I'm Joining the Power of Less

I’m finally making this public. I want to do less. And do it well.

I have been highly influenced by Leo Balbuta since he started his blog a few years ago to live a more simple life. He has written a wonderful book on the power of doing less which has helped me tremendously in a number of times.

I said a number of times because I have always reverted back to the original state after a while, mostly because I always felt the necessity to try the next big thing without completing what I already started.

Some examples of bad habits that contributed to my mental fog and mental clutter are:

• Starting too many projects at once.


• Ordering 30 books from amazon without knowing if I’d ever have the time and interest to read them all.


• Reading 4 books at time.


• Accumulating unuseful stuff, both physically and mentally.

You get the idea. Naturally, everyone who looks at that list would say that it’s impossible to get anything done adopting that mental aptitude, but for some reasons I still did all of them many time in my life.

I have learned the hard way that doing many things at once it’s not being more productive. On the contrary, if I want to get anything done I have to focus on that thing exclusively without distractions. That’s the only way for me, and it’s probably the same for everyone else.

It has taken a full year for me to realize this, and I’ve been doing many tests on myself to see if this theory of doing less holds, or if it was only an excuse for some to procrastinate.

To my big surprise, I’ve found that 80% of my procrastination happens when I’m trying to do more than one thing at once, and that’s why I decided to change.

The change

I feel now to be mature enough to join the power of less philosophy, and this is what I’m going to do to make it happen:

• Uncluttering my desktops setup. This includes my macbook and iMac. I’ve found to have too many distractions on my current desktop setup to get anything done. I have already followed some tips described here for a more minimalist mac setup. I still have to trash unused documents and files, and un-listened music and something else.


• Uncluttering my room. I have already started  doing this in the previous months. Basically I would like to work in a room with no distractions. Like with my computers, if the room where I’m working is full with stuff, my eyes can get easily distracted. This happens at the subconscious level and it may be difficult to notice at first, but I think it’s a big improvement.


• Concluding or getting rid of some of my projects. I have a list of projects where I’m currently working on. Most of them are not relevant to me anymore, so I find myself procrastinating on them instead of completing them. I want to get rid of everything possible and concentrate on the few that are providing the highest benefits and returns.


• Listing any open loop. Ironically, the pile of five books under my bedside is still an open loop in my head, even if I lost the interest to read them. Same thing for an old stock of stuff I should have sold many years ago. I want to list all that stuff and close any open loop I have, or at least I’ll try to.

This list is simple, yet it requires a lot of constant work on my part.

Once I will have reached a sort of balance in my life, I will probably focus on something else. Until then, that’s what I want to do.

Posted on September 28 2009

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