Why I'm Taking a Digital Semi-Sabbatical

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have seen that I announced a 1-week Twitter sabbatical last night. That’s the type of thing that’ll cause eyebrows to raise so I thought it’d be a good time to articulate why I felt this step was necessary. I mean, as a blogger it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me to ditch my #1 platform for connecting with readers, right?

First of all, a smidge of background. Since January 4th I’ve been working full-time as a high school economics and government teacher. I have the tendency to throw myself into endeavors to the point where everything else gets pushed to the back burner. I was working 10+ hour days trying to be an awesome teacher and that resulted in me doing nothing else other than teaching, planning to teach, or grading. All of my blogging duties and responsibilities have been seriously neglected over the past three months.

However, I happen to be fairly sweet at GTD (Getting Things Done). I read David Allen’s book several years ago and since then have implemented a fairly robust productivity system that usually serves me quite well (and also read the book twice more). My GTD system allows me to capture incoming thoughts and ideas fairly seamlessly and for the last three months I’ve been absolutely dominating the “collect” aspect of GTD.

On Friday I basically finished my teaching assignment and began to turn my attention back to my writing and blogging. However, three months of collecting information and ideas but not acting on them has left me feeling absolutely swamped and overrun. I have so much that I think I might want to do, but maybe not, but then again maybe I do.

I decided that I need to take a week to work through all my information, clarify what it means to me, and align it with my goals and values. To that end, the last thing I need is even MORE information to add to the pile. So, I decided that taking a break from Twitter, Google Reader, mindless net surfing, and awesome-blog reading was in order. I need to spend some time alone with my thoughts, and only MY thoughts, in order to prepare myself for the coming months.

In a nutshell, here’s what’s going on.

WHY I’M TAKING A SEMI-DIGITAL SABBATICAL

1. I’m way too good at GTD (well, the “collecting” aspect of it)

2. I’ve had some major life changes that need to be addressed (upcoming article about that later this week)

3. I need to spend some time with my own thoughts. I find myself getting sucked into the awesomeness that you all create and sometimes it depresses me because I don’t think I can do that. This is bullshit but sometimes I need to give myself a break from all the amazing stuff my friends produce and see if I can do something that warrants my association with them.

WHAT I WILL NOT BE DOING DURING MY SEMI-DIGITAL SABBATICAL

1. Checking or posting on Twitter (except for initially tweeting out new articles by using the button on my blog)

2. Checking my RSS feeds

3. Browsing reddit or any other news aggregation site

4. Checking email more than twice a day

WHAT I WILL BE DOING FOR THE NEXT WEEK

1. Running

2. Writing for the website

3. Writing for myself

4. Writing for a freelance project

5. Cooking good food

6. Meditating

7. Reading Making it All Work (again)

8. Realigning my daily action with my overall goals

WHAT'S THE ULTIMATE GOAL?

1. Come back with a clearer focus for my website.

2. Come back with a clearer vision of what I’m trying to do with my life

3. Come back with a healthier relationship with Twitter, email and other online information sources

4. Come back with a renewed vigor for my own creative output

Whew. That’s a lot of writing to essentially say, “I’m peace-ing out for a little bit but I’ll be back soon.” I like the idea of digital sabbaticals and writers better than I have explored the idea in more detail, if you’re interested. I think the idea of stepping back from the internet, unplugging and focusing on the self is going to become much, much more commonplace in the future. It’s only when your goals, values, and purpose are crystal clear in your mind that you can productively harness the information deluge that the internet provides. As soon as those higher level ideas become a little murky the internet shifts from an entity full of endless possibility to one of oppressive weight.

I’ll be getting my head together, creating some excellent content, and coming back with a new attitude after this break. Thanks for sticking around during the last three months and I’ll do my best to make it worth your while.

To wrap things up, I'd love to hear about your experiences with digital sabbaticals in the comments!

Breaking the Alliance of Perfection and Procrastination

It seems like every Sunday night I tweet something that surprises me. For whatever reason, maybe it’s the opportunity to relieve my mind of work stress or the fact that I’m well rested, Sunday evenings seem to be a time when ideas form. The tweet of notice this week was when I said something along the lines of, “The level of perfection I expect from an endeavor is directly proportional to how long I've been procrastinating. Therein lies the problem.” Those two sentences sum up a phenomenon that I’ve struggled with for years (other than the fact that I evidently like to quote myself) —- and I’m sure I’m not alone.

SELF-PERPETUATING PROCRASTINATION

I can currently think of at least three projects that are languishing in stagnation due to the massive levels of procrastination I’ve permitted myself to allow to grow (one of which is this article). The longer I stay away from a project the larger the expectations I have once I finally turn my attention back to it. And the problem is that this attitude is completely and utterly self-perpetuating. Who wants to work on something that has been built up to such monumental levels that you're positive you can never reach that level? It’s surely easier to keep procrastinating and thinking about how awesome something is going to be once you finally start working on it than it is to actually get down and dirty with the act of creating.

BEING AFRAID IS EASIER THAN FACING THE FEAR

This phenomenon grows like a snug blanket of mold insulating last week’s yogurt in the back of the fridge. You’re not about to scrape that fuzzy layer off tomorrow’s breakfast. But how many of us leave that strange science experiment marinating in the back of the fridge? How often do we take the time to admit that we messed up by not eating it before it went bad and just toss it in the trash? Every once in a while we get fed up with the detritus and clutter and clear out the fridge — but why do we even let it get that far?

Fuzzy kitchen metaphor aside, how many projects have you not touched in weeks because you’re afraid of what you might find? I tremble when I pop the top off that Tupperware I forgot I owned hidden behind the jelly just like when I brush off the e-book draft of that has sat dormant for the last 5 months. The only way to break the cycle is to remove all expectations for the work — and just work.

BREAKING ALLIANCES

This post may not represent the best writing I’ve ever done. I can accept that. But if I only wrote when my best writing was boiling just below the surface I would very rarely “make the clackity noise”. If I only published what I believed to be my most inspired, my most world-changing writing, then this would be an empty blog.

What it comes down to is breaking the alliance between the Perfectionist and the Procrastinator within my own mind. On a good day they are mortal enemies, but if I'm feeling particularly stuck it usually means I need to root out the unholy partnership they formed while I was busy fretting about the work I wasn't doing.

Adjusting Your Macro-Focus

If you’ve noticed that my writing has dropped off a little bit in the past few weeks, you’d be right. I’ve always believed that I should be writing about my life, not just feel-good theories about what it means to live better. For the past few weeks I’ve been fairly mired in a strange funk as I tried to figure out what is going on in my life. Luckily, I’ve made some significant progress recently and I’d like to share how a simple shift in my mindset has made an incredible difference on my level of happiness and satisfaction.

As I’ve written about a couple times already, I’ve been working as a full-time high school teacher since the beginning of January. This is what I went to college for so I should have been overjoyed to get this opportunity. I wasn’t. I’ve become fairly disillusioned with the prospect of being a high school teacher, but that’s a post for another time (actually, probably next week).

THE BREAKDOWN

At first I thought I just hated teaching. I dreaded getting up each morning and going to work. Yet, a funny thing happened. Every day at the end of school I found myself thinking, “Wow, well that went by pretty quick.” As soon as I removed myself from the teaching environment, the stress and anxiety would begin to build again until I was absolutely dreading getting up again and going to school the next day. It was weird. In fact, I even woke up one day, called in sick (even though I wasn’t), and begged my mom to go to lunch with me so we could talk about life. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to having a “breakdown.”

LOST FOCUS

Lately, I’ve come to realize what my problem actually was. I had a lack of focus. Usually, when I think of the concept of “focus” I imagine working on something without distractions (like how I’m writing this right now). That’s one type of focus, but that wasn’t the focus I was having trouble with. Instead, I was having trouble focusing at a macro-level.

Prior to accepting the teaching job I was essentially already working full-time for myself. I wrote and worked on my blog all day, everyday. It was my job and I enjoyed it. The problem was that I tried to put two full-time jobs on top of each other, and then wondered why I almost had a mental breakdown. Everyday at 2:30 when the final bell rung I’d feel guilty for not spending the previous 7 hours working on my blog. I’d get home and not even know where to begin with my blogging efforts because I felt so far behind and out of the loop. Plus, if I did sit down to work on my blog the pile of ungraded papers would leer at me from across the room. Or I’d start thinking about the planning I had to do to prepare for the next day of classes.

No matter what I worked on, it was the wrong thing.

TAKING MY OWN ADVICE

I couldn’t continue like this for the remainder of my teaching assignment so I finally did the intelligent thing. I reduced my commitments. Reducing my commitment came in the form of scaling back my output to one article per week. But more importantly, it was a matter of being completely okay with the fact that I’m not a full-time blogger right now.

As soon as I kept putting the unrealistic expectations of a full-time blogger and all the work that entails on top of my already hectic schedule of teaching, my mental condition improved 100%.

The best thing is, both aspects of my life have improved dramatically. I can commit more of my energy to teaching without feeling guilty about everything I’m not doing for my blog. I can take the time to really lose myself within the job for a couple months and see if this is truly what I want to do for the rest of my life. Frankly, I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to get a taste of “real” teaching as a long-term sub and not as a contracted teacher that is essentially locked in for a year. I’ve started to enjoy it much more and it has allowed me to decide where I should direct my energy in the future.

QUALITY TIME WILL TRUMP QUANTITY OF TIME, EVERY TIME

Consequently, even though my decision resulted in less attention and energy being directed at my writing, coaching, and speaking — that area of my life has seen improvement as well. My time may be more limited, but it is much, much higher quality time. A small amount of high quality time allows me to create much better work, even if it's in a lesser quantity, than I was accomplishing in my earlier unfocused state.

The simple act of adjusting my focus at the macro level, on a specific area of my life at the “expense” of another, has allowed me to enjoy both to a much greater extent than I had been lately.

ADJUSTING YOUR MACRO-FOCUS

Where can you adjust your macro-focus? We all have multiple roles, commitments, and responsibilities that are always pulling us in different directions. What if you shifted your focus from some of those requirements and centered your focus on just one area of your life — even if just for a week? Or a couple days? Maybe just an hour or two?

The tendency is to view a shifting of focus away from an area of your life as an admission that it’s not as important to you. Baloney. You should give every commitment and responsibility that you have your complete and utter focus… but not all the time. You can shift focus and you can come back to something later.

I’m going to take my own advice and kick some serious ass for the next 3 weeks of teaching. Then, in early April, my website is getting some undivided attention. If you can stick around that long (come on now, the Archives should keep you busy for awhile, right?) then I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Focus, work hard, focus on something else, work harder. Repeat as necessary. Reap the rewards.

How Do You Know What You're Capable Of?

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I'm capable of. That's kind of a weird sentence, so let me explain.

In January I deleted Facebook and counted every single calorie that I consumed. Both of those things I figured would be hard, if not impossible. In February I tried to limit myself to $0 in discretionary spending. While I missed that mark, it was definitely much lower than my monthly average. In March, I'm trying to eat as primal a diet as possible. I don't know if these things are necessarily the best and I certainly don't think I'm better than you for accomplishing them. I just wanted to know if I could do them -- so I did.

I'm in love with the idea of 30 Day Missions that stretch and challenge you to heights you didn't think you could accomplish. This post is short, but I'm hoping it has a lot of comments because I want to know what kinds of 30 Day Missions you have tried or want to try.

I have a whole list of questions that will probably turn into some sort of 30 Day Mission:

- How much sleep do I actually need to operate well?
- What would I feel like if I didn't consume any caffeine?
- What would I feel like if I ate a completely vegan diet?
- How fast can I run 1 mile?
- How far can I move myself in 8 hours?
- How long can I go without purchasing anything?
- How long can I fast?
- How long can I not sleep?

I get that some of these may not be the healthiest thing in the world -- but dammit, I want to know what I'm capable of! Our ancestors got to test their mettle against saber tooth tigers and angry mastodons on a daily basis. The scariest thing I see is what's growing in the back of my fridge.

More than anything, 30 Day Missions add a sense of excitement, of challenge, and unpredictability to your life. You may work in a boring job but as you look around at your boring co-workers you can smile inwardly about the time you once ran/walked for 8 hours just to see how far you could go or how you once randomly high fived a stranger just for the heck of it.

My simpler life has plenty of room for adventure. Does yours? Please share your 30 Day Mission ideas in the comments! 

Obliviousness Is Not a Valid Path to Simplicity

I firmly believe that limiting the amount of information that you face is a great way to simplify your life. I also firmly believe that having a good understanding of major world events and issues is very important. These two ideas can come into conflict with each other quite easily. In fact, I've seen many minimalists write about how they don't follow world events or the news at all. It's almost a point of pride to be completely oblivious to what is going on in the world. Every time I read that particular piece of advice I cringe. The social studies teacher inside me won't let me forego understanding and following world events in the name of greater simplicity.

I should probably back up and give some credit where it's due. I realize that most of my colleagues aren't advocating complete obliviousness to what is going on around us. They are wary of being sucked into the need of checking news websites all day long or leaving CNN on the T.V. for hours on end. I support that sentiment. Nobody needs to stay that connected to what's going on in the world. However, I do think many of my colleagues understate the importance of being informed and educated about more than just what is happening in your own small sphere of influence.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

An understanding of the world and the dynamics within it adds important aspects to our lives. Becoming obsessed with that which you cannot control isn't healthy, but neither is obliviousness to the travails and problems of the world around you.

BUILD EMPATHY

Knowing about conflicts happening across the world will help you build empathy for other humans. But only if you go beyond being aware of conflicts and move into understanding the issues surrounding them. Geographically we may be spread very far apart but the things that you care about, living a fulfilling life, having your natural rights respected and protected, supporting and providing for your family, are the same regardless of nationality or culture. The protests in the Middle East may be happening on the other side of the world but they are made up of people who care very deeply about topics that you likely care about, too.

We risk shutting off our capacity to empathize with others when we disregard the events they are living through.

BROADEN YOUR PERSPECTIVE

The majority of people who read this blog, and people in the United States in general, are some sort of "knowledge worker." Knowledge worker is just a fancy way to say that you interact with information and somehow add to or modify it in some way as to make it useful. Most of us aren't standing behind a workbench producing physical items any more. Whether you think that's a positive or negative thing is not relevant, but you can thank the Industrial Revolution for that particular social change.

When you are a knowledge worker, the only thing you have that separates you from somebody else is your unique perspective. Your educational background, your biases, your personality and your relevant knowledge is what you apply to your work everyday. Being aware of the larger world and understanding the issues that permeate it stretches your perspective. This is tied to the idea of empathy, but broadening your perspective to include the viewpoints and concerns of people other than your close friends and neighbors will only serve to improve your ability to do great work.

Perhaps you think I'm really grasping at straws here by arguing that an understanding of world events will improve your work, but I think it's a salient point. You never know when or how your knowledge  of the world will apply to your work -- especially when that work is something like writing, teaching, or something equally abstract.

THINK CRITICALLY

Lastly, staying up to date with the world will improve your ability to think critically. Thinking critically refers to the idea of weighing multiple sources of information and deciding if they are relevant and accurate. For many people, thinking critically is a skill that has laid dormant for a long time. When you begin to accept as truth whatever you see on TV or everything you read you give up the sovereignty of the mind that distinguishes you as a human.

Thinking critically is something that must be practiced and honed over time and there is not a better arena than the propaganda-laden world of news media. It's not easy to figure out what is truth and what is spin, but that doesn't mean it's not worth the effort.

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO STAY CURRENT?

When I advocate staying up to date with world affairs, I must clarify the time frame of what I'm talking about. You don't need a minute by minute feed of information. I don't even think a daily checkup is particularly important under normal circumstances. I'm talking about understanding the large and recurring themes and problems that are present in different areas of the world. Almost every conflict that you hear about in the news has a historical basis that is well established. Understanding that historical basis is the key to understanding current events today -- not checking an RSS feed every hour.

READ LONG ARTICLES/ESSAYS ON CURRENT EVENTS

Long articles and essays generally treat topics of importance with a greater attention to detail and nuance than short articles or clips. A well-written essay will explore many different aspects and sides to a story which makes it easier for you to digest critically. Some of the best sources for long form articles include Longreads and The Browser. If you have a mobile device, the app Instapaper has single handedly done more for my reading than anything else.

BRUSH UP ON YOUR HISTORY

As I mentioned earlier, most world events are not spontaneous. They are usually rooted in a deep history. Most of the conflicts in the Middle East, for example can be attributed to a handful of different historical events: The split of the Islamic religion, the mandate system at the end of World War I, the creation of the modern state of Israel (which in itself is borne out of it's own unique history). Nearly everything can be explained by first looking at the past. Brush up on your history, whether that's as simple as Googling for some information about something you don't understand, checking some books out of your local library, or taking a class at a community college -- the information is available if you care to find it.

FOLLOW A SAMPLING OF NEWS WEBSITES - PERIODICALLY

I rarely watch news on the television. Part of that is the fact that I don't have cable TV in my apartment and part of it is because I know most news television is utter crap. That which attracts viewers (and thus advertisers) is very rarely that which is actually important to understand. Bloodshed, sex, and celebrities make for so-called interesting TV but they are not the holy trifecta of important information you need to know. A more rational way to get a sampling of world events is to check a handful of news websites every couple days. For example, I regularly peruse BBC, CNN, Fox News, and Al-Jazeera. I try to select a wide array of sites so that I'm not exposed to only one type of bias -- even if I happen to disagree with the way they lean politically.

CONCLUSION

Living a life of simplicity does not mean living a life of obliviousness. Putting your hands over your ears and closing your eyes to the worlds' problems does not mean you are living a better life. In fact, I would argue the opposite. Understanding world events allows you to build empathy for those different from yourself. It allows you to broaden your perspective which allows for an untold amount of creativity and growth in your own work and thinking. Lastly, it allows you to practice thinking critically. Whether that is through identifying bias in news sources or understanding the historical basis of the ills that plague our world.

We live in a world too interconnected to expect to live completely isolated from one another. Utilize your tools intelligently to regulate the stream of information that is coming your way at all times but don't hide from it. The problems of the world are not just for those experiencing them at the moment. We all have a responsibility to understand and work toward a more harmonious world in whatever form that may take.

Old-Fashioned Augmented Humanity

One of the biggest names in minimalist blogging, Everett Bogue, has caused quite the brouhaha recently due to the change in focus of his writing. His talk of "cyborgs" and "augmented humanity" has turned a lot of people off. I'm not going to offer a critique of his new focus because, frankly, that's none of my business. I actually think it's great for a writer to evolve and grow. It's the only thing that keeps us interesting as creative people. However, I do want to offer a counterpoint to the concept of augmented humanity that he writes about.

The basic premise is that the always-connected nature of our relationship with the internet through software such as Twitter is allowing us to become something more than what we were in the past. I don't dispute that being able to connect with people, instantly, across the globe has some serious ramifications for the way ideas spread and evolve. We live in an exciting time of technological advancement and achievement. However, I have an issue with turning my attention to external factors, primarily technology, when I feel like I am light years away from where I personally want to be.

Let's slow down for a second.

I worry that we are looking to technology to fill in the gaps of our consciousness instead of looking within ourselves for improvement. When I think of augmented humanity, I envision an individual who has so thoroughly mastered the art of being human that the only chance for growth lies in the adoption of technology -- of becoming a "cyborg." Again, I don't doubt that technology is allowing us to become so much more than we have been in the past. But, maybe it's the history teacher inside me that constantly looks to examples of our past and sees remarkable people that accomplished incredible things without Twitter, without cell phones, without the internet, and without becoming a cyborg. I look to those examples as I try to become more than I currently am, not technology.

What might old-fashioned augmented humanity look like?

Where can we look for improvement before we embrace technological augmentation? Surely adoption of brand new technology is not the answer to self-improvement?

MASTERY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Regaining consciousness means knowing why I act, think, and believe what I do. It's about making decisions and living my life in a way that is aligned with my values and NOT the external decision makers, like advertisement, that barrage me. I need to be able to take multiple information streams and synthesize them with my own self-determined values to decide what I truly believe. Too many people are content to give up their consciousness for the relative ease of letting others live their lives for them.

I firmly and truly believe that the more people strive to live consciously the more we will see the great social ills of our time be solved. A world full of people asking themselves what they truly believe and whether their actions are consistent with those beliefs will result in greater responsibility across the board. This isn't an easy thing to do and it requires a constant and concerted effort. Every aspect of our lives, from what we eat, the work we do, and the relationships that we have need to be addressed in turn as we increase our consciousness. It is a whole body and whole mind effort.

MASTERY OF FOCUS

I see this in myself and my students everyday; our ability to focus on one thing at a time is quickly becoming eradicated. The pull on our attention comes from everywhere and anywhere all at once. The ability to sit quietly and truly focus on one thing is a skill that very few people still have. And yet, the ability to focus for long periods of time is one of the most important factors to creating great work. It isn't good enough to spread your attention as thin as next year's laptop anymore. If you want to rise above the noise then you must be able to eliminate distractions and focus at the expense of staying ever connected.

I look back to history with a twinge of jealousy as I read accounts of how Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison worked. They didn't have to face the never ending ping of incoming emails, text messages, or Twitter updates. And yet, nearly do you or I. We can turn off notifications, we can download software that blocks distracting websites and we can train ourselves to focus like the heroes of the past.

BECOMING AUTOTELIC

A person who is autotelic is able to find enjoyment in anything. An autotelic activity is something you do just for the sake of doing it. You aren't looking for external rewards or recognition. Developing an autotelic personality is quite possibly the ultimate end of old-fashioned augmented humanity. Try to imagine how you felt the last time you truly got "lost" in an activity. Time flew by, you felt engaged, challenged and you were operating at the peak of your abilities. You can train yourself to enter this state of flow at will with practice.

Mastering flow, or optimal experience, allows you to enjoy every aspect of your life. From the most mundane to the most exciting, you have complete control over your emotions and attitude. There are powerful examples of prisoners of war or explorers struggling under intense conditions that have been able to train their minds, to master their environment so completely, that they report levels of happiness that some millionaires only dream of. This level of super-humanness is equally as exciting as any purported benefit of technological augmented humanity. It doesn't take Twitter or the internet for you to learn how to enter the flow state in work, at play with your friends or family, or working on some other difficult task.

EMBRACING OUR HUMANITY

The purpose of this article is not to tear down Everett's theories of augmented humanity. In fact, I think using technology to help people become more than they currently are is an admirable goal. Using technology intelligently is an important skill that is only going to gain importance as time marches forward.

However, I'm afraid that we're jumping into the future without having a strong base to work off. Most people have not even scratched the surface of what they're capable of without the use of technology. Mastering our consciousness lets us become the masters of our own lives. Mastering the ability to focus allows us to create work that will change the world. And mastering flow makes us an active part in every aspect of life, regardless of how others perceive it. I'll spend my time focusing on these components of humanity first. Then, if I ever feel like I'm ready, I'll investigate becoming a cyborg.

Like a cheesy sci-fi movie, the cyborg built on the strength of humanity will beat the cyborg tricked out with the latest technological innovations any day.

On Blogging Without The Internet

I've been a semi-professional blogger for awhile now and I haven't had internet access at my home for the last 9 months. Every time I mention this little factoid jaws seem to go slack and eyes get a little hazy. The follow up question is invariably something along the lines of, "Whaa...how?" or "Why would you do that to yourself?" A blogger without access to the internet -- is that really as strange as it sounds?

Here's what I've learned from 9 months of limited internet access and why I decided to get service last week.

1. Blogging is done 98% offline anyway: First and foremost, I'm a writer. The internet just happens to be where I post my finished product. Writing is done most efficiently (for me at least) offline.

2. My willpower was never even brought into the question: When I woke up in the morning I didn't have to exercise any willpower to not check my email or go waste time on Twitter. It wasn't even an option so I didn't have to worry about it. As a side effect, I've noticed my willpower has atrophied a little bit when it comes to regulating my internet access.

3. My limited time online was usually very focused: I got in the habit of making lists of things I needed to do when I had access to the internet. Most of the time I only had an hour or two of access at a time so I had to make sure I got everything done that I had on my lists. This resulted in me using my time pretty effectively most of the time.

4. I was always on the prowl for access: This is the main reason I decided to get internet access in my apartment. I always had my iPod Touch with me and was constantly on the lookout for free wi-fi. Since I never knew when my next chance to access the internet would be, I became obsessed with looking for access. This started to really bother me when I caught my social habits being affected. I began taking my iPod Touch with me anywhere and everywhere. That constant uncertainty was making me a pain to be around, I'm sure.

5. I became Starbuck's bitch: "Tall bold, please." I said this so, so many times over the past few months. Starbucks has free internet (as long as you purchase a drink) so I found myself spending many a hour sipping a delicious coffee and using their wi-fi. I told myself that I was saving money by not paying for access to the internet, but when it comes down to it I was probably only saving $15 a month, tops.

I liked the productivity that not having home access to the internet gave me but I hated always being on the lookout for it as well. When I got my full-time long-term substitute teaching job I decided it was probably time to get the internet in my apartment. I wanted to be able to do research and preparation for my lessons on my own time and without having to drop $1.59 on a drink.

Now that I've re-entered the world of the connected, I'm very cognizant of not falling into bad habits. Just like you can't give a ton of food to a starving person without them throwing up, I'm afraid that my mind is going to throw up when it suddenly has access to the internet almost 24 hours a day after going without for so long.

It'll be an interesting case study in my own discipline and habits.

Have you lived without access to the internet for long periods of time? How did you feel about it? I'd love to hear your story in the comments.

It's Not the Tools, It's the Carpenter

This blog isn't about minimalism.

It never has been. Sure, I bandy the word about but I've never considered myself a "minimalist blogger". I write about living simply and consciously -- in whatever form that takes. Sometimes that is through the tool of minimalism and sometimes it's not. Despite the recent uproar (which I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in -- although, appear to be doing so now) minimalism can't die. Tools can't die. Hammers, screwdrivers and computers are nothing more than what people make them to be. Minimalism is made by the people who practice it -- and they aren't going anywhere soon.

I caution those of use who are lucky enough to make a full or even partial living on the internet to lose perspective of the larger world. Just because everyone you interact with on Twitter claims to live minimally and consciously doesn't mean the idea is mainstream. If you read this blog you're in the minority. If you've ever left a comment, sent me an email, or interacted with me in any way you're part of an even smaller minority. Your reality isn't my reality. My reality isn't yours. We risk running into problems when we project our own perspective on others.

Please don't let one person represent an idea for you. Proclamations are pointless when we are talking about the way we live our lives. Conscious living applies to every aspect of life -- especially when it comes to what you read on this, or any other, blog.

I'm not particularly interested in petty controversies between people who write on the internet. I'm just going to keep writing about how I'm learning to live a simpler and more conscious life. Minimalism will continue to be a tool I use. However, my tools don't define me. Nobody looks at a world-class sculptor and says, "That's the guy who uses that really awesome chisel! Check out how sweet his chisel is!" A carpenter is not asked to wax poetic about his hammers and his saws after a house has been built.

I'm not interested in being defined by my tools either; I'm building something that transcends what I've used to build it.

Out of Sight Minimalism

Minimalism usually evokes images of spartan living spaces, airy closets, and few personal possessions. In essence, minimal living is usually tied to physical items, or the lack thereof. That's an important aspect of minimalism, but it's not the end-all-be-all of what it means to live minimally. In fact, I don't think it's even the most important part. Minimalism can, and should, be applied to the unseen components of life, too.

COMMITMENTS

It doesn't matter how tranquil and serene your living environment is if you spend your life rushing from one commitment to another. I think it's interesting how many people who are interested in living a minimal life are also the type of person who is very driven and dedicated to personal development. Sometimes, the two values clash with each other. In the quest of self improvement it can be tempting to take on too much at a time. Start restricting yourself to only the commitments that speak most directly to your values. What you'll sacrifice in breadth of activities you'll easily make up for by becoming more deeply involved with your remaining responsibilities. The deeper you get into your commitments, the greater chance you have for impact, too.

SOMEDAY/MAYBE LISTS

A component of David Allen's Getting Things Done system (a keystone for organizing my life) is the idea of having a Someday/Maybe list. This is the list where everything that you think you might like to do at some point, but can't right now, lives. When these lists are up to date and truly reflect your passions and desires, it can be exhilarating to look at.

However, the longer something sits on this list and you don't take action on it, the more likely it is to weigh you down. I recently took a look at my someday/maybe list and had well over 50 things on it. Some of them had been on there for so long I couldn't even remember when I wanted to do it. I certainly didn't want to now. After I purged those lists and was left with the few things I knew I still wanted to do, I felt better. Unfulfilled commitments, even to yourself, can become draining. You have control over that, so don't let it happen.

PERSONAL WISH LISTS

I keep a simple list in my Evernote account of things that I want. It also serves double duty as a 30 day waiting list for significant purchases. It's easy to have a handy list to give someone who asks about birthday or Christmas presents and it keeps me from buying unnecessary things on impulse. Over time, though, the list becomes littered with 30-day-wait-items that failed to pass the test and items I no longer yearn for. Having a huge list of things that I wanted didn't feel very minimalist, so after I cleaned it up and purged the majority of it, I felt like I was closer to living my value of mindful consumption.

DIGITAL DETRITUS

How many gigs of music do you have on your computer that you never listen to? I used to have a massive iTunes library that routinely pissed me off. I couldn't listen to the entire library on shuffle because I had to keep skipping songs I didn't like. What the hell is the point of that? With Pandora and other streaming radio, keeping actual music files on my computer is almost redundant. I know this isn't true for everyone, but it might be worth looking at how much you're actually storing on your computer. Almost everything can be accessed on the cloud now. That means you don't have to store it plus you can access your data from anywhere. What about crappy photos that are mixed in with your good ones? Old work reports you'll never need again? That middle school paper you wrote 11 years ago? Why keep digital detritus around when you wouldn't dream of keeping a physical folder of old algebra homework in your minimal office?

An outwardly minimal life marked by unseen clutter is minimal in nothing but name. Minimizing the visual and concrete is only the first step that allows the space to minimize the more abstract components of life. Out of sight minimalism is just as important, if not more so, than visual minimalism.

Where are your out of sight trouble spots?

Living Beyond Books

I've considered myself a minimalist for well over two years. Before, I was a hoarder. A well organized hoarder, but a hoarder nonetheless. I loved to collect things. When I was younger my chosen poison was hockey trading cards. In fact, one of my favorite past times was to take my entire collection and spend the day reorganizing it. One day it would be by team, another day would be by name, and if I was feeling particularly motivated, I'd organized my massive collection by an obscure statistical category.

As I got older, I began collecting books. I was interested in anything that came in a series. Stephen King's Dark Tower series? Check. Lord of the Rings? Check. The entire Shannara series? Check. Any time I didn't have a complete series I felt like part of myself was incomplete. I dreamed of having a library that would fill entire rooms. But even that fantasy wasn't enough to assuage the emotional stress I felt about having as complete a collection as possible. Obviously, I could never own or read every book and for some reason that bothered me at a subconscious level.

Are you catching the crazy here?

Just in case it slipped by you, let me reiterate.

I was annoyed by the fact that I could never read and own every single book in existence.

Coming to accept that realization was the beginning of my minimalist journey. Since I couldn't have it all, I decided to see how little I could have instead. To my surprise, I discovered that it wasn't owning books that I loved after all. It was reading books that I enjoyed. Then, I realized that I wasn't even necessarily in love with the old fashioned construct of a book -- I just wanted to read.

I've lived quite minimally for awhile now. Quite minimally, that is, except for the two bookcases full of books. I always rationalized that an educated person such as myself needed an apartment full of books as proof of that education. I've also been holding onto various books that I thought would fill my classroom the day I became a full-time social studies teacher. Besides the narcissism inherent in keeping books as social proof of my own intelligence those books I was saving for my classroom were a constant reminder that I am not a full-time teacher. At first, that bothered me. Now, I'm happy that my plans have changed. Why keep the books, then?

This weekend I took the big step of giving away 95% of my remaining book collection. I'm giving them to the local library and a former high school teacher of mine. I'll let the library store, organize and care for them for me. I'll let somebody who is in the classroom already utilize the books that have been sitting on my shelves doing nothing but making me look cultured.

I love reading, not owning books. I love learning, not purchasing books.

I'm learning that minimalism is about focusing on the verbs in life: doing, being, reading, learning, growing; and a lot less on the nouns: books, stuff, collections, and clutter.

All you minimalists out there, where are the last remnants of your former self hiding? I was hiding in my books. What about you? Shoes? Photos? Computer parts? What would it feel like to finally let that go?

Why I'm Deleting My Facebook Account

I decided to start the New Year with a metaphorical bang. I've neglected to share the details of my life over the past couple months and I think it has made my writing quite dry. I know you aren't here to read about the intimate details of my life, but let's face it, anybody can write "how to" posts about living simpler. The interest lies when people add their own twists to run-of-the-mill information and when they share how it is affecting their life.

I will be posting this on Facebook, and then deleting (or locking down) my account.

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I'M DELETING MY FACEBOOK ACCOUNT BECAUSE I AM WEAK.

I allowed it to trick me into thinking 1,000 Facebook friendships are suitable replacements for 10 real relationships. I've been lulled into the false sense of security that tells me because I can instantly communicate with all the people in my life, I don't need to right now. Not talking to you right now, even though I could, has turned into not talking to you for 6 months. And then a year. And then two years.

Facebook has become much less about communicating meaningfully with people and much more about knowing what everyone is doing. And it's not you, it's me. I like scrolling through my updates and seeing what you did yesterday, how your finals are going, or whether it's snowing where you are. I don't know why I do this, but I've come to terms with the fact that none of this matters. What you're actually doing, thinking, feeling, and fearing right now is not being portrayed by the lyrics in your status update.

I care about you as a person and for me, Facebook is becoming extremely adept at removing your humanity. Instead, you are just another line of information in an endlessly updating stream flowing in front of my eyes as cheap entertainment. I don't want that and you don't want that.

This isn't about you, it's about my own inability to filter the information that comes into my life. I face too much of it on a day to day basis and it dilutes and distracts me from the things that really matter. Deleting my Facebook account is only the first step in a larger movement toward becoming more conscious of how I spend my time and attention.

It's about being okay with less. With less information and less distraction. About eliminating the low-impact streams of information in favor of making time for what truly matters.

No, I won't be checking your status or updating my own anymore, but I will be calling you and asking if you want to grab a coffee sometime soon. I won't "like" that funny video you posted on somebody's wall but I will be writing you an email or a letter. I won't be able to play Farmville with you, but I will want to get together and play some video games sometime. All I know is that I need more face to face, and less text to text, time with the important people in my life.

I've got a list of people that aren't going to really be affected by whether I have a Facebook account. We're still going to talk and see each other and the world will continue to spin.

I have another list of people that I'm going to make a more conscious effort to contact more often. These are the people who I need to make a concerted effort to make a larger part of my life. If I'm a part of that second list for you, I'd love if you'd send me an email or give me a call sometime. If you don't know me particularly well but think that you'd like to, please, please, please contact me via email, Skype, Twitter, or phone.

Our technological world is becoming more and more impersonal. This is my small act of defiance, of rebellion, toward a world of more personal connections. I see the irony that a service meant to draw people closer together has not done that for me and yet, I'm okay with it.

In fact, I feel better already.

Is Facebook replacing heartfelt and personal relationships for you?

Why You Should Focus on Process, Not Results

I've spent the last several days thinking deeply about what I want to accomplish in 2011 and beyond. I've always been a planner by nature. However, events over the past several years have made me question the point of planning. So far, most of my plans rarely seem to come to fruition for reasons outside my control. This year, I'm going to try to change the nature of my planning to account for the fact that there are numerous factors that I have zero control over in my life. I want my goals and plans to reflect what I can impact with my own actions and effort. To that effect, I am focusing on process in 2011.

FIRST COMES PROCESS, THEN COMES RESULTS

Obviously, this website plays a very large role of my life. I spend hours upon hours working on it every week and I am trying to grow it into a self sufficient business. It's important that I have logical goals to work toward. However, the metrics that many blogs use for success are not things I can have complete control over. For example, I really don't have any control over whether or not you subscribe to my blog. I can't control your actions. I can, and should, obviously write compelling content that will make you want to subscribe and I should provide an easy way for you to do so. But the bottom line is that decision is purely yours.

Another common metric for blog success is page views. Again, that is not something I control. I can improve my SEO so my pages rank better in search engines, I can submit articles to news sites like Digg or Reddit, but again, whether or not somebody clicks on a link to my site is not something I can control.

Instead, I'm going to focus on goals that hinge completely on my own effort this year.

1. Writing first thing in the morning: I need to write if I want to become a better writer. The better writer I am, the better this site will be. Very simply, I need to write more. Therefore, I want one of the first activities I partake in upon waking to be writing. I don't necessarily need to jump directly into an article for the website, I just need to write something. It can be my daily "morning pages", a poem, an article, a letter-- anything.

2. Letting every piece of writing sit for at least 24 hours before publication: I don't edit my writing stringently enough. For most of what you see on this website, I write a draft, look it over and make some minor changes, and then hit publish. That works for some people but I'm becoming more and more aware of the fact that writing requires good editing just as much as a solid first draft. I need to let my writing sit, to marinate for awhile, before I allow you to see it. I think this will make my writing tighter, clearer, simpler, and more powerful.

3. Planning at night: Each night I want to spend a few minutes planning for the upcoming day. When I have a clear plan with three "Most Important Things" to do I am much, much more productive. Investing the time on the front end to figure out what my discrete next actions for each project are allows me to get a lot more work done. Developing this habit is just a matter of discipline.

Each of these three goals are completely dictated by my own choices and action. They are process-focused and not result-focused. I obviously want more subscribers, more readers, more exposure and every other goal that bloggers want. Writing in the morning, editing my writing more ruthlessly, and planning each night will make those other goals happen. By improving the process I improve the result.

This concept of process-centered goals can be applied to other aspects of my life. Health, personal development, and relationships can all benefit from focusing on the habits and routines, the processes, instead of goals.

What processes can you improve on in 2011? Does it make more sense to focus on process, which you control 100%, instead of external metrics of success?

This Is What I'm Teaching

I recently had the opportunity to speak to a group of students at the university where I coach hockey. I was asked to talk about leadership, finding your passion, and figuring out how to live after graduation when you can't find a job. I wasn't really sure what the format of the presentation was going to be, but it ended up being a great conversation that covered many different topics. I wanted to briefly summarize a few of the main points that I made during my talk.

1. A college degree doesn't equal a job: I thought that because I was a top 10 high school student and a 3.97 GPA college student a teaching job would fall into my lap. It didn't. Instead, I took my seemingly narrow degree (social studies secondary education) and applied the skills I developed at school to a new activity, blogging. Going through the classes and getting good grades isn't enough. You need to find a passion (or passions) and pursue them on your own time.

2. You get to decide what matters to you and what doesn't: Just because most people buy a new car with a pay raise or buy the largest home they can barely afford doesn't mean you have to as well. Just because most people don't cook at home and are content spending thousands of dollars a year eating out doesn't mean you have to as well. You are the master of your attention, money, and focus. Figure out what actually matters to you and spend as much of your time and resources doing that. Everything else? Do what you have to do to get by but don't feel like you need to follow the crowd.

3. We all get 24 hours in our days: The difference between people is the way in which those hours are used: Abraham Lincoln had 24 hours in his day. Albert Einstein had 24 hours in his day. Why are some people so much more successful and productive than others? There are a ton of different factors at play (obviously) but the bottom line is that we're all working with the same limitations. You decide how you want to use the time you've been given.

4. You can either reduce your wants or increase your income: I've found it's much easier to reduce my wants: Both have the same effect of helping you live below your means. However, unchecked wants seem to have a way of always outstripping income. If you can reduce the amount of stuff that you desire you can free up a ton of money to do some really awesome things. For example, you can work part time while pursuing your passion (like I'm doing). You could save your money and travel the world or give yourself a number of other amazing experiences.

I'm very thankful for the opportunity to get to speak about some of the ideas and concepts that I've been writing about for a long time now. I hope this is only the first of many, many forays into public speaking on this topic.

Living a conscious life is an important message and if you agree, I hope you find the work I do here inspirational.If you do, please consider sharing my work with a friend so we can help people live healthier, more conscious, and more meaningful lives together.

Keep Your Stick On the Ice

As a long time player, and now as a coach, I've been around the game of hockey for a long, long time. One of the things you quickly pick up if you're familiar with the sport is the prevalence of certain cliches. Watch a between periods interview on TV, a post-game interview with a coach, or talk to a 12 year old pee-wee and they are all likely to sound very similar. For some reason, hockey is a game dominated by cliches. I've heard many people say that it's nearly pointless to interview a hockey player because they are likely to say the same things every other hockey player says:

1. "We just gotta get some traffic in front of the net."

2. "I just gotta keep my stick on the ice."

3. "Gotta keep your head up out there."

4. "Just gotta go hard every single shift and everything will take care of itself."

And a few others.

Being the inquisitive person that I am, I decided to think a little bit deeper about what these cliches actually mean. If everybody says them all the time, they must have some sort of relevance, right?

Don't worry, I'm not about to launch into a detailed analysis of hockey theory and system. I know most of you guys are American and don't even know what hockey is :)

Instead, I'm going to apply these hockey cliches to life in a new series I'm calling Living Like a Hockey Player.

"KEEP YOUR STICK ON THE ICE"

This might be the most repeated piece of advice any hockey player ever hears. From the time you're old enough to be stumbling around on the pond you have a coach constantly telling you to put your stick on the ice (although, it's amazing how many of my college players seem to have tuned out that part of their development…) What's the big deal about having your stick on the ice? Obviously, if you're going to take a shot or see somebody getting ready to pass to you you'll put your stick down, by why does it matter if you don't even have the puck?

Hockey is an incredibly fast game. Pucks often reach 90 MPH or more. Players are flying around with razors on their feet. It's intense, quick, and changes directions constantly. Having your stick on the ice means you're ready for anything. I don't know how many goals I've scored just because my stick was on the ice and a shot deflected off of it. If I was carrying my stick around my waist I would never had the opportunity to score. The difference in a one goal game can be as simple as where the blade of your stick is at all times.

But what about life? What can you learn from the cliche "keep your stick on the ice" if you aren't a hockey player? I see it as advice to be ready at all times. Sometimes you don't see what is developing on the horizon until it is right on top of you. If you aren't ready to jump all over an opportunity, if your "stick" isn't on the "ice", you're going to miss it. How can you train yourself to keep your proverbial stick on the ice at all times?

1. Stay on top of your work: If you're buried under work that you've been procrastinating on, you probably won't even realize an opportunity passed you by. Even if you do realize it, you probably don't care because instead of seeing it as an opportunity you see it as just another thing you have to add to the pile of work already crushing you. Granted, sometimes we get buried under work outside of our own control. However, too often I see people who are just "so busy" and "swamped" because instead of working on something logically and steadily over time, they procrastinated to the last second. Kick the procrastination habit and you'll be in a much better position to see an opportunity for what it is.

2. Eliminate clutter from your life: Clutter serves to distract you from what's important. How many times have you missed an opportunity because an important piece of paper was lost in the abyss known as your desk? How many times did that vital piece of information get lost somewhere in your purse? Clutter prevents you from having your stick on the ice. It prevents you from being ready for opportunities you don't even know are coming.

3. Develop the ability to switch gears quickly: In hockey, and life, the ability to change directions and adapt to situations quickly is vital. It's already tough enough to react to a 100 MPH slap shot when your stick is on the ice. If it's at your waist you're not going to have time to get it on the ice to deflect that shot and the opportunity will be missed. If your boss comes to you with an opportunity that will improve your career but you can't quickly switch gears from one mindset to another, from the "ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod I have so much to do," to "I'm busy, but I can see how this would have a positive long-term impact on my career," then you will miss out.

It's a crazy world out there. Don't make it harder on yourself by not being ready for opportunity at all times. It's not tough to do - it's just a matter of where you're carrying your stick. Are you skating around with your stick in the air while waiting for the perfect pass? Or, are you going hard to the net with your stick on the ice hoping to knock in an ugly goal? The latter might not be as sophisticated as the former, but on the stat sheet you don't get any points for style.

Keep your stick on the ice.

(Tired of hearing it yet? Gimme a lap.)

The Power of Deep Practice

If there is one concept I wish I had a stronger grasp on when I was younger it has to be the idea of "deep practice". According to Daniel Coyle in the book Talent Code, deep practice is the methodical, slow, and painstaking way that people with world class talent practice. It's filled with errors and upon first glance doesn't appear to be anything special. However, it is the key to developing talent. If I had adopted and learned the techniques that distinguish deep practice I would have been a better hockey player, musician, student and any other role I pursued participated in. The oft-cited 10,000 hours needed to become an expert at something is built on the back of deep practice.

What is it?

Defining deep practice and recognizing or adopting it yourself are two vastly different abilities. True deep practice is characterized by chunking a skill into manageable parts, repeating it, and learning to "feel it". Basically, deep practice can be characterized by the following process:

1. Pick a target.

2. Reach for it.

3. Evaluate the gap between the target and the reach.

4. Return to step one over and over and over and over and over.

Another metaphor that Coyle uses is that of a baby learning to walk. You will feel wobbly, off balance, and you will fall when you are in the throes of deep practice. And that's ok. That willingness to keep trying, to keep improving, to keep taking baby steps is "the royal road to skill."

WHAT DOES DEEP PRACTICE LOOK LIKE FOR YOU?

This is a question I have struggled with for a long time. How can I deeply practice being a blogger? A hockey coach? A conscious person?

How can you adapt the principles of deep practice in your own work? Are there specific skills you can practice that will translate into gains at your job?

1. Slow down - Deep practice is not something that can be rushed through. It’s something you have to approach slowly and deliberately. It's not about the number of hours you put in but what you put into the hours. With that being said, you can't expect to fly through a practice session and expect to improve very much.

2. Focus - Daniel Coyle compiled a list of words people used to describe the sensations of their most productive practice. Here is a partial list: attention, connect, alert, focus, mistake, tiring, and awake. All of these words point to the importance of being able to focus solely on your practicing for a period of time. Deep practice is distraction free, so turn off the cell phone, get away from the internet, and focus on practicing.

3. Make mistakes - If somebody were to watch you while you were practicing, they would probably wonder why you are making so many mistakes. That's ok--practice is supposed to be like that. You should be right on the edge of your abilities because that is how you push the edge a little bit further. I always tell my hockey players that if they aren't occasionally falling down during basic skating drills, they aren't skating hard enough or pushing themselves during turns and transitions. Practice beyond your ability and your ability will catch up.

4. Break it down - Deep practice must be conducted on very small subsets of skills at a time. Instead of practicing an entire piece of music on the piano, you must practice on a very small piece of it. A master chefs doesn’t crank out a 5 course gourmet meal the first day of cooking school. Sidney Crosby did not rip a shot into the top corner the first time he ever took a slap shot. Anything you’re trying to improve can be broken down into the most basic of skills.

It is only by learning how to practice deeply that you will see a large increase in skill. Anything is up for grabs. The way you do your job, a particular hobby that you enjoy, or a skill you wish you had but never tried to develop. Nothing is out of reach when you are willing to spend a lot of time practicing - and practicing correctly.

Where have you applied the principle of deep practice in your own life?

Living In the Midst of Your Mistakes

As I've evolved as a minimalist (or should I say "conscious maximalist") I've tried to move beyond the low-hanging fruit mentality. One of those easy to grab fruits that I've criticized before is the focus on the practical how-to aspect of decluttering. Decluttering as an activity is fairly straight forward and easy to do. My criticism of the minimalist movement in the past has been on the fervor over decluttering "tips and tricks". There are only so many ways to say; "Take everything out. Throw stuff away. Donate/sell other stuff. Place remaining stuff back. Repeat."

Boring.

However, one thing I don't get tired of exploring is the motivation and thinking behind what people do or don't do. I've recently applied that concept to the idea of living with clutter. Most of the time, clutter is the physical manifestation of negativity. Think about how often a piece of clutter represents regret, unfilled commitments, remorse, and/or a piece of a less-than-perfect past.

Look around your most cluttered room (or garage) and see how many of these questions pop into your head:

1. "I should really do something about this."

2. "That doesn't belong there. I don't even know what that is."

3. "I never should've bought that."

4. "I don't use this enough considering how much money I spent on it. I need to use it more."

These are only a few of the questions that are likely to wiggle there way into your mind as you look around an environment filled with clutter. Each question taken on its own may not be enough to alter your frame of mind too much. However, if they are popping into your head 24 hours a day over and over again you begin to have a problem. Why would you want to live in a place where such negative questions are always lurking just under the surface? Clutter breeds negativity.

What kind of mindset is your environment breeding?

I see decluttering as much more than reducing the sum total of my possessions. Decluttering is about removing negativity and putting the past behind me. It's about making room for positivity, growth, and opportunity.

What do you want your life to be filled with? Are your possessions getting in the way?

Simplifying Isn't Easy

It drives me nuts when people interchange the words "simple" and "easy". I also understand why people do it. Before I started this blog, I never really thought about the difference, either. But there is a difference -- a difference so great it defines the very basis of what it means to live simply.

Let me explain.

My definition of simplicity involves the removal of all excess, all superfluousness, in favor of the true essentials. The world we live in today means that most of us have a lot of excess in our lives. We have an excess of possessions, an excess of information, an excess of commitments and an excess of distractions. We live in a society of too much and too fast.

For those of us that have made the decision to simplify our lives and therefore live more consciously, a lot of our time is spent identifying the excess and getting rid of it. Anybody who has spent an afternoon purging a closet or making phone calls to end various commitments knows that it's not easy. Simplifying is hard.

Simplifying your life will lay you bare. It's easy to hide behind a mountain of stuff or point to your packed schedule and say, "I would follow my dreams, but look!" When you begin to peel away those layers of fat, those layers of excess, then the true person underneath has nowhere to hide. What if you aren't smart enough? What if you aren't brave enough?

Being laid bare means eliminating what society has told you to do, to become, or to desire.

You become you and most of us really don't have any idea who that person is.

And most of all, it's certainly not easy. 

The Slippery Nature of Planning

For the second year in a row, I am going into the fall without a full-time teaching job. It wasn't supposed to work this way. I was supposed to graduate from college, find a job in an excellent school district and be teaching exactly what I want to teach. I wasn't supposed to spend a summer fruitlessly applying for countless jobs and only getting two interviews. I wasn't supposed to sub for an entire year. I wasn't supposed to spend another entire summer looking for and applying for jobs to only get one interview. These were not my plans.

For a long time I was the type of person that liked to plan and have everything adhere to that plan. I liked having that feeling of control. The experiences of the past two years are teaching me something knew: when your carefully laid plans start to slip away, let go and make new ones.

For a long time, I tried to grab ahold of my waylaid plans the more they slipped away. I got frustrated and depressed. Instead, I realize that now is the time and opportunity for growth.

Plans are obviously artifacts of the past. By definition, they are an attempt at regulating and predicting the future. When they start to slip away, realize that you now have new experiences, new knowledge, and new insight that you didn't have when you originally made those plans. This is an opportunity to rejoice at the chance to use all of your new information to improve your plans. Adhering to an old plan that no longer fits the situation is the height of folly. And yet, that's exactly what many of us do. Circumstances change and it makes sense for us to adapt as well.

Using the example I talked about earlier with my job search experiences I can illustrate what I'm talking about. When I first made those plans to graduate from college and get a teaching job, I had no idea that I had an interest or any skill in blogging. My inability to find a teaching job has opened a new door into a world I knew almost nothing about a year ago. Instead of using my frustration as an excuse to give up I refocused my energy on a new activity. And even though blogging and teaching are two very different activities, my efforts here at The Simpler Life draw on a lot of the skills I developed as I studied to become a teacher in college.

So, in a nutshell, what should you do if you feel your carefully laid plans slipping away?

1. Let go: You won't get in trouble if you abandon your plan. Sometimes the best option is to just cast it aside and get busy forging a new path.

2. Use the core of your original plan: Take the main skills or idea of your old plan and create a new one with them. For example, when I couldn't find a full-time teaching job, I didn't completely abandon the plan and become an actor or a crab fisherman. Instead, my new plan is to substitute teach for awhile while I refocus my teaching talents toward my writing. I'm still using many of the skills that I needed for my original plan. I'm just applying them in a different way.

3. See it as an opportunity for growth: It can be easy to feel like a failure when plans don't turn out the way you think they will (or should). Instead of feeling that way, try to look at it as an opportunity to do something new. If my original plans had worked out how I wanted, I never would have started this blog and I would have missed out on all the excellent experiences I've had because of it. What have you always wanted to do but haven't?

It all boils down to how you react to a change of plans. What will your attitude be like? What good does sulking and getting depressed do? Change, adapt, and move forward!

Rethinking Necessity in a World of Abundance

As I strive to become more conscious in the way I live my life I find myself rethinking what I think is necessary. When you are surrounded with abundance of wealth, information, distractions, tools, and services it can be easy to start thinking that all these things are truly vital. While some of them may be, most of them are not. Figuring out what is truly required to do your best work or be your best self is what living consciously is all about.

I think what really caused me to start to question my needs is the move I made to my new apartment a couple months ago.

WHAT DO YOU NEED?

Every type of work has certain tools that are truly vital to executing the job correctly. Carpenters need all of their hammers, drills, saws and other building tools. Seamstresses and tailors need fabric, thread, needles, sewing machines and whatever else is inherent to making and adjusting clothing. Jobs like this are pretty clear-cut with what tools are truly necessary. It's these "information worker" jobs where the line starts to get a little fuzzy.

What does an internet marketer need to fulfill his job requirements? What does an IT worker need? What about a blogger?

Remember how I said I moved into a new apartment a few months ago? At the time, I decided to not sign up for internet service. I was super poor and decided that I could use my parents' house, the public library, and other free wi-fi hotspots for my internet needs. I figured I'd conduct this little experiment for a month or so before caving in and getting internet hooked up at my apartment.

That was 5 months ago.

INTERNET-LITE BLOGGING

I'm a blogger and I do not have home internet access. What I thought was absolutely necessary to my career as a blogger turned out to be much more of a luxury than I thought. Rethinking what you believe to be necessary is truly at the core of living a conscious life. Try these steps to help break out of the advertiser and society induced fog that is currently clouding your vision:

1. Pick an area of your life to examine: It could be your job (or even just an aspect of your job). You could try looking at your routines (like what you do after work) or even the way you eat. Almost any area of your life is open to examination.

2. Write down what the absolute core of this area is: If it's your job, what do you actually have to DO on a daily basis to complete your work? For me, even though blogging requires access to the internet to post articles, almost ALL of the true work that goes into blogging, the writing, brainstorming and creation of products can be done without the internet. If you're looking at an area of your life other than work, think about this question: what would the "ideal" you do/act/look like in this situation?

3. Honestly look at how you currently approach the situation: How do you currently behave? What is distracting you from focusing on the core essence of a specific area in your life? Is it a bad habit (or a series of bad habits)? Is it unnecessary distractions? Is it a lack of clarity of what needs to be done? Try not to pull any punches with yourself at this step. You want to have as clear a picture as possible about what is keeping you from your best.

4. Identify what's truly necessary and boot the rest: In step 2 you figured out your core action or responsibility and in step 3 you figured out what is keeping you from that. It's time to use that knowledge to get rid of all that unnecessary "stuff" that is keeping you from your best. Be ruthless. Although, if you're worried you might eliminate something that you will truly miss, try just putting it away in storage for awhile. That way you can have a test run without it in your life. Chances are you won't miss it. If you're eliminating bad habits or trying to build new ones, commit for just a week at first. Give yourself permission to go back to your old ways if after a week you hate it. Again, once you start seeing the positive change I don't think you'll be going back to your old ways.

TRUE CONSCIOUSNESS REQUIRES ONLY THE TRULY NECESSARY

Necessary is not what the marketers tell us. It's not what the T.V. commercials berate us with, what our friends insist upon, what we see on billboards or in the newspaper. Necessary is only decided when you take an honest look at your own life and make some decisions. You get to decide what's necessary. Most people don't realize they have that power. You truly do and it is one of the most important realizations to living a conscious life.

Have you decided what's necessary yet?

Three Areas of Your Life You Can Gain More Control Over Today

The study of happiness has been ongoing for centuries. It's generally accepted that money doesn't buy happiness. But what does? Is it our relationships? Maybe it's our mental outlook or attitude? Or possibly our status in society? More likely, it's probably a complex relationship of all these factors -- plus many more.

My personal belief is that while all of these things are important, the most vital characteristic to long term happiness is control.

When I think back on the times that I am most content and happy with my life, I realize that it's always when I have a high level of control over what is happening to me. For illustration, lets look at the opposite of this phenomenon. Ever since I graduated from college in 2009 I've been looking for a full-time teaching job. As the months and months of joblessness stack up, I've become more and more agitated (and even depressed). Searching for a job in this economic environment does not allow for very much control. Preparing my resume and filling out applications allow me to have some control over the situation, but as soon as I apply for a position my feeling of control dissipates.

You may notice, however, that this lack of control is a construct of my own mind. For some people, actively searching for positions, writing resumes, preparing applications, and following up is something they feel they have much more control over. I'll bet you that this type of person does not find the job search as nearly as soul-sucking and depressing as I do.

And therein lies a great avenue for personal development; learning how to take control over situations that are causing us anguish.

Here are a couple situations where many people feel like they have no control and a couple ideas to begin changing your mindset:

1. Work: The workplace can be an environment where you feel like you have no say, no control, over anything that happens. Obviously, different jobs will have various levels of autonomy. If you happen to be at the highly autonomous end of the spectrum, then your potential for control is enormous. What can you do to make yourself more effective throughout the day and possibly even finish your work earlier? What is your Great Work and how can you do more of it? If you're job is less autonomous, you might have a little more trouble finding ways to exert your control. Start with the smallest of environments (your desk or workspace) and routines (is there a better way you can ring up those groceries?) and gain control over those first. Later you can try to gain more and more control over what you do, how you do it, and most importantly, how you feel about what you do.

2. Health: When I am at my unhealthiest, I feel like I have no control over my habits. I'll eat whatever I want, workout intermittently, and just generally feel like crap. Gaining control over my health does wonders for myself psychologically and usually only consists of a couple simple steps. Tracking what you're putting into your body is an eye-opening experience on several levels. Seeing the actual number of calories and array of food that you're consuming is quite often enough to spur positive change. Similarly, planning and tracking your workouts allows you to have a level of control that is often missing.

3. Emotions: This is probably the most difficult and most abstract topic to talk about controlling. Our emotions control almost everything about the way we act. How we react to positive events, negative events, and everything in between differentiates us as people. I would never recommend curtailing your positive and negative emotions to the point where everybody exists in some intermediate and dull range. However, I do recommend taking the time to figure out how to recognize what causes us to overact, both positively and negatively. In my experience, meditation has helped me control my emotions in a way that nothing else really has. Figure out what works for you.

If you want to be happy, you have to feel like you have control over yourself. Your environment, work, health, emotions, and relationships are all important aspects of your life that require you to be in control if you are to be at your happiest.

Where do you feel out of control and is it hampering your happiness? What can you do to change that situation?