Monday Motivation: Hack Away at the Unessential!

“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.  “

– Bruce Lee

When you are trying to solve a problem or achieve a goal, it’s easy to fall into the trap of looking for more. More time, more money, more contacts, more work, more anything:

• How can I fit more hours in the day?
• How can I get more work done?
• How can I add five more activities to my life?
• How can I work out for more hours?
• How can I acquire more stuff?

More, more, more.

That’s one way of looking at it. However, I suggest you give Bruce Lee’s advice a try. Before you start looking at daily increase, try daily decrease.

What unessential stuff are you filling your days with that you can hack away?

Chances are, if you are like most people, your life is filled with unessential stuff. You may not need anything more; you may just need to get rid of some of the junk.

Here are three steps you can use to start hacking away at the unessential:

1) Stop Trying to Add More

Before you can cut out the unessential you have to stop trying to solve your problems by adding more.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting more money, more time, more stuff, etc. Believe me, I’m all about that!

However, if you just keep trying to add more without:

1. Understanding what the unessential stuff is
2. Understanding why you are adding more

…you may accomplish nothing other than making your life even busier, harder, and more complicated than it already is. Once you stabilize your current life by removing the unessential, then you can look at adding more.

Also, you’ll never be able to hack away at the unessential if you keep adding more – every time you hack, you’ll just fill it with more unessential stuff!

2) Identify the Unessential

You can’t hack away at the unessential until you know what it is. Sounds obvious, but when you look at your life and try to figure out what’s essential, it can be tough. Everything seems so darn important, doesn’t it?

To identify what’s essential on the short term, you need to take a step back and figure out what’s essential in the long term (for help with this, check out the Free Smart Ass Success E-Book).

Then take a look at your life and identify what activities, work, relationships, and spending you are consistently engaging in that don’t support any of those long term goals.

3) Hack it Away!

Now comes the hard part. Once you have identified the unessential, you have to start removing it from your life.

If you’re fully committed to this you’ll just jump in and hack it all away at once.

However, you may find yourself a lot more hesitant. In that case, start small. Pick one thing and remove it from your life. Then move on to the next. Then the next. Keep proceeding as much as you can. It should get easier over time.

Important! Once you start hacking away at the unessential, be very guarded about letting more unessential stuff creep back in (see point #1)! Guard your time, money, energy, etc, and only add the essential back in!

Admittedly, you will never be able to remove 100% of the unessential, so don’t try. However, by removing some (or a lot) of it, you can reduce your headaches, increase your time, money, and energy, and make sure you are able to focus on the stuff that really and truly matters. If it was good enough for Bruce Lee, it should be good enough for you!

P.S. Hey, if you like this post, why don’t you share the love and click the Facebook “Like” button at the top of this page…?

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Do you want help making better long term decisions? How about help figuring out what exactly it is that you want? Or maybe you know, but your problem is that you don’t know how to put together a plan to get you there?  Or perhaps you have a plan, but never feel motivated to follow it? Or you jyst get easily derailed when things go wrong? If so, than the Smart Ass Success! Learn the 7 Steps to Getting What You Really Want – Even If You Have No Idea What That Is! FREE E-Book is for you! It addresses those questions (and more) to help you get on the path towards figuring out what you really want – and then getting it! Don’t let another year pass you by. Click here to download your free copy now!

About

By Avish Parashar. As the world's only Motivational Improviser, Avish uses techniques from the world of improv comedy to engage, entertain, and educate audiences on ideas around change, creativity, and motivation. Connect with Avish on Google+

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