Welcome to The Simplifier, brought to you by…

Contents:

1. A Note From Shawn
2. Our Featured Quote
3. Article: Creating Meaningful Goals
4. Your Simplification Tip
5. In the News
6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com
7. Keep Smiling

If this was forwarded to you, you can subscribe here:
http://projectsimplify.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=2
Unsubscribe instructions can be found at the bottom of the newsletter.
Check out our newsletter archive page for back issues.
Visit Project Simplify’s website at www.projectsimplify.com.

1. A Note From Shawn

The message I frequently want to convey in the Note is one of relaxing. I imagine you flipping through your emails, deciding on the fly what to read, what to trash, what to come back to later. I want to say, “slow down… take a break from your busy day to enjoy the newsletter.” If we were super high-tech, we’d send soothing music your way through subliminal messages embedded in the text. Until that’s possible, go ahead and take a deep breath in… exhale tension… relax your shoulders… :-)

On this week’s menu we have goals (Article), solitude (In the News), and information gathering organization (Tip). Simplifying really is all over the map!

Enjoy!

Shawn Tuttle

Head Simplifier
Project Simplify
Co-editor, The Simplifier

P.S. - The Simplifier is coming out a day late this time around - our apologies. (See here for a bit of an explanation.) We hope you made it through Wednesday OK without us! ;-)

2. Our Featured Quote

“Anything simple always interests me.“

-David Hockney

3. Article: Creating Meaningful Goals

By Shawn Tuttle

“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
- Ursula K. LeGuin

“Goals are not only absolutely necessary to motivate us. They are essential to really keep us alive.”
- Robert H. Schuller

These quotes represent common sentiments that are seemingly at odds with each other: If goals are so important, how can the journey be the most important thing?

Melding these suggests an interesting dance between committing to goals that motivate while enjoying the “now”. This melding offers you an opportunity to embrace each step of the journey as part of the goal—just like a single piece of tile is one of thousands in a beautiful mosaic. Each tile is important in its own right, in its participation with the whole, and in how it relates to the pieces around it. In other words, each piece is a relevant contribution to the full mosaic.

The clearer your vision of the full mosaic is, the more quickly you will assemble it. Maybe you have a feeling, maybe you have a visual, but if you don’t have at least a sense of the vision, how will you discern whether something is relevant or irrelevant to where you are headed?

And so it is with simplifying. Your goal of a simpler life comprises the moment-to-moment actions of your experience as a mosaic encompasses its tiles.

The vision of the goal is the push-off point. So let’s talk about your goal from a practical perspective.

Your Goal
Common reasons for wanting to simplify are:

• to have an organized office
• to be more efficient and effective
• to have more time

When a client states one of these reasons, I’ll ask, “Why do you want this?” Answers usually involve some form of “Who wouldn’t want this? My current situation is driving me nuts!” These aren’t very convincing answers.

Focusing on organization for the sake of organization eventually leads to questions along the lines of “Why am I doing this?” Without a compelling answer, there isn’t much reason to continue.

Identifying a meaningful goal (defined as being in line with your values, interests, and passion) reminds you why organizing your office (and keeping it organized!) is a worthwhile activity. Meaningful or heart-felt goals can be big—or they can be super-big! “To be a published author.” “To buy a house.” “To change careers to ____.” “To run a marathon.” “To be successfully self-employed.”

This point illustrates the underlying philosophy of my entire simplification approach. I believe that setting your sights on a meaningful goal is an essential motivator toward manifesting your goal.

That said, “goal: to have an organized office” very well may be the first step to more heart-felt goals. You can keep this in perspective by remembering that any big goal will embody a number of smaller goals along the way (and that having your work-flow as easy as possible will facilitate all of your work).

But don’t stop here! Push through to the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel—why is it worth it to you to expend the time and energy to organize? The more passionate the answer, the more likely you are to stick with the solutions created.

Basic tip for clarifying your goal: Be specific.

Look at the difference between:

Vague goal: To have more free time.
and
Specific goal: To spend at least one hour a day in a relaxing or fun activity and to take 1 four-day out-of-town trip per month.

OR

Vague goal: To have an organized office.
and
Specific goal: To be able to locate papers/files/supplies within 15 seconds, have a clear desk at the end of every day, and have the only things on the floor be furniture.

The vague goals do not provide your brain with a clear understanding of when the goal has been met. The specific goals do.

Writing down your specific goal helps you clarify and commit the goal to yourself, plus it serves as a reminder. Staying clear and connected with your goal helps you keep your actions and decisions in perspective.

As a bonus to current readers, I am making a simple worksheet available for progressing towards your goal in the context of the 5 Core Concept model (Visualize, Clear, Plan, Do, and YES!) We’ll get to this model in my next article on June 13. You can download the worksheet here. The goal goes in the central oval.

Thinking about your goal daily helps it become a part of your thought process, which in turn helps it become the journey.

—

Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify

4. Your Simplification Tip

The Simplification Binder

Collecting your thoughts helps you stay focused on your goals. Let’s set up a Simplification binder to collect your thoughts. The current series of articles in this newsletter includes information that may trigger ideas and solutions for your situation. Organizing these discoveries and thoughts in a simplification binder creates a toolbox to support you on your simplification journey

1. Start with a three-ring binder. Separate sections with dividers. (Try Post-its on a blank page. This simple method makes it easy to make new sections on the fly.)

2. You may want sections for:
   -blank paper to explore thoughts in a journal writing style
   -articles, tools and/or tips that particularly speak to you
   -worksheets

3. Label the spine of your binder with a descriptive title such as “Simplify!”

Make sure you keep your binder nearby, so it’s handy when you need it to be. (Like when reading The Simplifier.)

 

——————————————————————————————————-
Spread simplicity - forward The Simplifier to your friends and colleagues!
——————————————————————————————————-

5. In the News

In the News is compiled by The Simplifier co-editor Lance Brown.

Bathrooms: Small places can attract lots of clutter (The Valley News - Temecula, CA)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/2bzu23
Shawn discusses the “small, spacious room” concept below in our “Featured at ProjectSimplify.com” section…this article here seeks to help you bring that principle to life in what is traditionally the smallest room in the house.

In the Spirit of Solitude: Singular Reads (Library Journal)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/27qtr7
The folks at Library Journal have compiled a guide to the best books about solitude, in many different forms. As someone who has spent almost 7 years living alone on 32 acres at the end of a 1.5-mile dirt road, bordering hundreds of acres of wildlands, I can personally attest to the transformative power of solitude. And not just the part where it turns you into a lonely freak…the good parts, too. ;-)

Are you suffering from ‘time famine’? (Fort Frances Times - Ontario, Ca.)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/2axsxq
We each have our 86,400 seconds every day, to use as we choose. In other words time is what we make it, as this over-60 author reminds us.

If you know of something in the news that should be featured here, let us know!

 

6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com

Springtime Blog Selections

Here are some of the best posts at the Project Simplify blog from the past few months. (Insert clever “blooming” metaphor here.)

Click on the entry’s title to read the whole thing.

Free printable calendars
A cool online service.

A small, spacious room
Spacious doesn’t have to equal “big”.

The Tangle Tamer
It’s either a nifty hair device, or a certain curly-haired Simplifier. Could be both, I guess…

Psycho-degradable
All the cool yogis are talking about it…

Yoga, reading and writing
Shawn spends time (in a way) with Stephen King, and learns how he has learned to go with the flow.

Working in public
The café laptopper must be ever-vigilant in modulating work interruptions.

Coding receipts to make bookkeeping easier
Simple tips from a certain tangle-taming bookkeeping guru.

 

7. Keep Smiling

Parachute

This guy goes skydiving for the first time. After he jumps out of the plane, he counts to ten, pulls the ripcord, and nothing happens. Only a little worried, he pulls the cord for the auxiliary parachute, but unfortunately, the chute still does not appear. As he is plummeting toward the Earth, he sees a woman coming up the other way. He shouts to her, “Do you know anything about parachutes?” “No”, she says, “do you know anything about gas stoves?”

Thanks to Funny Stuff Central for this quick laugh.

——-

Thanks for reading!

Publication Information
————————————————————————–
The Simplifier is published by:
Project Simplify
P.O. Box 597
Nevada City, CA 95959
phone: 530.205.5775
web: www.projectsimplify.com
e-mail: (newsletter@projectsimplify.com) newsletter (at) projectsimplify (dot) com