7 Little Ways to Simplify Your Day

Use these little ways to simplify your day to bring some intention and action to the changes you want to make in your life. It’s not about doing it all at once or overnight or pushing through but instead honoring your time and energy availability to make progress. Try one of these recommendations. The only one that is time sensitive is the first one!

1. Don’t go it alone.

Have an accountability friend to support your new habits.

If you want to simplify your day, your home, your work or your life, don’t go it alone. Join the FREE, 6-day Tiny Step Simplicity Challenge. Sign up here and get my full support, a fun community, live calls and bonuses to support the changes you want to make in your life along with my signature process for changing habits with less stress and more ease. 

2. Check your heart before you check your phone.

Simplify your day by starting it anywhere but on your phone. If breaking the phone first habit is hard, take this recommendation literally. When you wake up, before reaching for your phone, pause. Put your hands on your heart and stay there for a few moments. Check in. Check your heart before you check your phone. Then you can make space to hear your voice first and remember what’s important to you before you engage in the noise of email, news and social media. You can start with just a few minutes and then extend your heart practice as you get more comfortable with less phone and more life.

3. Change your measuring system.

We try to prove our worth by what we get done, which means we always feel like we have to do more. Your worth, your heart, your you-ness, it’s not connected to how many checkmarks are on your to do list, how clean your house is or how many hoops you jumped through at work. Check in with the “doing more” part of your life. Is it working for you or against you? What would happen if you pulled back a little? It’s time to stop measuring who you are by what you get done. Give yourself permission to do a little less, and then a little more less.

4. Declutter 3 things.

When it comes to letting go of your stuff, simplify your day by not trying to do it all at once. Decluttering 3 things a day means letting go of 1095 items in a year. Keep a box or bag somewhere you can easily access each day. Drop in 3 things a day and when the box or bag is full, donate it. Consistency will get you further than intensity. 

5. Enjoy a simple pleasure.

Give yourself some joy every single day with a simple pleasure. Your simple pleasure might be coffee in bed, a nice walk, chatting with a friend, listening to your favorite music or creating a simple morning routine.  Don’t save your simple pleasure as a reward. You do not have to earn it. 

6. Make a not-to-do list.

What we intentionally choose not to do can be just as important as what we choose to do. Instead of giving all of your focus to your to-do list, try a not-to-do list. Make one for the day or the week as a reminder of what you do not want to do. If you don’t have time for what matters, stop doing things that don’t. Think about the things you do on auto-pilot that you’d rather not do, or the things that really distract you from what matters to you right now. 

7. Be gentle.

What I’ve discovered over the last decade and especially the last few years is that we don’t have to fix everything within us or around us, and when we do want to make a change, the more, better, harder, faster approach causes more damage. Instead, let’s take the journey to becoming gentle by trusting ourselves to be kind, soft and slow in how we treat ourselves and others, how we change our habits and how we live our lives. If you struggle with perfectionism or often look more closely at things that go wrong vs. things that go right, simplify your day and be gentle with yourself. Treat yourself like you would treat a good friend, celebrate your progress even if it’s small progress and resist the urge to pick apart all of the things you could have done better.

To really simplify your day and in the spirit of being soft and gentle, choose one or two of these suggestions instead of all of them at once. After a few weeks of practicing, add another. Give yourself lots of time and space to make one of these new habits part of your day and part of your life. Inch by inch, day by day and year by year, we can learn to know and trust ourselves by slowing down and simplifying, making room for the kind of life we want to live.