How I'm Embracing A More Minimal Life
A huge focus for my life this year is to be more intentional with the decisions I make along the way. The concept of minimalism is something I've been exploring recently and I'm starting to really focus my time and my decisions around living a more intentional and simple life. This post from Into Mind has been a huge inspiration along the way, and I'm taking six simple steps at the moment to really focus my life and embrace the things that really matter to me.
Knowing my priorities Like Anuschka says in her post, minimalism is about making space for the things that truly add value to your life. Exploring what it is I really want to prioritise my time and my focus around, I started to pin-point five areas of my life that really matter to me. My relationship, my work, my creative growth, my friendships, and my health are the parts of my life that are most important to me, and getting that down on paper has really helped me to start building my routines around nurturing the things that matter most.
Reducing clutter We hoard so many things throughout the years of our lives, and Alex and I are still holding onto things from our university days that we just don't need or use anymore. We've put aside an afternoon this week to really declutter our home; we're surrounded by so many things that it's hard to really embrace the belongings that actually matter to us.
A new approach to spending I've been at two extremes of spending habits in recent years; during my late teens and early twenties I was very attached to emotional spending and would always splurge on nice clothes and beauty products that I was lusting after. Since going freelance, my money has had so much more value to me that I've been super frugal with my spending and really struggle to justify investing in anything these days. The idea of building a capsule and minimal wardrobe is a huge thing I want to focus on this year, and investing in less pieces but of higher quality makes so much more sense to me now. Un-Fancy and Into Mind are awesome inspiration for this if it's something you're interested in too.
Being intentional with my time Sometimes I'll find myself at 9pm wondering what the hell I've done with my day. I've probably done around eight hours of work, and wasted another hour or so just consuming far too much on the internet, but there's something about my day that doesn't feel fulfilling. Maybe I haven't focused on the work that really matters to me, but instead the work I think I should be doing, or maybe I haven't spent enough time with Alex and instead just overworked myself in the quest of being super productive. Being intentional with my time and how I build my days is a big thing I'm focusing on at the moment, and I really want to end each day knowing I've made the most out to the hours available to me.
Single task Single-tasking is something I explored a lot last year, I even wrote a whole post on the topic for ALO here. Single-tasking makes sense to me; focusing on one task at a time, building focused to-do lists and prioritising your workload really does nurture a productive work environment and are great ways to work smarter not harder. The problem is that it's far too easy for me to be very scattered and unfocused with my workload - I'll jump from task to task and find myself surrounded by multiple tabs, notebooks, and projects on the go. Single-tasking is a huge thing I want to be more proactive with this year, as in the long run I think it's one of the things that will be super beneficial to my productivity and workflow.
Notification free time I feel bombarded by notifications at times, from emails, to social media, to my calendar reminding me of upcoming commitments, it can be super overwhelming some days. The best relief? Notification free time. Now when I'm working I turn off my notifications - we live in an age of instant online connection, but replying to tweets throughout the day (and subsequently then being distracted by my feed) and having emails pop up and distract me when I'm in the middle of a task just isn't the best way to be productive. And come evening when I've actually switched off for the day? This is the most important time that I switch off notifications and actually take a step back from the digital world and actually be more present in my relationship - both with myself and with Alex.
I'd love to know your thoughts on living a minimal life?
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