productivity

How to Simplify Your Life: Key Steps

1 Point Contributor3 Comments

We live in a well-connected world where life changes faster than ever. Every day, life becomes more complex, with increasing expectations at work, in personal life, and in society. Many of us also want more results, happiness, and productivity. We want to achieve more in the limited 24 hours we have each day.

At work, there is a constant need to learn and execute. For example, if you’re a computer programmer, you must continuously improve your development skills. The same applies to any role in technology. As we advance in our careers, we are expected to acquire higher-level skills, such as understanding the company’s overall technical architecture. Technologies evolve rapidly, while businesses continuously innovate to remain competitive.

In personal life, we face expectations from family, friends, and society. For instance, as a parent of a 3-year-old, you may want to spend quality time with your child. If you cannot, you might feel guilty. Similarly, societal expectations—like participating in social causes—can add pressure. Beyond external demands, many of us hold high standards for ourselves. We want to be productive and increase our self-worth.

So how can we manage life with so many expectations, needs, and desires? A first step is to define your focus areas, goals, actions, and learn to avoid distractions.

Define Your Focus Areas

Decide what truly matters to live a wholehearted life. Start by listing everything you want to do. Over time, group them into broader focus areas that cover all aspects of life. Clear focus areas help you prioritize and say no to things that don’t align with your core goals.

Examples of focus areas:

  • Inner Growth: This defines who you are, what you want to do in life, and how you will do it. It involves understanding your personal mission, vision, and values. For instance, if your core value is service, your goal is to contribute to others and add value to their lives. Think of Inner Growth as the base of a tripod — the foundation supporting everything else.
  • Fitness: Includes physical health, mental well-being, and a balanced diet. Without fitness, you cannot fully engage in your desired activities. Fitness is the first leg of the tripod.
  • Family & Friends: Support from and to loved ones. Humans are social beings, and having a support system is essential. This forms the second leg of the tripod.
  • Finance: Planning for financial needs is critical. Money is a means to live purposefully, not an end itself. In the tripod analogy, this is the third leg. Financial planning involves leveraging your skills to contribute meaningfully while securing your future.

Blend Focus Areas When Possible

Whenever you can, blend focus areas for a more integrated life. For example, if your Inner Growth emphasizes service, try to serve through work, family, and fitness.

Example: If you have a family business teaching yoga, you can:

  • Spend quality time together as a family (Family)
  • Contribute to society by teaching yoga (Inner Growth / Community)
  • Earn a meaningful living (Finance)
  • Stay fit while practicing yoga (Fitness)

Define Goals

Once focus areas are defined, set goals for each: lifetime, 5-year, 1-year, 1-month, 1-week, and daily goals.

Example for Finance:

  • Lifetime: Estimate total financial needs, including retirement, kids’ education, vacations, and housing.
  • 5-Year: Identify upcoming expenses and plan how to earn and save to meet them. Adjust strategies if necessary.
  • 1-Year: Break the 5-year roadmap into actionable yearly targets.
  • 1-Month / 1-Week / 1-Day: Plan specific actions to achieve short-term and long-term goals.

Plan Actions with a Schedule

Translate goals into actionable steps and schedule them.

Example weekly allocation for focus areas:

  • Inner Growth: 15 minutes of meditation daily, plus reflection throughout the day. On weekends, dedicate more time to Inner Growth activities such as reading, visiting meaningful places, or self-discovery exercises.
  • Fitness: 30 minutes daily, following weekly CDC guidelines — 150 minutes of moderate activity plus 2 days of muscle strengthening.
  • Family & Friends: 2 hours daily with family, weekly calls or visits with extended family and friends.
  • Finance / Work: Focused work time, skill improvement, and relationship-building.

Plan for Unplanned and Ad-Hoc Needs

Life is unpredictable. Reserve a few hours weekly for unplanned tasks. For ad-hoc or exceptional tasks (like a week-long course), accept that you cannot “find” extra time in a regular week. Adjust your schedule, take time off, or delegate other responsibilities to accommodate it.

Avoid Distractions

Desires and external demands can pull you away from focus. Ask yourself:

  • Does this align with my focus areas and goals?
  • Does it help me live according to my mission, vision, and core values?

Examples:

  • Money / Wealth: Focus on earning what you need, not chasing excess for ego.
  • Fame / Recognition: Focus on contribution rather than social media validation.
  • Respect / Influence: Focus on creating an environment of mutual respect rather than personal prestige.

Learn to say no to tasks or demands that do not align with your focus areas. Understanding your mind, body, and ego can help manage distractions, comparisons, and wandering thoughts.

What’s Next

Simplifying life is a skill that takes time and practice. Clarity allows you to plan tasks that are achievable within your limited lifetime. Decide what’s important, act deliberately, reflect on your journey, and seek feedback from others. Inner Growth, combined with planning, reflection, and continuous self-discovery, helps you live a more intentional, productive, and fulfilling life.

How to learn 1-hour every weekday

1 Point Contributor2 Comments

In any career track, it is important to keep learning. For example, technologies are changing with a rapid speed. It’s important to keep learning if you are in a technology career. Everyone talks about learning continuously and everyone understands the importance of it. How to really keep yourself updated? I went through a very informative article about a 5-hour rule of learning every week. As per this rule, learning one hour every week day is required to stay up-to-date in your field. If we are convinced to follow the 5-hr rule, here are few ideas on how to make it happen:

  1. Accountability:

How to make yourself accountable for it to make it happen? These are few ideas:

  • If you like writing (as I do), what if you commit yourself to come up with one article of the week that you share with your audience what you learned this week? It could be a simple article about one single technical topic or anything you learned. Can you commit your audience to know by Friday evening or Saturday morning what you learned in the week? If you like writing, what if you start your auto-biography in that you write about each week’s learning?
  • If you like speaking, can you create an audio clip about what you learned in the week?
  • If you like painting, can you draw a picture about what you learned in the week?

Some other ideas for accountability: Imagine you are an IT consultant who has to fill-up a weekly timesheet that has a section of 1-hour learning every day. Imagine that the timesheet will be approved only if the 1-hr learning section is filled up.

2. Fix the learning hour for every weekday:

If we can set a fixed time in the day every week for the learning, it has more chances that we will not miss it. By chance, if you missed it, ensure to cover it up before sleeping. In the worst case, one cheat day in a week is ok. Here are some ideas on how to fix the hour for the learning:

  • Morning time: What if we get-up one hour earlier and use that hour for learning? It needs determination and assumption. Assume we had to get up one hour earlier. What if we start reaching work one hour earlier and use that hour for learning? Avoid the temptation of checking emails or other distractions.
  • Lunch time: What if we convert the lunch hour as a learning hour? We will not get a complete hour but 20 minutes quality time is a possibility. 
  • In between the work hours:  What if we block one hour every day at work for learning? The difficulty is to avoid the temptation of replacing it with an urgent meeting or task. One cheat day is ok. What if we go home one hour late?
  • Before sleeping: What if we plan to sleep one hour late?

3. Be realistic with your goal:

An example of an unrealistic goal would be to complete a 500-page book in a week. An example of a realistic goal would be to understand one topic of the book every day. Here is another key to plan. If you think we can finish three topics in the day, then, what if we reduce it to one third of the goal?

4. Temptation to skip it today:

There are high chances you may be tempted to skip it just today because today is a busy day. It will happen many times. Remember. Everyday is a fresh day for new opportunities.

Decide today the topic for tomorrow:

If we don’t know what the topic is for tomorrow, we have a high chance to skip it tomorrow. So, it’s critical to be specific about the learning goal for tomorrow. A better idea is to plan for a week in advance. If at the moment we feel like learning something else, we should note it. Delay the next topic to another hour, if we get it in the day. Consider it as a work meeting on the decided topic that has the deadline today.

5. Other difficulties:

  • We may face a difficulty of breaking the topic in small units. So, to challenge it, consider it as a project with a go-live date. Break the work down into a small unit of work that takes about 20 minutes to finish.
  • What if you are not in the mood to learn today? This task is not for today and it can not be dependent on the mood today. It is a task for the future that has to happen today. If you are upset or angry about a situation at work, consider this task as an activity to change this situation in the future. It is anyway a good idea to let the day go in a flow, write down such moments, and review those at the end of the day.
  • What if you had some emergency situations at work or at home? Use it as a cheat day or try to adjust other things on the plate.

I would like to know your views about 5-hr learning rule and your ideas about how to stick to this rule.