“I want you to pause for a minute, you wretched weaklings, and take stock of your miserable existence.”
This is the advice that Saint Benedict gave his rather startled followers in the 5th Century. Isn’t it brilliant. When I heard it in this TED video by Nigel Marsh on How to Make Work Life Balance Work I cracked up laughing. Talk about getting straight to the point.
The key messages I took from this humorous yet extremely important talk on why we’re all responsible for creating a more balanced life is this:
If you don’t design your own life it will be designed for you by your work, your bad habits or your clients.
What does your ideal life look like? You could start by creating a picture of your perfect day. Once you’ve done this ask yourself how often do you have it?
If it’s next to never then acknowledge it’s not going to happen if you don’t make a concerted effort to live it on a weekly basis. Being more balanced does not mean a massive upheaval of your life. With the smallest investment in the right places you can rapidly transform the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life.
Keep it simple stupid.
If you haven’t heard of the KISS principle then it’s high time you had. If you can create simple systems in your day to day business you will start on the road to a balanced and beautiful life.
One of my personal favourites is the KISS principle. You can repeat this to yourself each day except with one important change: `Keep it simple ……[ choose appropriate a more appropriate adjective to incite feelings of joy such as sexy, sweetheart, sassy, superwoman, smarty, sugar].
Think about it… the less complicated and convoluted a business model is, the easier it is to maintain, promote, and grow. There are so many companies that have a single focus and they are successful because of that very reason.
They have perfected their craft and don’t let extraneous or unnecessary sh*t take away from what they’re truly best at. One such example I like to state is Richard Branson’s singular focus in building his empire.
A while back Darren Hardy (of Success Magazine) asked Richard to speak at a conference.
He initially offered $25,000 and after being turned down continued to up the price when speaking to Richard’s PR team until he reached $1 million. By this time it was an experiment to see what would trigger a yes.
Again he was turned down. Amazed he asked what would it take to get Richard Branson to speak? The answer: Nothing sir, he is focused on just one thing right now and so is not taking on any press or media opportunities or any other projects.
Darren’s reaction was the same as mine – wow. What complete and utter focus on achieving just one outcome in remarkable fashion.
How to uncomplicate your life
I’ve been speaking to several people recently about discipline vs freedom. For the longest of times I was from theich will ultimately free up precious time for you to put towards being a creative force and agent of change. You will also have a life – one rich with friends, family and experiences.
I asked you how you keep it simple in your everyday business. I loved the answers I got and the trend was definitely towards creating to do lists that keep you focused on the priorities. Here’s a sample:
Tools to create more freedom
TeuxDeux
One of my favourite tools for doing this is TeuxDeux.com – a simple free online tool that automatically shifts any unfinished items to the next day. It’s clean, minimalist and as you check items off, it put a simple strikethrough to show your progress.
Chrometa
If you want to track each and every minutiae of your day and give yourself a clear picture of where you get distracted and at what times of the day then install this application on your computer and start making some serious changes. In fact it will save you time.
This utility starts working for you as soon as you install it. Running in the background, Chrometa tracks all your computing activities including emails, visits to web sites and open applications. It sorts the activities by application or tool and does it all without you needing to do a thing. You can create reports to show your progress towards simplifying and optimizing your daily routine. You can track your team members too and make sure they’re KISS too.
Emergent Task Planner
If you’re one of these people who is more effective actually writing things down then this may be for you thanks to this great suggestion.
Here’s the link to download his free PDF planner and you’ll also find simple instructions. Start using it this week and commit to it. Come back and report on how it made a difference to your business and time management.
Darkroom
I’d like to thank Tyrone Shum the king of Mass Outsourcing for introducing me to this tool. If you’re like me and get distracted by having several browsers and applications open on your computer then this piece of software stops all that. It allow you to just focus in on content you need to write by completely blacking out your screen so you can only see your cursor and your text. No distractions. Perfect. Try it out at https://they.misled.us/dark-room
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How are you keeping it simple sexy?**