How to Stop Adding Stuff to Your Life
The case for subtraction and creating more space
A common refrain amongst my coaching clients, and most people these days, is finding it challenging to pay deep attention to meaningful activities. Even after addressing low-hanging fruit — for example: eliminating distractions, designing the physical environment, and timing specific tasks — many people still struggle. The solution, it seems, almost always involves creating more space; space between activities in the day, days in the week, and weeks in the year.
Even if your capacity to pay attention is world-class, you still need periods of restoration and a manageable load of things to pay attention to. Back-to-back-to-back high attention activities is draining over the course of a day, no less over the course of a week or year. Having eight high-priority endeavors ensures that none will actually be high priority, since you won’t be fully there for any of them.
Creating space works on two complementary levels: physical space (and time) between activities and also psychological space between priorities. Neither eight meetings in a day nor eight balls to juggle in a mind lead to great outcomes.
If you are feeling overwhelmed and struggling to focus, it is likely you are also feeling a sense of behindness on the important…
