Add One, Drop Two

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I’ve been trying to simplify my life in various ways for the last couple of months. This includes getting rid of old books, donating old clothing and other surplus household goods to worthwhile causes, unsubscribing from various mailing lists that didn’t bring me any value, and so forth.

I am also trying to adopt a new discipline wherein everytime I get something new I need to get rid of one or two old things. This will help me to organize, simplify, and prioritize the things that I keep. Mathematically I suppose that this should also improve the quality of everything that remains.

I’m doing the same thing with feeds. If I add one new feed to BlogLines I now have to unsubscribe one or two. For example, today I added Tim Ferris (found via Janet) and I dropped Tom’s Hardware and the Yahoo Search Blog. Bye!

How do you go about simplifying your life? Leave me some good comments and I will do a followup post!

8 thoughts on “Add One, Drop Two”

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  6. Whats fascinating about ‘Add One, Drop Two’ is the connection you make of chochkas in our lives with chochka’s in our cyberspace. The realization as new and different tools are available you cant have them all on a blog. I’ve visited blogs with everything including the kitchen sink widget, and my system freezes. The blog loses meaning when my eyes don’t know where to go first. Maybe in the future readers will be able to manually add or remove a blog’s tools from an available list or with an ‘add/remove’ feature. (Chochka’s = ‘stuff’)

  7. Jeff,

    Great post. I think in addition to looking into new habits, it’s also setting up automated processes that maintain those habits and prevent the chaos from creeping in.

    For example, as I learned from good friend Amy Rhoads (http://amyrhoads.wordpress.com), keep a box specifically earmarked to collect items you’re donating, and every third Saturday or whatever, drop it off like clockwork.

    Then your organization approach doesn’t ebb and flow depending on life; rather, it’s a built-in priority in your schedule, and more likely to be a constant, streamlining influence.

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