365 Holly Worton ~ How to Keep Life Simple

Transcript

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 365. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to talk about the simplicity of life, keeping life simple now that we are coming out of lockdown, or at least that is how it feels in the UK.

This has been a topic that I have been wanting to touch on for a few weeks now, because I really enjoyed the simplicity of life that I experienced under lockdown. I originally wanted to have this conversation with Joanna Hennon, who I do a lot of episodes with, and when I put forward the topic to her she said: I really can’t talk about that with you, because my life has been more complicated during lockdown… she had to do homeschooling and other things. So I realise that, of course, my experience is not the experience of everyone; obviously especially people with children have had to home school, life has been very, very, different and I know it hasn’t been simpler for everyone but it has for me, and it has been for a lot of people that I know. And I really feel like this time during lockdown has been kind of a liminal space, almost like when you do a long distance trail and you are in this universe away from your normal life, except my life was going on as usual, I was doing the same things. It was just simpler and easier in a way, there were fewer options, and I got used to that.

Now, things are starting to open up, there are more options in life, a lot of the courses that I had signed up for that were supposed to start way back in April are starting now, dates have changed, I have had to rearrange some things in my schedule. Then on Sunday I got a text that kickboxing classes were starting again and I was like: oh shit, now I have another thing to fit in my calendar! And I really was looking forward to that but yet had booked things into my calendar to the point where I didn’t have those spaces saved anymore.

So I have been kind of scrambling around with my calendar, rearranging things, and trying to make sure that I can fit in the things that are important to me, as more options become available and as we come out of lockdown. I am also mindful of the fact that I really want to keep that simple feeling going. I think a lot of us have a tendency to over-complicate our lives and I think a lot of us have been on that quest for simplicity. So I thought this might be a useful thing to talk about now and, as always, this episode is much for me as it is for you, because this is something that I am going through right now, so I hope that you find this interesting and useful because I think a lot of us are going to be experiencing this.

Simplicity, what does it mean?

Simplicity is, “the quality or condition of being plain or uncomplicated in form or design”. So it is having a simple lifestyle, an uncomplicated lifestyle, and I think that is probably the easiest way to define it. I think we all know what simplicity looks like, and feels like, in terms of lifestyle. I think most of us have probably had a simple lifestyle at some point in our lives, if not now, or if not during COVID.

Why is simplicity important? Why is living a simple life good? Why is it useful to seek a simple lifestyle?

I think there are a number of reasons, having a simple lifestyle will give us more time, it will give us less stress, it will release some of the stress from our lives, it will help us to avoid overwhelm. I know that there are so many things that I want to do in life and so many things that I want to learn. I don’t overbook, but I often fill up my calendar with things, because I don’t have enough time to do all the exciting things that I want to do: courses that I want to take; workshops that I want to take; workcation weekends that I want to take, to focus on my writing; and regular client work; and just all kinds of stuff. So I am very much guilty of, again not of overbooking, because there is a part of me that is really precious about my time and really mindful of how I choose my time and how I book things in, but at the same time wanting to do so many things.

Next week, Joanna Hennon and I have an episode on mid-life, talking about being at that half-way point in our lives. I am going to be 47 next week, the day after this comes out, and I am very much aware of the fact that I am probably half way through my life (although could die tomorrow!) and time is running out, there is a part of me that is really feeling like time is running out and there are all these things that I have always wanted to do. I don’t really have a formal bucket list, but I have this list of things I want to do and things I want to learn and I want to do them and time is running out. So I think that is one of the things that makes me feel: I have got to do stuff, I have got to do all of the things that I want to do and I have got to be very mindful about how I spend my time, because I wasn’t necessarily mindful about how I spent the first 35 years of my life.

So again, simplicity why is it important? It gives us more time, it helps us reduce stress, it can help us avoid overwhelm by making us mindful about how we spend our time, what things we book into our calendar.

And it can make it easier to find meaning in life. It has taken me years to find my thing and I have had many things along the way, I have tried out many things, they have all been very fulfilling but they weren’t really the thing. I really feel like I have got the thing now which is helping people achieve personal growth through nature. Helping people to get outdoors and learn how to get outdoors and connect with nature to connect with themselves and, thus, have a better life. But that required time and space to find, and to get clarity on that, and it required me making the right decisions in my life and it required me to prioritise the things that I love, which is doing more outdoor stuff; and through doing the stuff that I love, being able to see this clarity.

I think simplicity is important because it makes it easier to see the purpose in what we do, and to see what other things that don’t fit into that purpose. You may not believe in the concept of “life purpose”, but as I said earlier, meaning, we all know which things are more meaningful to us, which things are fulfilling to us, if you don’t know you can find it through making better choices about what you do, and making better decisions about how you spend your time, and thus, at some point, sometimes it takes a few years, seeing the purpose to what we do and finding that meaning in life and filling our lives with fulfilling stuff.

Priorities

I think simplicity is important because it makes it easier for us to make decisions, to see the priorities in life and to focus on the important things.

So one of the ways to achieve simplicity is to focus on our priorities but sometimes that’s really hard. I think it is a process and our priorities will of course change throughout life, it might change throughout the year, different things are important at different times, at different stages of our lives, at different stages in the year. I think the more that we, kind of, reprogram our minds to focus on those priorities the more we will see what our true priorities are.

 

I have blogged about priorities a lot in the past when I looked at the three questions: who am I? where am I and where am I going? Which are what I call the three questions of self-knowledge, so I will find some of those, or I will find the best one and I will link to it in the show notes. I think knowing what our priorities are is really, really, important and, again, keeping our lives simple allows us to see what the priorities are.

 

Living a life of simplicity, or focussing on simplicity, and making simplicity important, also gives us a sense of freedom because it frees up time in our calendar. If you are saying yes to everything that everyone proposes to you without being discerning, and without focussing on priorities, it is easy to get overwhelmed, it is easy to fill up your calendar with stuff that is not necessarily fulfilling. So by doing the opposite of that, and making simplicity a priority, it gives you a sense of freedom, because you will have the freedom and the space and the time in your calendar to choose the things that are really important to you and when you do that you know yourself better.

 

So I think simplicity is also important because it makes it easier for you to know yourself, because you start to make conscious decisions about what you want to do, and you start to make conscious decisions about how you want to spend your time, because our time on earth is limited, we don’t know how long it is going to be, like I said I think I am at the mid-life point in my life, but I could die next week, we don’t know.

 

So it is very, very, important for me now, to consciously choose how I am going to spend my time, and to focus on doing fulfilling things and things that I enjoy and things that make me happy. As I say this, because I don’t have children I have a lot more time and energy, and probably money, than people that do have kids, or some people that do have kids.

 

But we all have pockets that we can rearrange, so even if you are listening to this and you think: oh my God I have got four kids, how can I do this, I don’t have any personal time? I don’t know, start with five minutes and spend five minutes doing something that is important to you, even if it is reading part of a chapter in a book, a page in a book, I don’t know, whatever, start with something. We always have a little bit of time in our schedule, even if it is five minutes. I say this because I read this review of my book: How to Add More Adventure to Your Life and the person said something like: I can’t do any of the things because I don’t have time, and one of the suggestions was as simple as to just eat something different for dinner. It is so easy to get caught up in this story that we tell ourselves that we don’t have time, and I think that is why it is important to keep life simple because we really do, if we choose to spend our time differently, but it is about making conscious decisions about how we spend our time.

 

Simplicity is important because it gives us more free time, and more time to do the important things, the things that are really important to us, and simplicity is important because it can help us be more productive and it can help us hone our productivity muscle and get better at being efficient in doing the things that we need to do so we can free up time so we can do the things that we want to do.

 

How to keep life simple

 

A simple life is going to look different for everyone, what I see to be a simple life is not necessarily what someone else would see to be a simple life, so the important thing is to figure out what that it looks like to you.

 

So how to keep life simple? First of all get clear on what that looks like to you, what does a simple life look like to you? What would that feel like? What does it sound like? What does it look like? What would you schedule look like? What does your calendar look like if it is a simple calendar? What would you be doing during the day? What would you not be doing during the day? It is really, really, important to get clear on what simplicity looks like to you,

 

How to identify complications and work to remove them

 

And then identify the complications: what are the  in life that you are currently experiencing, that are creating all this complication, and preventing you from creating this simple life? Can you remove these things? If you can, work to remove them. And obviously some things you can’t; if you have got children you can’t just give them away to a family member for a few months at a time, I am very much aware of that, but perhaps you can change the way you do things to free up some time. I am really sorry if all of my examples of complicated life involve children, but honestly I don’t think I could function with children, so, to me, that sounds horrible as I say it, but children are very much a symbol of complicated life. I think because of my autism, my Aspergers, I would be in a constant state of meltdown if I had that level of responsibility in my life. That is why I am saying this, I am very much aware that children are a normal thing for most people, but not for me.

 

So how else to keep life simple? So get clear on what a simple life looks like to you. Identify the complications and if you can remove them, do so and then declutter other things. I have talked about this before but decluttering is such a great way to simplify so many things, it is like when you take a step outside of your comfort zone in one area of your life, it stretches it in all other areas of your life. So if you declutter your clothes, your home, your office of physical stuff, and you take a bunch of stuff down to the charity shops, now they are starting to open after lockdown, that can help you declutter other things. It can help make it easier for you to declutter your mind, it can make it easier for you to declutter your calendar, your inbox, and other things that are complicating your life.

 

When you look at your calendar for the next month, the next week, the next quarter, the next whatever, be very mindful of what you say yes to. And give yourself permission to say no to things. Decluttering is really, really, powerful, I am going to say that again.

 

How to make the most of your time

Another thing that you can do is to create systems, batch tasks, I have got episodes where I talk about time management, I have got blog posts where I talk about time management, time management used to be a really big thing for me and productivity, and I really feel like doing really well in that area. If you feel like productivity and time management is perhaps something you are struggling with then read up on it and try some techniques that might help you improve your time management. I did an episode years ago, or a couple of years ago, with Amber De La Garcia and she has a podcast called Productivity Straight Talk, I think it is, I will link to that in the show notes, which is an excellent podcast on time management, so that is something you could listen to.

 

Improving time management is so, so, important, because it really helps free up time for you to do other things. To not only get done all the things that you need to do, but to have time for all the things that you really, really, want to do but perhaps don’t have time. And creating systems really, really, helps; create checklists for the things that you have to do every week, so every week when this podcast episode goes live I have a checklist of all the things that I need to do: I share it to Instagram, I share on Patreon, I share it here, I share it there, I set it up on Edgar, so it can keep going out on my social network. I have systems and that makes it so much faster, and so much easier, and so much more efficient, because I just go through the checklist. Whereas before it was like: agh I have to do all this stuff, the podcast went live, I have to share it places, I don’t know where!, so having a checklist makes it really, really easy.

 

Plan your weeks. I talk a lot about Google calendar, we all know what that is. I use it religiously, I really, really, love Google calendar, but every week, probably not Sunday because I try to stay off the computer on Sundays, but Monday morning I will look at the week, I will drag and drop things, I will see what I need to do, see what extra time I have, see what stuff I can’t fit in, and move stuff around to make sure the important stuff gets done, the high priority stuff gets done, and I kind of have that week-at-a-glance planning moment. I plan everything in my calendar, I have meals blocked out there, I have exercise blocked out, everything that you do in your day put it in there because that is the stuff that takes up time.

 

And really be honest about how long it takes you to do stuff, I was having a conversation with a friend a while back and she said: yeah I never seem to have time to record my half-hour podcast episodes. And I said: well, you need to block them off in the calendar. And she said: oh, yeah, I guess I could just block off a half-hour here and there. And I said: no, it takes more than that! For every half-hour podcast that I record I block out two hours in my calendar, because I have got to research it, I have got to think about it, I have got to type up my bullet points, I have got to type up the show notes. I have got to create the graphics, I have got to send all the stuff to my podcast guy, it takes me usually two hours, sometimes it takes me less, but I always block out two hours for a half-hour episode.

 

So be honest about how long it takes you to do something, because it is a lot harder to find two hours in your calendar to do something, than it is to find a half-an-hour. If you think something is taking you a half-hour but it is really not, that is probably why it is not getting done, because it is really not taking a half-an-hour. So that will also help you plan your weeks appropriately and make sure you have enough time do all the things that you want to do.

 

How else to keep life simple?

 

A lot of people are a fan of clothing uniforms, having a basic clothing outfit that you wear every day of the week, obviously with multiple copies of it. I tend to have different clothing uniforms per season. Like in the winter I will wear jeans and a sweater and in the summer I will wear a t-shirt and peron pants, I have different things for different seasons. It is really easy because every day I get up, now it i summer I have got matching peron pants and t-shirt, I have them paired up in my drawers and I just grab one set for tomorrow and I put it on. Then it gets washed and it goes back in the system. Having clothing uniforms can be really, really, helpful. I don’t know about you but I used to spend hours debating what to wear and this was years and years ago and it was such a waste of time, it is so much easier just to have set outfits that you can just grab and put on and go. So that is one way to keep life simple and this is something that I developed over time, figuring out what kinds of things I like to wear in each season of the year and just buying stuff like that. If I find a top I like I will buy it in five different colours because that just makes it easier.

 

Food, meals, a lot of people will recommend meal planning and cooking a ton of meals on Sunday and packaging them up so that you can eat them throughout the week. I am not a fan of that but I am a fan of intermittent fasting and intermittent fasting has been a really important, life-changing thing for me in many different ways, it has given me energy, it has helped me to lose some weight and it has been absolutely life-changing, especially in the energy and focus area. But it has also helped to make my life more simple because before I would eat three meals a day, I was always worrying about: what am I going to eat for dinner, what am I going to eat for lunch? Then lunch would be come around and I would be starving and I would be thinking: I haven’t planned for lunch, now I have to stop everything and interrupt myself and what am I going to do? It was a pain! I often found myself grabbing foods, that weren’t the best foods for my body, but just because I wanted to stuff something in my mouth to tick the box and say: I have had that meal, let’s move on. So that wasn’t good.

 

Now, I find that I am eating more mindfully, I am choosing foods that I know my body likes, because I am eating fewer meals, with intermittent fasting. I know this isn’t for everyone, consult your doctor before starting a new lifestyle eating habit, but intermittent fasting can be a really great way of simplifying your life. I usually do alternate day fasting which means that I have two meals every other day, sometimes I will do one meal a day, but I am not ever doing three meals a day. This has freed up time in my calendar, I spend less time cooking, I spend less time planning meals and I spend less time thinking about food, and I spend less time eating. So whereas before I used to block out three hours a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner, now it is two meals every other day. There are some days where I don’t eat at all and I have so much more time. Again this is not the right solution for everyone, but oh my god it is really simplified things and as I said it has made me a lot more mindful about what I eat and when I eat, so that could be something that could help you simplify your life.

 

So as we are coming out of lockdown, and of course this is going to be different in all parts of the world, I know that everyone is at different places, so where you are right now you might not be coming out of lockdown, but keep this stuff in mind for when you do. Be mindful fo the choices that you make, don’t feel like: okay we are coming out of lockdown so I automoatically have to go back to life the way it was before lockdown. No, you can choose something different, you can choose different ways of doing things, you can choose a different lifestyle, you can choose to make different decisions. So as more choices become available to you, be mindful about the choices that you are making, be mindful about the stuff that you sign up for, be mindful about the stuff that you say yes to and give yourself permission to say no to things that are not a high priority for you.

 

Give yourself permission to say no to things that don’t bring you joy, that are not what you want to spend your time and money on.

 

Time is precious, time is a limited resource, and I think the more mindful we are about how we spend our time, the happier we are going to be, so as more choices come available be mindful of what choices you are making for yourself.

 

I hope you find this interesting and useful and I hope this helps you wherever you are in the world, as you come out of lockdown, whether that is now or in the future.

 

Next Week’s Episode and Show Notes

So thank you so much for listening, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought about this week’s episode you can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.

Thank you as always for listening, if you enjoy this episode please leave a quick review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, it would mean the world to me and it would help get this podcast seen by more people who might be interested.

Next week, as I said, I will be back with Joanna Hennon, we are talking about midlife. We ask the questions: when is midlife? What is it? What does it look like? How does it feel? And how to use midlife as kind of a catalyst for where you are and where you want to go in life? Also, how to know when it is time to re-evaluate, because it doesn’t necessarily have to be midlife when you reevaluate where you are and where you want to go. We talk about what to do when you look at your life and you wonder whose life am I living? And we discuss how to be happy when you are in that place of dissatisfaction.

So, hope you find this episode and useful and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/365 for the show notes on this episode.

And if you are the kind of person who likes podcast transcripts you can head over to that link in two weeks time and the transcript will be up there. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for listening and have a fantastic week.