-mize your time and energy.These two lessons form the key to this book. They are thePower of Less in two sentences. Everything after this is simplyan exploration of these concepts, or practical ways to apply themto many areas of your life.CHOOSING THINGS WITH THE MOST IMPACTIn our work lives, we can be like the first reporter in the exam-ple above, cranking out tasks like crazy, and we'll probably get awhole lot done and be praised for it. People like to see hardworkers who will handle anything thrown at them.However, we can make another choice: We can be like thesecond reporter and choose to do fewer things, but things withthe most impact. What does that mean, &the most impact&? Atask or project could be &high-impact& in a number of differentways. It could:get you long-make you a lot of mbe highly beneficial to pany, in terms of revenues, branding,expanding into new areas, etc.;change your career or have the potential to greatlchange your personal life i orcontribute to society or humanity in general.These are just some examples—you can probably think of otherways a task or project can be high-impact.How can you determine which tasks have the most impact?There are generally two good ways of doing this.1. Examine your task list. Take a look at everything onyour list and ask yourself the following questions about eachone: Will this have an impact that will last beyond this week orthis month? How will it change my job, my career, my life?How will this further a long-term goal of mine? How impor-tant is that goal? From these answers, you can determinewhich items will have the most impact over the long term.While this sounds like a tedious process, it actually gets veryeasy with practice, and soon you'll be able to do it in just a fewminutes.2.Start with your goals. If you start by identifying thethings you really want to plish in the next year, you canplan your tasks so that you are doing things each day to furtherthose goals along. Let's say you have three long-term goals—each day, choose a task from your list that will move you closerto those goals. This will ensure that you pleting thetasks with the most impact, because they relate directly to along-term goal.Which of these two methods should you use? Whichevermethod works for you. We'll talk more about working with goalsand tasks in later chapters, but for now I just want to point outthat it's not an either/or choice. You can try bination ofboth of the above methods, and in fact, I think that's necessary.You can do your best to plan for your goals, but even the best ofus has tasks outside of those goals that must pleted. Allyour tasks will pile up in a long list (if you're careful to writethem down) and the non-goal tasks can easily push back yourgoal tasks. What you'll need to do is do a review of your task list(method number one above) to choose the high-impact tasks,instead of trying to tackle everything regardless of how mean-ingful the tasks are to your life.APPLYING LIMITATIONS TOEVERY ASPECT OF LIFEThe lessons of the haiku, of applying limitations in order toforce choices, of choosing the essential and finding the Powerof Less—these are lessons we can apply not only to the tasks onour to-do lists, but to everything in our lives. If there's any areaof your life that is overwhelming you, and that you'd like to sim-plify, apply limitations.Have too many e-mails in your in-box? Apply a limitation:You'll only check e-mail twice a day, and only respond to fivee-mails each time. You'll be forced to work more effectively, andonly write important e-mails.Have too many projects? Limit them to three. Have too muchstuff in your house? Limit yourself to two hundred items. Youget the idea.We'll explore these different areas in more detail and seehow the lessons of the haiku can transform these areas of yourlife into something powerful and meaningful, but for now, ithelps to ask yourself the following questions:Which areas of my life are overwhelming?What would I like to simplify?In addition to the tasks I need to plish in differentareas, do I want to limit the number of possessions Ihave, what information I receive, or what responsibilitiesI have?These are just prelimina we'll explore thisin more detail and figure out what's essential and what isn't aswe get into the following chapters.twoThe Art ofSetting LimitsMOST OF us lead lives filled with too much stuff, toomuch information, too many papers, too much to do,too much clutter. Unfortunately, our time and spaceis limited, and having too much of everything is like trying tocram a library into a single box: It can't be done, it's hard to en-joy the books, and sooner or later the box will break.Our problem is living without limits. It's like going shop-ping without spending limits—you tend to go overboard andend up with a bunch of stuff you don't need or really wantmuch. But if you have a budget (say one hundred dollars), you'llchoose only the things that matter, and you'll end up with muchless junk.Our entire lives are like this: We live without limits. Andwhile that freedom can seem fun at first, after a while it gets tobe too much. We don't have enough room for everything. Wecan't handle the stress of trying to do everything. We just can'tfit it in our lives, no matter how much we'd like to do so.It weakens us in so many ways. It dilutes our power and ef-fectiveness. It spreads us too thin. It tires us out so that we don'thave the energy to handle the important stuff. A life withoutlimits is taking a cup of red dye and pouring it into the ocean,and watching the color dilute into nothingness. Limited focus isputting that same cup of dye into a gallon of water.Limitless is the pitcher who pitches nine innings every threedays, throwing as many pitches as he can, as hard as he can.Soon he's too tired to pitch very hard, if at all. The real power iswhen that same es in for one inning every threedays and can mow down the batters every time.Limitless is trying to excavate an entire acre of land with asingle shovel. Limited focus is digging with that same shovel inone spot until you hit water.Limitless is weak. Learn to focus yourself with limits, andyou'll increase your strength. In this chapter, we'll explore Prin-ciple 1. Setting Limits.HOW LIMITS CAN HELPGoing from a limitless life that's overwhelming and not veryeffective to a life with limits, focus, and power is an incredibletransformation.Here are just a few benefits of setting limits on everythingyou do:It simplifies things. Your life es more manageableand less stressful.It focuses you. Instead of diluting yourself, you focusyour energy on a smaller number of things.It focuses on what's important. Instead of trying to doeverything and not having enough time for the impor-tant things in your life, you do only what's important toyou. That's an incredible change for most people.It helps you achieve. Many times, when we are spread toothin, we only make incremental progress on importantprojects and goals. But if we focus on just a few impor-tant things, we can plete them. You'll achievemuch more by focusing on the essential.It shows others that your time is important. When wetry to take on everything es our way, the peoplearound us get the message that their time is more im-portant than ours, that we'll say yes to whatever re-quests they have. If, however, we have firm limits onwhat we do, we send the message that we value ourtime and our priorities. Others will value your time inreturn.It makes you more effective. By doing less of the busy-work, and more of the important work, you are spinningyour wheels less and using your limited time and energyon something with lasting impact. That helps you makethe best use of your time, and eliminates much of thenonessential in your life.WHAT TO SET LIMITS ONWhat areas of your life need limits? Everything that you feel isin any way overloaded. Every area that you'd like to improve.You don't need to revamp your entire life all at once. That's asure recipe for failure, actually. Taking on too much at once isthe antithesis of this book—to eed at setting limits, youshould start with one area at a time, and preferably an area witha great likelihood of ess.Where should you start? That can't be prescribed, as eachperson's life is different, and you'll need to do what works foryou. Take a few minutes to think about your life—what areastake up too much time, or seem overloaded? What would youlike to simplify? Some ideas for good places to start:E-mailDaily tasksThe amount of time spent on the he number of projects you have on your plateThe number of blogs or other projects you subscribe toThe amount of time you spend reading on the The number of things on top of your deskThese are just ideas, of course. You'll slowly be expanding intoother areas. Focus on one change at a time until it es apart of your routine, and you'fortable with the limit.HOW TO SET LIMITSWhen you first set a limit on something, it'll be a fairly arbitrarynumber, as it will take some time to see what works for you.However, setting limits isn't just pulling a random number outof a hat—it's based on your experience with that type of activity,and based on what you think your ideal is.For example, when you first set a limit on the number oftimes you plan to check your e-mail, if you just randomly selecta number, it could be well over a thousand. But you know fromexperience that that would obviously be too high a limit, soyou'll likely choose from a range that's reasonable based on youryears of experience in checking e-mail. Let's say you normallycheck e-mail ten to fifteen times a day, and that seems like toomuch for you. You're spending most of your day in e-mail, in-stead of getting your other work done. So you might choosefrom a range of one to five times, as that seems ideal. Maybeyou'll try twice a day—once in the morning and once before youleave work.The next step is to test it out, to see if that limit works foryou. Is it a limit you can reasonably stick to? Is it hurting munication with others in an appreciable way? Are you ableto get much more work done with this limit?Think of your first week with that limit as an experiment. Ifit doesn't work for you (and there's no single limit that works foreveryone), then adjust it a bit. If twice a day isn't often enough,try three times a day. If you think you can get by with even less,try once a day. Then test that new limit out until you find whatworks for you, and until you make that limit a part of your dailyroutine. Once it's a habit, you can move on to the next area ofyour life. So setting limits for anything else will work the sameway:1. Analyze your current usage levels (how many times doyou do something a day?) and pick a lower limit based onwhat you think would be ideal.2. Test it out for about a week, and then analyze whetherthat's working for you.3. If it doesn't work, adjust to a new level you think mightwork better, and test that out for about a week.4. Continue to adjust until you find the right level and untilyou make it a habit.Once you've learned to set limits, you will then learn tomake the most of those limits—by choosing the essential andthen simplifying. That's when the power of limits can really beseen: when the limits force you to reduce yourself to only theessentials. We'll discuss this in the next chapter.threeChoosing the Essential,and SimplifyingIN THIS CHAPTER, we'll explore Principle 2, Choose theEssential, and then Principle 3, Simplifying. Choosing theessential is the key to simplifying—you have to choosethe essential before you simplify, or you're just cutting thingsout without ensuring that you're keeping the important things.How do you know what's essential? That's the key question.Once you know that, the rest is easy.Once you know what's essential, you can reduce your proj-ects, your tasks, your stream of ing information, mitments, your clutter. You just have to eliminate every-thing that's not essential.It's like the old joke: how do you carve a statue of an elephant?Just chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.Well, first you have to know what the elephant looks like.PUT THE HORSE BEFORE THE CARTMany productivity systems will tell you to do things in reverse:They'll tell you how to do things quickly, without trying to fig-ure out what things you should be doing. They'll tell you how toget the urgent tasks done, and how to handle a mass of assign-ments and ing at you, but these systems don'tdo a good job of discriminating between what's important andwhat's not, and you end up doing everything that's thrown atyou. That puts you at the mercy of the flow of tasks and infor-ing at you—in other words, at the mercy of anyone'swhim or requests.Instead, you must ask yourself in everything you do, what isessential? Whether that's asking yourself what you want to dotoday, or this week, or this year, or in your life in general, askyourself what is essential. Whether that be deciding whiche-mails to reply to, what you can buy this month with your lim-ited budget, how to declutter your desk or your house—askyourself what the essentials are.That puts the horse before the cart, instead of after it—you'reidentifying the essential, and then plishing those essen-tials.CHOOSING THE ESSENTIAL:A SERIES OF QUESTIONSIn everything you do, use these questions to guide you tochoose the essential, especially if you have problems deciding.Once you get the hang of it, you won't need these questionsanymore—they'll e automatic.1. What are your values? Values are simply knowing whatthings are most important to you. Think about the things thatreally matter to you, the qualities you want to have, the principlesyou want to live your life by. Once you've identified these values,everything you do and choose should follow from those.2. What are your goals? What do you want to achieve inlife? How about over the next year? How about this month? Andtoday? If you know what you're trying to achieve, you can deter-mine if an action or item will help you achieve it.3. What do you love? Think about what you love, who youlove to spend time with, what you love doing.4. What is important to you? Along the same lines, makea list of the most important things in your life, in your work, orin whatever area you're thinking about.5. What has the biggest impact? If you have a choice tomake between a list of projects or tasks, think about which proj-ect or task will make the biggest difference in your life or career.What will have the biggest effect on everything else? For exam-ple, if you have a choice between making some calls, having ameeting, and writing a report, think about the impact each taskwill have: the calls are to clients who spend perhaps one hun-dred dollars each on pany, the meeting is with a clientwho will bring in ten thousand dollars in business if you canclose the deal, and the report is something that might not evenbe read. The meeting, in this example, has the biggest impact,and is therefore the most essential.6. What has the most long-term impact? There's a differ-ence between the size of an impact and its long-term value. Forexample, a meeting with a client might bring in ten thousanddollars next week, but a long-term marketing campaign mightbring in hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next year.The impact doesn't have to be in terms of money—it could beanything that's valuable to you.7. Needs vs. wants. This is a good criteria to use when you'retrying to decide whether to spend on certain items: Which itemsdo you actually need, and which ones are just things you want?If you can identify needs, you can eliminate most of the wants,which are nonessential.8. Eliminate the nonessential. Sometimes it's useful towork backward, if you're having trouble figuring out the essen-tials. If you have a list of things to do, for example, start bycrossing off the nonessential items. You know that washingyour car, for example, isn't as important as paying your bills orfixing that leak that is costing you hundreds of dollars on yourwater bill. Once you eliminate some of the nonessential stuff,you are left with the more essential things on the list.9. Continual editing process. Most of the time you don'tpare things all the way down to the essentials on your first try.You eliminate some of the nonessentials and give the remain-ing things a try. Then you take another look at it in a week ortwo and eliminate more things. Continue that process until youare happy that you can't eliminate anything else.HOW TO APPLY THE QUESTIONSThe list of questions above is a good way to determine whichthings are essential to you if you're having difficulties, no mat-ter what area of your life you're examining. From your workprojects and tasks, to e-mails, to finances, to goals, to -mitments in life, to the clutter in your home and on your desk,identifying the essentials is the first and most important step insimplifying things so that you can be more effective.The key is to take a few moments (or hours, or days, if neces-sary) to stop what you're doing and think about it in a broaderperspective. Are you focusing on the essentials? What are theessentials? Can you eliminate the nonessentials? Take the timeto ask yourself the questions above and you'll do a much betterjob of honing in on what you really need to do, and really wantto do—a better job of focusing on what's important, and on get-ting the important things done. That'll cut back on the time youspend doing things that aren't important, that you don't love do-ing, that don't lead to the plishment of your goals.Here are some ways you can apply the essentials questions(with more detail in the following chapters on these topics):mitments: mitments in your life are es-sential? Apply the questions above, especially those aboutvalues and goals and the things you love, to reduce mitments.Yearly goals: At the beginning of each year, we are oftenfilled with the desire to plish many goals. It doesn'talways turn out the way we wanted at the beginning ofthe year, and one of the main reasons for that is havingtoo many goals. Pick one or two goals for the year andfocus on those. Learn to use the essentials questions todecide which goals are the most essential. You can al-ways get to the less essential goals later.Work projects and tasks: If you have a long list of projectsand tasks, you need to simplify—use the essentials ques-tions to decide what your priorities are. What project willyou focus on this week? What tasks will you focus on to-day? Eliminate as many nonessential projects and tasksas possible. The essentials questions regarding yourgoals, and the impact of each project and task, are themost relevant.E-mails: If you have twenty e-mails to answer, use theessentials questions to pick the three to five e-mailsyou're actually going to answer today. Worry about thenonessential ones tomorrow—or if you dare, just elimi-nate them.Finances: The needs vs. wants question is important here,but so are the questions about goals and values. If youalign your spending with your goals and values, you'lleliminate a lot of nonessential spending, and your fi-nances will be better off.Clutter: Eliminate clutter by starting with the needs vs.wants question, by eliminating the nonessential and us-ing a continual editing process. Eventually you'll weedout the junk and get down to what is truly necessary andthe things you truly love and use.Regular review: Choosing the essential is almost never aone-time decision. It's something you have to revisit reg-ularly, as new things accumulate, as your values and goalschange, as you learn that you can live with less and less.If you go through an area of your life and eliminatemany of the nonessentials, mark a date in your calendarto revisit that area, and continue the editing process overand over. And learn to enjoy the process, not to strive fora certain destination.Simplifying isn't meant to leave your life empty—it's meantto leave space in your life for what you really want to do. Knowwhat those things are before you start simplifying.Principle 3: Simplifying—Eliminating the NonessentialOnce you've identified the essential, the task of simplifying istheoretically easy—you just have to eliminate all the nonessen-tial. However, in practice this isn't always easy, although it doesget less difficult the more you do it.Let's say you have a task list, for example, and you've identifiedthe top three things you need to do on that list. To simplify thelist, you'd want to eliminate as many of the nonessential thingson the list as possible—everything that's not identified as es-sential. So you start by crossing off the things that aren't reallyimportant, then delegating other tasks that can be done by co-workers, and finally postponing assignments that you do needto get done but that don't need to be done today.The hard es when others want you to get somethingdone, but you don't think it's essential. In that case, you'll haveto learn to say &no.& We'll talk more about this in the chapter mitments, but for now it's useful to understandthat saying &no& is simply mitment to sticking to the es-sentials. If that means telling people you don't have time to domore, then that's what mitment means. And saying&no& gets easier with practice, especially as you gain confidencethat sticking to the essential is something that will have greatbenefits to you in the long term. Additionally, others will startto respect you for being honest about mitments youcan take on without overloading yourself, and they will start torespect your time if you respect it first.fourSimple Focus& With the past, I nor withthe future. I live now&—RALPH WALDO EMERSONPRINCIPLE 4 of the Power of Less is that your focus isyour most important tool. Focus on less to e more ef-fective. Focus on One Goal in order to achieve it (more onthis later). Focus on the task at hand instead of multitasking, andyou'll be more productive. Focus on the present, to reduce anxietyand stress.Principle 4: Focus is your most important tool in ingmore effective.HOW TO USE FOCUS TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFELet's first look at how to use the power of focus in differentways:Focus on a goal. Focus is the most important factor indetermining whether you'll achieve a goal or stick to cre-ating a new habit. Not self-discipline, not rewards, notsheer willpower, not even motivation (though this is alsoan important ingredient). If you can maintain your focuson a goal or habit, you will more often than not achievethat goal or create that habit. If you can't maintain yourfocus, you won't achieve the goal, unless it's such an easygoal that it would have happened anyway. It's that sim-ple.Focus on now. Focusing on the present can do a lot foryou. It helps reduce stress, it helps you enjoy life to thefullest, and it can increase your effectiveness. Focusingon now, rather than the past or the future, isn't easy, andtakes a lot of practice. We'll explore how to do this in thenext section.Focus on the task at hand. Have you pletely lostyourself in a task, so that the world around you disap-pears? You lose track of time and pletely caughtup in what you're doing. That's the popular concept of&flow& (see page 63), and it's an important ingredient infinding happiness—having work and leisure that getsyou in this state of flow will almost undoubtedly lead toit. People find their greatest enjoyment not when they'repassively mindless, but when they're absorbed in a mind-ful challenge. The first step is to find work that you'repassionate about. Next, you need to clear away distrac-tions and pletely on the task you set beforeyourself.Focus on the positive. One of the key skills I've learned ishow to be aware of my negative thoughts, and to replacethem with positive thoughts. I learned this through quit-ting smoking and running—there are many times whenyou feel like giving up, and if you don't catch these nega-tive thoughts in time, they'll fester and grow until youactually do give up. Instead, learn to focus on the posi-tive. Think about how great you feel. Think about howother people have done this, and that you can too. Thinkabout how good it will feel when you plish whatyou're trying to do. Also, learn to see the positive in justabout any situation. In my experience, this results inhappiness, as you don't focus on the difficult or negativeparts of your life, but on the good things. Be thankful forwhat you've been given.FOCUSING ON ONE TASK (SINGLE-TASKING)We live in a multitasking world. You're working on two projectsat once when your boss places two new demands on your desk.You're on the phone when three new e-e in. You'retrying to get out the door on time so you can pick up a few gro-ceries for dinner on the way home. Your BlackBerry is going offand so is your cell phone. Your coworker stops by with a requestfor info and your Google Reader is filled with more than a hun-dred articles to read.You've learned to juggle tasks at high speed, worthy of thisage of the .In these days of instant technology, we are bombarded withan overload of information and demands of our time. But we'renot designed to handle this kind of overload: Soon we are sooverwhelmed with things to do that our system begins to fallapart.Instead, I advocate single-tasking, focusing on one task at atime and working as simply as possible to preserve your mentalhealth and to improve your effectiveness. Here are a few quickreasons not to multitask:1. Multitasking is less efficient, due to the need to switchgears for each new task and then switch back again.2. Multitasking is plicated, and thus leaves youmore prone to stress and errors.3. Multitasking can be crazy-making, and in this alreadychaotic world, we need to rein in the terror and find alittle oasis of sanity and calm.Here's how to single-task instead:1. First thing in the morning, work on your Most Impor-tant Task. Don't do anything else until this is done. Giveyourself a short break, then start on your next Most Im-portant Task. If you can get two to three of these done inthe morning, the rest of the day is gravy.2. When you are working on a task in a time block, turn offall other distractions. Shut off e-mail and the
if possible. Shut off your cell phone. Try not toanswer your phone, if possible. Focus on that one task,and try to get it done without worrying about otherstuff.3. If you feel the urge to check your e-mail or switch to an-other task, stop yourself. Breathe deeply. Refocus your-self. Get back to the task at hand.4. If other e in while you're working, put themin your in-box, or take note of them in a small notebookor on a text file on puter. Get back to the task athand.5. Every now and then, when you'pleted the task athand, process your notes and in-box, adding the tasks toyour to-do lists and refiguring your schedule if neces-sary. Process your e-mail and other in-boxes at regularand predetermined intervals.6. There are times when an interruption is so urgent thatyou cannot put it off until you're done with the task athand. In that case, try to make a note of where you are(writing down notes if you have time) with the task athand, and put all the documents or notes for that tasktogether and aside (perhaps in an &action& folder or proj-ect folder). Then, when e back to that task, youcan pull out your folder and look at your notes to seewhere you left off.7. Take deep breaths, stretch, and take breaks now and then.Enjoy life. Go outside, and appreciate nature. Keep your-self sane.HOW TO FOCUS ON THE PRESENTSimilar to single-tasking, you can learn to focus on the present,instead of the past or future, in order to stay calm, productive,effective, and sane.The only way to learn to focus on the present is to practice.This might be hard to do at first. Your mind will wander, oryou'll do a lot of &meta-thinking,& which is just thinking aboutwhat you're thinking, and whether you're thinking it the rightway, and whether there is a right way . .. and so on, until you'reno longer in the present. That's normal. We all do that.Don't beat yourself up about that. Don't get discouraged. Justpractice. Practice in the morning. Practice while eating lunch.Practice during your evening jog or walk. Practice while wash-ing dishes after dinner. Every opportunity you get, practice.And you'll get better. I promise.Here are some of the best ways to practice focusing on thepresent:1. When you eat, just eat. The best way to think about be-ing present is this: Do just one thing at a time. When you areeating, don't read or think about something else or iron yourclothes (especially if you're eating something that might splat-ter on the clothes). Just eat. Pay attention to what you're eating.Really experience it—the taste, the texture. Do it slowly. Samething with anything else: washing dishes, taking a shower, driv-ing, working, playing. Don't do multiple things at once—just dowhat you're doing now, and nothing else.2. Be aware. Another important step is to e moreaware of your thoughts. You will inevitably think about the pastand future. That's OK. Just e aware of those thoughts.Awareness will bring change.3. Be gentle. If you think about the past or future, do notbeat yourself up about it! Don't try to force those thoughts out ofyour head. Just be aware of them and gently allow them to leave.Then bring yourself back to the present.4. Exercise. Exercise is my meditation. I run, and try to onlyrun. I focus on my running, on my breathing, on my body, onnothing but the present. It's great practice.5.Daily routines. Anything can be your meditation. Whenyou wash dishes, this is practice. This is your meditation. Whenyou walk, focus on walking. Make anything you do epractice.6. Put up reminders. A reminder on your fridge -puter desktop, or on your wall, is a good thing. Or use a reminderservice to send you a daily e-mail. Whatever it takes to keep yourfocus on practicing being present.7. There is no failure. You will mess up, but that's OK, be-cause it is impossible to mess up. The only thing that matters isthat you practice, and over time, if you keep doing it, you willlearn to focus on the present more often than you do now. Youcannot fail, even if you stop doing it for a while. Doing it at all ess. Celebrate every little ess.8. Keep practicing. When you get frustrated, just take adeep breath. When you ask yourself, &What should I do now.Self?&, the answer is &Keep practicing.&fiveCreate New Habits,and the Power ofLess ChallengePRINCIPLE 5, Create New Habits, is the secret to mak-ing lasting changes that will actually improve your life.There is a series of habit changes mended in everychapter of this book, but if you attempt to master all of them atonce, you'll be overwhelmed and your focus will be spread outtoo thin. And in a matter of weeks, the changes you attempt willbe for naught.Principle 5: Create new habits to make long-lasting improve-ments.Instead, the only way you'll form long-lasting habits is by ap-plying the Power of Less: Focus on one habit at a time, onemonth at a time, so that you'll be able to focus all your energy oncreating that one habit.The tool that you'll use to form each habit is an extremelypowerful one: the Power of Less Challenge, a thirty-day chal-lenge that has proven very effective in forming habits for thou-sands of readers of my Zen Habits blog.Here's how it works:1. Select one habit for the Challenge. Only one habit permonth. You can choose any habit—whatever you think willhave the biggest impact on your life.2. Write down your plan. You will need to specifically statewhat your goal will be each day, when you'll do it, what your &trig-ger& will be (the event that will immediately precede the habitthat's already a part of your routine—such as exercising right af-ter you brush your teeth), and who you will report to (see below).3. Post your goal publicly. Tell as many people as possiblethat you are trying to form your new habit. I suggest an onlineforum, but you could e-mail it to coworkers and family andfriends or otherwise get the word out to a large group.4. Report on your progress daily. Each day, tell the samegroup of people whether or not you eeded at your goal.5. Celebrate your new habit! After thirty days, you willhave a new habit. You will still need to make sure you do thehabit each day, but it'll be fairly well entrenched if you were con-sistent all month.WHY IT WORKSThis thirty-day Challenge is one of the best ways to form ahabit, and it has worked repeatedly for several mitment. Just the act mitting to the Chal-lenge, and setting a measurable goal, and declaring it toa bunch of others, is a huge step toward making thehabit change a ess.Accountability. The daily check-in makes you want to doyour daily habit, so you can report your ess to others.There is a very positive feeling (reward) you get whenyou report that you did your habit today.Encouragement. There is also value in reporting yourstruggles. For example, during one challenge, when I gotsick for a few days, I asked my group to motivate me.They were extremely encouraging, and I got back into myhabit.Inspiration. When you see everyone else doing so great,it's inspiring. If they can do it, so can you! And there arealways some really inspiring people in each group ofchallengers.Now, you don't need to join the Monthly Challenge on theZen Habits forums to achieve a positive habit change, but Ihighly mend you find a group—online or off—to helpyou stick to your habit change. There are plenty of online fo-rums munity groups to help with these kinds ofthings—the power of a group can help leverage your power tochange a habit.THE RULESThere are only a few rules you need to follow to make this Chal-lenge a ess. If you follow these rules, it would be hard foryou not to form a new habit by the end of the thirty days.Do only one habit at a time. Do not break this rule, be-cause I assure you that if you do multiple habits at once,you will be much less likely to eed. Trust me—I'vetried both ways many times, and in my experience thereis a 100 percent rate of failure for forming multiple hab-its at once, and a 50 to 80 percent rate of ess if you dojust one habit at a time—depending on whether you fol-low the rest of these rules.Choose an easy goal. Don't decide to do something reallyhard, at least for now. Later, when you're good at habitchanges, you can choose something harder. But for now,do something you know you can do every day. In fact,choose something easier than you think you can do ev-ery day. If you think you can exercise for thirty minutesa day, choose ten minutes—making it super easy is oneof the best ways to ensure you'll eed.Choose something measurable. You should be able tosay, definitively, whether you were essful or not to-day. If you choose exercise, set a number of minutes orsomething similar (twenty minutes of exercise daily, forexample). Whatever your goal, have a measurement.Be consistent. You want to do your habit change at thesame time every day, if possible. If you're going to exer-cise, do it at 7 a.m. (or 6 p.m.) every day. for example.This makes it more likely to e a habit.Report daily. You could check in every two or three days,but you'll be more likely to eed if you report daily.This has been proven over and over again in the Chal-lenges.Keep a positive attitude! Expect setbacks now and then,but just note them and move on. No embarrassment inthis challenge.12 KEY HABITS TO START WITHYou can choose any habits in this book that you think will helpyou most, at work and in the rest of your life. But if I had to -mend twelve habits to start with (one each month for a year), theseare the twelve I think could make the most difference in the livesof the average person (more on each habit in later chapters):1. Set your 3 MITs (Most Important Tasks) each morning.2. Single-task. When you work on a task, don't switch toother tasks.3. Process your in-box to empty.4. Check e-mail just twice a day.5. Exercise five to ten minutes a day.6. Work while disconnected, with no distractions.7. Follow a morning routine.8. Eat more fruits and veggies every day.9. Keep your desk decluttered.10. Say no mitments and requests that aren't on yourShort List (see Chapter 13, mitments).11. Declutter your house for fifteen minutes a day.12. Stick to a five-sentence limit for e-mails.sixStart SmallWHILE YOU WOULD do just fine if you only fol-lowed the first five principles of this book, Princi-ple 6, Start Small, is simply a way to ensure thegreatest likelihood of ess for the rest of the changes.Principle 6: Start new habits in small increments to ensure suc-cess.Oftentimes people are enthusiastic about making changes—whether it's about implementing a new productivity system orstarting a new exercise program—so they start out with bigambitions.The problem is that that enthusiasm often runs out ofsteam after a week or two, and the es to failure. That'swhat happens with almost every New Year's resolution—peo-ple start out with a lot of enthusiasm but it dies down by theend of January.The solution is Principle 6: Start Small. Follow this principlewith everything you do: with any goal, with any habit change,with any change in your life.I've proven this principle over and over again in my lifechanges. When I start an exercise program, I will start with onethat's as easy as possible, even if I know I can do more. When Istart with a new habit, I start with just a tiny habit change, evenwhen I think I can handle more. When I decided to start wak-ing earlier, I started by waking only fifteen minutes earlier.WHY STARTING SMALL WORKSPeople often skip Principle 6, because they don't really under-stand why it's so important. Here are some of the main reasonsthat Starting Small works so well:It narrows your focus. Focus, as we discussed in the sec-tion on Principle 4, is incredibly important in gettinganything done. If you start an enterprise or life changetrying to tackle a lot at once, you spread your focus anddecrease your effectiveness. But by starting small, youkeep your focus narrowed, and therefore increase yourpower.It keeps your energy and enthusiasm going for longer. Bystarting out doing less than you can actually handle, youbuild up energy and enthusiasm, kind of like water build-ing up behind a dam. That built-up energy and enthusi-asm ensures that you don't run out of steam early on, butcan keep going for much longer.It's easier to handle. Easier is better, especially in the be-ginning. If the change you're making is hard to stick to,you are making it more likely that you'll fail.You ensure ess. Choose something so small ess is almost guaranteed. Sure, a small ess isnot as satisfying as a big ess, but it's only small inthe short term. If you start out with a small ess, youcan build upon it, get another small ess, and buildupon that, and so on—until you have a series of esses that add up to a very large ess. And that'smuch better than a large failure.Gradual change is longer-lasting. Think of dieting—when you go on a severe, drastic diet and you lose fortypounds in two months, it feels pretty great, but more of-ten than not those forty pounds e back, andthen some. But if you do small changes—perhaps one totwo pounds a week—those pounds are much more likelyto stay off. This has been proven repeatedly in weightloss studies and it works with any kind of change. Makegradual changes, in a series of small steps over time, andyou're more likely to stick to those changes than if youattempt a big change all at once.HOW TO APPLY STARTING SMALLSo when and with what do you start small? Always, and withanything. Any habit change you undertake, any exercise or pro-ductivity or life change, any goal or project or task—start small.Here are but a few examples:Exercise: Start with five to ten minutes a day, instead ofthirty.Waking early: Start by waking fifteen minutes earlier,instead of an hour or two.Productivity: Start by trying to focus on the task at handfor five to ten minutes at a time.E-mail effectiveness: Start by limiting yourself to check-ing e-mail just a couple fewer times a day.Healthy eating: Start by making just one change to yourdiet, instead of doing a major diet overhaul.A major project: Start with just one small task from theproject, instead of trying to tackle everything at once.Then go to the next small task, and so on.Decluttering: Start with just one drawer, instead of try-ing to declutter your entire office or home.Part IIinPRACTICEsevenSimple Goalsand ProjectsI'M AS AMBITIOUS in setting goals as anyone I know—Ioften have several goals I'd like to achieve at work, alongwith self-improvement goals that can range from learning anew language to running a marathon. And while I've alwaysbeen enthusiastic about setting and starting new goals, my listof things I want to achieve seems to grow faster than I progresson any of those goals.It's easy to set goals, but extremely difficult to achieve themif they're goals worth achieving.Tackling a goal takes energy and focus and motivation, threethings that are in limited supply in any person, no matter howdriven. Taking on many goals at once spreads out your availableenergy and focus and motivation, so that you often run out ofsteam after the initial couple weeks of enthusiasm. Then thegoals sit there on your list, gathering dust, while you feel guiltyabout not achieving any of them.The Power of Less is perfect for achieving goals: Limit your-self to fewer goals, and you'll achieve more.At the same time, we'll look at ways to narrow your focus onyour projects, so that you plete them more effectivelyand move forward on your goals. We'll apply limitations to ourprojects to increase our effectiveness.THE ONE GOAL SYSTEMThe One Goal System is simple—you focus on one goal at a timeto increase your effectiveness with that goal. To break the goalinto concrete steps, you will focus on one sub-goal at a time.1. Choose a goal. Make a list of things you'd like to -plish over the next few years. This list might have ten things onit, or maybe twenty. Now, you could try to tackle all those goalsat once, or take on as many as possible. But that will dilute youreffectiveness. Instead, choose just one, and pletely onthat goal until you can check it off the list.I'd mend that you choose a goal that you really want plish—the stronger your desire, the more likely you are toactually stick with that goal until you're finished. It's not enoughto say, &It would be nice to achieve this goal.& You need to wantit so deeply that you'll make it your top priority for months e.I also mend that you choose a goal that will take aboutsix months to a year plete. Any longer than a year, andyou will have problems maintaining your focus, and might e overwhelmed. If it's much shorter than six months, itmight not be something worthy of your efforts.What if you really want to achieve it, but it'll take two yearsor more? Break it down into sub-goals, so that your first sub-goal will take about a year. For example, if you want to e alawyer, you have to get in to law school, and plete threeyears of school, and then pass the bar exam. Make your firstgoal simply to be accepted into a decent law school—that'll takesix months to a year.2. Break it down to a sub-goal. Once you've decided onyour One Goal, the next step is to focus on a smaller sub-goalthat you can plish in the next month or two. In the lawschool example above, you might decide that your sub-goal willbe to do research into some of the top law schools in the areasyou prefer, to choose five schools, and to gather the essentialinformation about each school. To shorten that, you might callthis sub-goal something like, &Complete research on Top 5schools.&The reason for a sub-goal is to create shorter steps that aremore immediately achievable than a larger, yearlong goal mightbe. If you don't break a goal into smaller steps, you can eoverwhelmed by such a large and vague goal. You can't sit downtoday, for example, and get accepted into a law school. It's notsomething that's doable. So you have to break it into more do-able steps.3. Weekly goal. Each week, create a weekly goal that willmove you closer to your sub-goal. So this week, using the ex-ample above, you might just want to find all the decent lawschools in the areas you prefer, find their Web sites, and startreading about them. That would be your weekly goal.4.Daily action. Then each day, choose one action that willmove you closer to your weekly goal. Make this action your mostimportant task for the day. Do it first, before you do anythingelse. This will help keep you focused on your One Goal, insteadof pushing it back when other, more pressing e up.This might plicated, but in action, it's fairly sim-ple. You set a One Goal for the year (it can be set at any time—you don't have to wait for January). You set a sub-goal that willtake a month or two plete. Each week you set a weeklygoal. Each day you choose a task that will move you to thatweekly goal, and make that your most important task of the day.This One Goal system will keep you focused on achievingyour goal, moving closer to it each day. It will keep you fromspreading yourself too thin, and will allow you to focus all yourenergy pleting this goal.THE SIMPLE PROJECTS LISTIf you don't already have a projects list, I suggest you make aquick-and-dirty one right now. List all the projects you have go-ing on in your life, including all your work projects, any per-sonal and home projects, projects with anizations, andso on. Anything that would take a day or more plete, touse a rough guideline. If you can do it in an hour or two, youcan still list it if you like_a project is usually something thattakes several tasks plete.How many items are on this list? If you're like most people,you probably have ten to twenty projects on this list. If you're anoverachiever or extremely busy, you might even have more. Thisisn't a good thing. Too many projects leads to ineffectiveness.Now I'm going to ask you to do something that might be abit difficult for some of you: Choose just the top three projectson your list. Don't choose three from each area of your life_just choose three altogether.This list of three projects is your Simple Projects List. Every-thing else goes on a second list, which we'll call the &On DeckList.& You'll probably still get to these projects on your On DeckList, but you won't be working on them right now. They're onhold until plete the three projects on your Simple Proj-ects List.Let me make this point clear: In this system I'm -mending, you don't move a project from the On Deck List to theSimple Projects List until you finish all three projects on yourSimple Projects List. Not just one, but all three. Why? Becausethis will ensure that you don't leave one of the top three projectssitting pleted while you keep moving new projects ontoyour active list. It will ensure that you focus pletion of allof your top three projects, not just one or two.The top three projects on your Simple Projects List will beyour entire focus until you finish all three, and then the nextthree projects you move onto this active list will be your focus.This ensures that you aren't spreading your focus too thin, andthat you'pleting your projects.I mend that, at all times, you have at least one of播放器加载中，请稍候...
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ThePowerof+LESS++编辑打印版 “ BABAUTA HAS E A POWERHOUSE OF ONLINEPRODUCTIVITY FOR GOOD REASON: HIS MANTRAWORKS.”—TIMOTHY FERRISS, AUTHOR OH THE #1 NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLERTHE 4-HOUR WORKWEEKThe Power of LESSthe fine art of limiting yourself to theessential. . . in business and in lifeLeo Babauta...
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