Simplify

As I try to whittle away at all the needless time sinks in my life, I have found that snail mail takes up a surprising amount of time. I don’t get a lot of mail, by any standard, but so little of what I do get is meaningful, that I tend to ignore all of it. It piles up on my dining room table and is a constant eye sore.

In an effort to save time, I try to sort my mail no more than once a week. It gets sorted into one of the following piles:

• Requires Action (bills, invitations, etc)
• Recycle
• To File
• To Shred

I try to work through the Requires Action pile immediately after sorting. Otherwise, this pile continues to sit and be an eyesore. I pay bills, respond to invitations, etc and then immediately sort the mail into one of the other piles. For example, after a bill is paid, it goes into the To File pile. This process has been manageable but it’s not ideal.

I still have piles of mail sitting around at all times. More mail comes every day. No matter how diligent I am (and frankly I’m not very), it never ends. I’ve decided to take a new approach. Instead of managing my mail, I’m focusing on eliminating it altogether. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

• I’ve signed up for paperless statements from all the services that offer them.
• I signed up for Green Dimes (a junk-mail elimination service)
• I’ve asked to be removed from all credit bureau mailing lists (1-888-5OPTOUT)

I’m hoping to get to the point where the only items I get in the mail are DVDs from Netflix and the occasional bill. I’ll report back on how it goes and what other things I try. Do you have any good tips on eliminating snail mail? Please share them in the comments.

I work at a startup and we are currently going through a rough patch where several people are feeling overwhelmed and stretched far too thin. It’s interesting to see how different people react and what works and does not work. I have found the following steps help quite a bit when trying to keep your head above water.

1. Take a deep breath.

It’s really easy to focus on the sky falling around you. But running around, shouting that the sky is falling isn’t going to get you anywhere. Stop for a minute, take a deep breadth. Calming down and focusing on the tasks at hand is the first step to picking up the pieces.

2. Make a list - Write down the problems not the solutions.

When you don’t write things down, it’s easy to bounce from problem to problem, making each seem bigger than it actually is. Focus on the problems, not the solutions. You won’t find suitable solutions until you clearly identify the problems. Often times, we feel overwhelmed because our “solutions” aren’t actually solving our problems. To avoid this, clearly define each problem. Be as specific as you can.

Often times, clearly defining and listing out the problems is enough for people to realize the sky isn’t falling. Seeing it all on paper, often helps us realize we aren’t in as deep as we thought. Other times, we aren’t so lucky. For those other times, keep reading.

3. Sort each problem according to when it has to be done.

This is the toughest step for most people. When you feel overwhelmed, it’s usually because you feel like everything has to be done right now. This is rarely the case. For each item on your list, honestly ask yourself:

a) What’s the worst thing that would happen if I ignored this problem?

If you can live with the answer, cross it off your list, and move on. Period. Don’t get overwhelmed with “shoulds” or self-imagined responsibilities or perfectionism. If you can’t live with the answer, next ask:

b) Has this problem already been solved?

This one surprises people. But often times we worry about things that have already been handled. For these problems, all we need is to acknowledge the solution so our brains can stop worrying. If this isn’t the case, next ask:

c) Will this problem be solved with time?

Sometimes we identify solutions, but they take time to bring about. Other times, problems can’t be solved until something else occurs. In both cases, it’s very easy to worry about something that can’t be acted on immediately. If it will be solved with time and it’s an acceptable time-frame, cross it off your list.

If the time-frame is not acceptable, split the problem up: the long-term problem will be solved with time, cross it off the list. Address the short-term problem only.

For example, suppose you need a place to live. You’ve found the perfect apartment but it’s not available for 30 days. You need somewhere to sleep tonight. You’ve solved the problem of where to live for the long-term, but now you have a new problem: where to live in the short-term?

This is a simple example, but now imagine your problem is you need “x” today. But it takes 6 weeks to build “x”. Once you start building “x”, this problem becomes a problem that will be solved in time. However, you might have a new problem: How to deal with not having “x” for 6 weeks. Fortunately, many solutions that are unacceptable in the long-term are perfectly adequate in the short-term. Don’t confuse your short-term problems with your long-term problems.

At this point, if your list is still overwhelming, next ask:

d) Can I solve this problem tomorrow, next week, or next month (in other words, later)?

This is another tough one to answer honestly. You are feeling overwhelmed because you think you need to sovle it right now. But ask yourself, what will happen if I wait a day, a week, a month? If you can live with the answer, mark it for later.

4. Take Action

The only things that should be left on your list are real emergencies. The only thing you can do with these is take action. In true GTD fashion, identify the first step and do it. If it’s still too much, find someone to help you out. Get creative. But do something. The sky isn’t going to stop falling until you start picking up the pieces.

Over at Zen Habits there is a great post, 7 Powerful Steps to Overcoming Resistance and Actually Getting Stuff Done. One of his 7 steps for overcoming procrastination is to schedule a time and place to get things done. This is great advice and something that I have put into place recently to get this blog going.

I’ve wanted to start this blog for months. But I never seemed to find the time. Recently, I started forcing myself to wake up an hour earlier so that I could spend an hour each morning working on this blog. This works for me for two reasons:

1. I hate waking up early. By forcing myself to get up and work, I don’t procrastinate or get distracted. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth the early morning wake-up call.
2. First thing in the morning means I have no other distractions. I don’t read email, blogs, news, etc. The first thing I do is work on my own blog. All those other things have to wait until I’ve completed my blog task for the day.

When I was in high school, my journalism class had a motto: Make it happen! Sometimes, the easiest way to make something happen is simply to schedule it. What can you schedule?

I love my cat, but I hate litter boxes. I recently found a simple solution - the Scoop Free Automated Litter Box. Now this isn’t one of those contraptions that throws cat waste around and scares the daylights out of your cat. It’s very well-designed. My cat switched to the new litter box in a few short days. Here’s what I love about it:

• Most days, I do nothing - I mean nothing. The cartridge needs to be changed once every 30 days and takes about 2 minutes.
• It’s always clean and it never smells.
• I never see cat waste. The contraption rakes it away into a hidden compartment.
• My cat absolutely loves it. I have a finicky cat. If I missed a day scooping her old box, she would pee in my laundry. She loves the new box and my clothes have never smelled better, (By the way, I also recommend Nature’s Miracle Laundry Detergent.)

I also invested in an automated feeder with a timer, so I can sleep in on the weekends. Both have simplified my cat chores and leave me more time to enjoy my cat.

It’s a subtle difference, but I’ve found that focusing on tracking spending and not each and every purchase makes me much more likely to 1) stick to a tracking system and 2) stay on budget. What’s the difference?

Tracking Purchases

I used to use Quicken to track every single purchase. I would keep track of all cash spending in my phone or pda and then would transfer it to Quicken when I returned home. When I received credit card statements, I would import them into Quicken. Because I work on a Mac, this involved manually downloading export files from each financial institution and then uploading them into Quicken one at a time - or paying a ridiculous monthly fee from various financial institutions to automate the process. It was a very tedious solution and as a result, as hard as I tried, I never kept up with it.

Recently, I’ve changed my philosophy. Do I really need to know that on October 23rd, I bought 3 books from Amazon or that on November 12th, I bought coffee from Starbucks. It was overkill. Not to mention, while I love Quicken’s fancy reports and charts, for my needs, it was way too much information. I wasted way too much time staring at pretty charts and too little time actually assessing my spending habits and planning accordingly. It became apparent, i needed to shift my focus.

Tracking Spending

What was the point of tracking all of this stuff? What I really wanted to know was the following:

• What was I spending my money on, at a macro level (food, rent, clothing, fun stuff, etc)?
• What was a reasonable budget for each macro category to strive for?
• What was my overall cost of living?

I figured that macro categories were informative enough to sufficiently influence my spending habits. But were also flexible enough, as to let me not feel too restricted. Thus improving the odds of sticking to the budget. For example, I use the following macro categories:

• Rent
• Utilities
• Food
• Clothing
• Hockey
• Outsourcing
• Discretionary

I don’t drive, so you won’t see things like car payments, gas or car insurance. Hockey is a fixed cost for me and not something I’ll ever give up, so I treat it like a basic need, right alongside food and rent. Outsourcing is something I’m experimenting with and might grow into a broader Business category as I explore alternate sources of income from my standard paycheck. The discretionary category is how I avoid tracking everything from books to coffee to new toys. I don’t care too much about what I spend my money on. I know that if I set goals I’ll adjust my spending and make better trade-offs on which toys to buy. So I set an amount for that category and gauge my progress throughout the month to make sure I don’t exceed it. It removes most of the tedium of budgeting but still keeps me on track.

The key reason why I budget and track my finances at all, is to assess my overall cost of living. While I love my job, my company, the people I work with, etc., my long term plan is to be self-sufficient. Just like a startup, the path to self-sufficiency involves doing two things: 1) reducing my expenses and 2) increasing my personal revenue. By tracking spending in these 7 categories, I can track my key expenses and clearly identify my personal revenue goals.

Instead of tracking every single purchase, once a month, I tally my expenses in each of these categories. I make sure I’m still on track and it also provides regular reminders to focus on my income goals. I track all of this with a very simple excel sheet. No more charts and graphs, just the raw numbers. You can download the spreadsheet, if you want to see just how simple it is.

While doing my Christmas shopping I got to thinking, Amazon has all the data to make the best gift recommendations. I don’t mean the cheesy gift recommendations you see on most sites - the new gadgets and doohickeys that make you say “oh neat” but you know nobody will ever use.

I mean, I need to buy a gift for my sister. I know she buys from Amazon all the time. Why can’t I tell Amazon that I am shopping for my sister and see the same products Amazon shows her as recommendations?

I know there are some privacy concerns here. I’m not proposing that Amazon go down the same path as Facebook with Beacon and just share my purchases with anybody. But Amazon already allows me to exclude purchases when making recommendations to me. Why not add another option that allows me to let my friends and family use this purchase to see future recommendations for me. They don’t need to see the actual purchase. I’m just giving Amazon permission to show them recommendations based on this purchase. It’s essentially me telling Amazon, “Encourage my friends and family to buy more like this for me.”

I know Amazon already supports Wish Lists. But I want to be surprised. i don’t want a gift that I asked for, I want a gift similar to what I asked for that I might never discover on my own.