
The year of less
For a few years now I’ve been working harder and harder to get better at work and life. This lead me to believe that somehow the harder I work at life, the more I would get out of it.
For a while it seemed to work; I was able to achieve more. I was able to advance in my career, gain more skills and knowledge, perform better work, earn more money, have more house, buy a nicer car, get more stuff.
However, there was a bunch of other stuff I didn’t account for:
- I found more stress and I was getting less sleep and I had less focus because I was trying to do so many things I had less time in the day to do them.
- I was eating more crap, spending more time sitting in a chair working, and so I was gaining more weight.
After a while with all of this piling up I felt like I was losing my ability to do my work at peak capacity, and for the times I could, they were only for short bursts. I was losing my drive, and in some cases losing my cool. I was being an awful person to be around and I was starting to suck at being a husband and a father.
This year I decided I needed less crap in my life
Less clutter in my house, less junk in my diet and in my body. I needed to make less commitments. I started going through my things to get rid of it because I wanted to have less stuff lying around doing nothing. I started saying no more often so I could could commit less time to things.
I needed a year of less.
Turns out, I’m finding that I have a year of more
- I’m working late less and I have less stress so I get more sleep which gets me more energy; I’m generally happier and feel great most of the time.
- I eat better, healthier food and doing more exercise, and I have less weight because of it.
- I’ve committed less time to other things, which gives me more time with my family where we go have spur-of-the-moment fun outside together geocaching in the rain at the zoo, or going to little communities outside of the city to walk around and get some ice cream.
I have more drive and focus, and I feel like I’m doing my best work, better than I’ve ever done before. It feels like my brain is supercharged.
When I set out looking for less, it felt like I was giving up; that I was forfeiting the game or taking a timeout.
I never thought I would find more through doing less.
