Behavior – Page 4 – LifeEdited

July 16, 2012May 23, 2014

4 Things You Can Do to Save the American Home from Dystopian Future

In 1950 the average size for new homes was 983 sq ft; the average household had 3.37 occupants. In 2010 the average size of new homes was 2,392 sq ft with 2.59 occupants. 317% more space.

According to Nielsen, in Q4 of 2010, the average American watched 34:39 hrs of TV per week. Put another way, that’s 1.5 months per year of continuous TV watching annually.

The outstanding domestic debt of the Household and Home Mortgage Sector in 1950 was $411B (adjusted for inflation). Currently, that same figure is $9.7 trillion. While the population has doubled and home ownership and college attendance have increased, this is still an increase of over 23-times.

Something’s wrong in America.

A new report by UCLA-affiliated social scientists called “Life at Home in the Twenty-first Century: 32 Families Open their Doors” takes a deep look at the lives behind the statistics, entering 32 Los Angeles homes to see how Americans really live. Here are some of their findings:

3 out of 4 of the families garages cannot fit cars because of excessive stockpiling from stores like Costco.
50 of the 64 parents reported not stepping outside in the course of a week.
Managing possessions has lead to increased stress hormones in mothers.
Most families rely primarily on “convenience foods” even though they only save 11 mins over homemade meals.
The majority of leisure time, as the Nielsen statistic suggests, is spent in front of the TV or computer.

A complimentary piece in the Boston Globe that followed Boston families and their consumption patterns suggests that some of the most pleasurable moments today’s Americans experience is when they are getting rid of the stuff. “I felt so light,” a woman remarked about filling a dumpster with her old stuff following a move.

So what do we do?

Just as we didn’t get into this mess quickly, we might not get out of it so quickly, but there are a few things all of us can do, right now:

Challenge the status quo. Many of us have a sense of resignation about over-consumption–as if it’s inevitable that everyone has the latest Macbook or every little girl has a Dora the Explorer Adventure Hut. It’s not true. I use a first generation iPhone that was handed down from my mom. Sure, people snicker, but the phone works fine. We have choices, and though it might mean enduring some screaming, parents can make smart choices for their children. Nothing is inevitable.
Think before you buy. From the biggest to the smallest purchase, we should constantly ask ourselves if our purchases are contributing or detracting from our enjoyment of life.
Change you behavior. Get rid of clutter, rent stuff instead of buying it, digitize, downsize.
Take time to appreciate life every day. Share your meals, get outside, spend time with family and friends, read a book, pay attention to things not coming from a glowing box.

Image credit: Rick Bowmer/AP

Via Boston Globe

July 10, 2012May 23, 2014

How to Use Limits for More Space, Time and Ease

Ever notice how the amount of stuff and activity you have to deal with is directly proportionate to amount of space you give it? E.g. if you have 1K sq ft to fill, you fill it. If you have 2 weeks to do something, you use that (even if you could have done it in two days). Today’s guest post is by productivity coach Ari Meisel, who provides a methodology whereby you can leverage that phenomenon to bring more ease, space and time to your life.

About two years ago I created The Art of Less Doing. I teach people how to optimize, automate, and outsource everything in their lives in order to be more effective. Doing more with less has always been a passion of mine and I’m constantly looking for ways to streamline and improve my processes. A long time ago I started imposing artificial and sometimes oppressively restrictive limits on myself just to see if I could make it work, this is the refinement of that process.

In the fundamentals of Less Doing when I talk about Organization I say that in my system it is simply a matter of setting appropriate limits. That limit becomes your benchmark for how the rest of your productivity system is working. Using the limit as your goal and working to do whatever you need to in order for that to happen is an excellent exercise. What would you have to do in order to:

Never have more than 10 emails in your inbox?
Read a book every week?
Travel the world and run your life with nothing more than your iPhone?
Have a 30 page binder that holds all the paper in your life?
Spend $100 on food every month?

The list goes on and on because there are literally hundreds of examples like this. This is NOT the same as setting a goal and working backwards to figure out what steps you need to get there. This is about setting (possibly unreasonable) restrictions on yourself to force you to become more streamlined, and thus more efficient and mobile. In the end less is more.

I’ll give you a really concrete one. A couple of years ago I had a closet in my house full of old electronic junk. In all honesty it was probably all garbage but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of any of it. Even worse, every time I’d get a new gadget or upgrade a computer, more stuff would go in the closet. In this day and age nobody needs 30 of those 6 foot long telephone cords that come with new phones. So I decided to do something drastic, I got a medium-sized box (about 2 feet by 1 foot by 1 foot) and decided this would be the limit of my electronic debris. Now what would it take for me to make that happen. I donated a bunch of it to a charity that uses circuit boards and related items for arts and crafts projects. I dumped a bunch of stuff off at an e-waste recycling day. I downloaded digital copies of any paper manuals. And finally I was left with just enough stuff to put in the box. Furthermore, going forward, any time I want to put something new in the box, I have to take 2 things out. Since I did this little “cleansing” experiment, I have added two items to the box, and thus removed four.

I started to realize I could apply this to other things in my life and business. Email was a big one as it is for many people. I thought, as I looked at my hundred plus message inbox, if I never had more than 10 emails at a time. What would it take to accomplish this? Make sure to check out my article on Mashable about Dealing with Email Overload for a great start. I needed a better filing system; rather than have hundreds of folders I have one, the optional folder, and everything that is not essential is automatically filtered into that folder. I have autoresponders setup, my virtual assistant deals with certain things, and I got into the practice of answering emails quickly and moving on.

I only use the bookmarks bar in Chrome which holds about 12 saved URLs. I used to have hundreds with folders and sub folders. There were tons of dead links and things I never looked at anymore. If I ever want to add a new bookmark, I either have to think really hard about whether or not I need it or about the one I need to delete to make room for it. In fact, I try to keep as much as possible web-based as it is. If I come across a cool program that requires I download and install it, I’ll look for a web-based alternative or I will figure out another way to accomplish the functionality of that program that doesn’t require an installation. Seem extreme? As a result I have two programs installed on my Mac, Chrome and Dropbox. I am able to accomplish everything I need in life and business via web-based applications whether it’s Google Docs for document creation and management or SignNow for getting contracts signed. It also means that if my computer were to blow up for some reason, I could literally be up and running on a complete stranger’s computer in a matter of seconds without any disturbance to my flow. In this case, the limit is that everything I do must be web based, then I find the systems and setups that fit that guideline.

Over the years I accumulated a lot of paper. Just as I explain in the fundamental on Creating an External Brain, I want people to overuse and overshare when it comes to note and record keeping, you never know when something will be useful. I used to do that with paper and as a result had three filing cabinets, each one six feet wide with double drawers. We are talking about thousands of pieces of paper, hundreds of business cards, and even full-sized architectural plans. I decided that a single file folder that could hold about thirty pieces of paper was acceptable to me. It was quite an undertaking but after scanning hundreds of pieces of paper including seven years of taxes, digitizing business cards and putting them in my contacts, and getting the architectural plans shrunk and scanned into pdfs, I finally shredded and recycled a very satisfying mountain of paper and have never looked back.

Here’s a big one, it was one thing not to install things on my computer but once I became almost completely cloud based I realized I could take things a step further. What if I could run my whole life from my iPad. That day I put my laptop away and started figuring out what apps I would need in order to function. I need FTP access, VPN service, the ability to edit pdfs, the ability to look at CAD files for architectural drawings, Skype, etc…all of it could be accomplished by apps and if not I could email my assistant and have her do it. For the next six months I never opened my laptop again. The only hiccup came with typing but after temporarily using bluetooth to pair my Mac keyboard with the iPad and seeing how well it worked, I got a portable keyboard…problem solved. Of course, the job of trimming the fat is never done. Two months ago I wanted to see if I could do it with just my iPhone. It wasn’t as challenging as I thought and I have now gone on two five-day trips with no laptop, no iPad, and without needing to use a hotel or friends computer. I can operate my business and my life, with full function, using nothing more than my iPhone and THAT means that I am COMPLETELY mobile.

What limits can you set in order to be more effective, and what would you have to add, learn, eliminate, or arrange to make that happen?

image credit: Guardian UK

July 3, 2012May 23, 2014

What Do Freedom and Independence Mean to You?

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

Kris Kristofferson

In the context of 1776 colonial America, freedom and independence meant being free and independent from the tyranny of taxation without representation, illegal search and seizure and other nasty imperialistic institutions (for the sake of economy, we won’t go into the myriad contradictions of our founding fathers).

Today, there are new forces inhibiting our freedom and independence: Bills we cannot keep up with. Mountains of debt. Constant streams of emails, texts, and hyperlinks begging for our attention. Bloated homes we can neither afford nor maintain. Cultural expectations we can never seem to meet.

At LifeEdited, we promote freedom and independence from unimportant stuff. When we eliminate (or “edit”) that stuff out, the important stuff–relationships, passions, health, great design–naturally moves in.

To get some other perspectives, we asked a few of our friends what freedom and independence meant to them.

From Francine Jay–aka “Miss Minimalist“–we got this response:

To me, freedom is traveling lightly through life. Each extraneous thing I eliminate—be it an unused item, unnecessary purchase, or unfulfilling task—feels like a weight lifted from my shoulders. Paring life down to the essentials is positively liberating!

Joshua Fields Millburn, one of the 2 guys behind “The Minimalists” gave this appropriately minimalist response:

Intentional awareness.

Ari Meisel, a productivity coach and practictioner of “The Art of Less Doing” says this about freedom and independence:

The ability to head half way around the world tomorrow, with no planning, and not knowing if I’ll have Internet access or not and having confidence that my life and business will run itself without interruption.

What about you? What constitutes freedom and independence to you? We’d love your thoughts. Please share below or on our Facebook page. And have a great holiday!

June 28, 2012May 23, 2014

2 Lists To Live By

How often have you checked your inbox or the web only to realize it totally short-circuited an important task you were engaged in? How often have incoming calls, texts and/or emails undermined your level of presence with the people you were spending face-time with? How often has your desire to do everything left you too confused to do anything?

If the above problems beset you, strategic adviser Peter Bregman has a simple way to keep on track and avoid distractions. He suggests making and abiding by two lists; he recommends checking them throughout the day. The lists are broken down into two simple categories:

Your Focus List (the road ahead)
Your Ignore List (the distractions)

Though he doesn’t use the phrase, Bregman is describing life as opportunity cost. In order to have certain things (the road ahead), we need to turn down or ignore many others (the distractions). In order to be present with one person, you have to ignore many others. In order to do one thing really well, you have to not do infinite other things. There is a reason no one talks about Picasso’s novels–he chose to be a painter.

What’s unique about his suggestion is the use of active ignorance. It’s not enough to find out what’s important–we have to actively avoid the things–be they communications, tasks, pursuits, purchases, etc–that aren’t aligned with what’s important.

Bregman’s suggestions run counter to our culture that promotes all information all the time. But he’s emphatic about the importance of saying no and the heavy toll of unlimited inclusion. He writes:

Never before has it been so important to say “No.” No, I’m not going to read that article. No, I’m not going to read that email. No, I’m not going to take that phone call. No, I’m not going to sit through that meeting.

It’s hard to do because maybe, just maybe, that next piece of information will be the key to our success. But our success actually hinges on the opposite: on our willingness to risk missing some information. Because trying to focus on it all is a risk in itself. We’ll exhaust ourselves. We’ll get confused, nervous, and irritable. Read full essay here.

We live in an age of amazing tools that enable us to do and have more than ever possible. But our unlimited options often come at the detriment of singular focus and peace of mind. Suggestions such as Bregman’s offer sage advice on how to use these new tools wisely so we can do what’s important while staying sane.

How do you keep on task and combat distraction? Let us know.

Via Life Hacker

Image credit: EE Comics

June 18, 2012May 23, 2014

Get the Email Monkey Off Your Back Today

For many of us, our fiercest opponent in the battle to reclaim our attention span is email. It’s the first thing we check in the morning and the last at night. It sidetracks us throughout our day, thwarting our intentions to complete the task at hand–writing a blog post, for example.

Escaping the email trap can be hard. Many of us have trained our family, friends and co-workers to expect instantaneous responses. If we typically respond lightning quick to emails, not doing so is often grounds for them to call an ambulance.

Many of us will use the excuse that our jobs depend on email. For a very small percentage of people like customer service representatives and EMT’s, this may be true (though I would sooner call an EMT). For most of us though, this is an excuse. Realistically, lag of a few hours on our email response will is not a make-or-break thing. And the benefit of fully paying attention to our tasks will more than outweigh the delay.

Another possible reason we check is neurochemical. Psychology professor Christopher Chabris said this in a NY Times article about the affect of email on our brains:

What the Internet does is stimulate our reward systems over and over with tiny bursts of information (tweets, status updates, e-mails) that act like primary rewards but can be delivered in more varied and less predictable sequences. These are experiences our brains did not evolve to prefer, but like drugs of abuse, they happen to be even better suited than the primary reinforcers to activating the reward system. So if you find yourself stopping every 30 seconds to check your Twitter feed, your brain has no more been rewired than if you find yourself taking a break for ice cream rather than celery. Picking the more rewarding stimulus is something our brains can do perfectly well with the wiring they start out with.

In other words, checking email usually excites our reward systems more than the task at hand. So our environments and our brains push us to be slaves to our inbox.

There are ways out.

Author and LifeEdited judge Tim Ferriss gives some valuable advice for shaking the email monkey. He promotes using an autoresponder to train yourself and others to not constantly check email and rather “batch” it, which means handling email at an appointed time rather that having it as something peppered throughout the day, pulling at our attention.

Here is a sample transcript he posted on his blog 5 years ago. His message is as, or more, relevant today when smartphone saturation is nearing 100%:

Hi all…

In an effort to increase productivity and efficiency I am beginning a new personal email policy. I’ve recently realized I spend more time shuffling through my inbox and less time focused on the task at hand. It has become an unnecessary distraction that ultimately creates longer lead times on my ever-growing ‘to do’ list.

Going forward I will only be checking/responding to email at 11a and 4p on weekdays. I will try and respond to email in a timely manner without neglecting the needs of our clients and brand identity.

If you need an immediate time-sensitive response… please don’t hesitate to call me. Phones are more fun anyways.

Hopefully this new approach to email management will result in shorter lead times with more focused & creative work on my part. Cheers & here’s to life outside of my inbox!

Tim claims the response from his clients was cheery. This may or may not be the case for many of us. Like anything, it might take some time to train ourselves and others to not constantly send and receive. Anecdotally, a friend of mine regularly uses an autoresponder and I definitely think hard before emailing him.

What is hopeful, as Chabris suggests, is that our need to constantly check email is no more fixed than picking “ice cream rather than celery.” It has been conditioned through practice. It can be unconditioned through practice.

How do you keep the email monkey off your back? Let us know your tips and tools in our comment section.

June 13, 2012August 22, 2013

5 Minimalist Blogs Worth Checking Out

You’re editing your life. You tossed those jeans you haven’t worn since the Clinton administration. You automated your bill payments. You traded in those books for a Kindle. You moved to a home where you could walk to everywhere you need to go.

Beyond editing your physical possessions, you started to evaluate your mental consumption habits. You started to wonder about the quantity and quality of the media you consume. Perhaps those hours spent on TMZ.com might be spent better elsewhere. You want to consume less media in general, and make the stuff you do consume to support your new way of life.

While we know it’s inconceivable that you’d need anything more than LifeEdited.com, there are a number of worthwhile writers and sites singing the less-is-more gospel. Here are just a few that are worth checking out:

Zen Habits. Since 2007, Leo Babauta has been dispensing his practical suggestions for simplifying and improving your life.
Miss Minimalist. Blogger Francine Jay, according to her website, is a minimalist. Period. A recent post took on whether having more than 1 child is non-minimalist.
The Minimalists. Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus were a couple corporate types who gave it all up to write heady essays about minimalism and living a meaningful life.
Rowdy Kittens. Don’t let the name fool you, blogger/author Tammy Strobel is a serious minimalist and, along with her husband, a tiny house dweller.
Project 333. Courtney Carver, who also runs the popular blog Be More with Less, runs this blog focused on fashion of all things. It’s a bit of how-to site, focusing on how to use only 33 pieces of clothing every 3 months.

Of course there are many more, but making an interminable list would sort of defeat the purpose of an edited reading list.

What are you reading? We’d love to hear your favorite sites and publications for minimalist living.

image credit ehow

May 31, 2012May 30, 2013

How to Stop Receiving Unwanted Mail

Are you trying to live a more edited life, but your mailbox teems with catalogs, serving as daily reminders of your former excessive ways? Do you receive multiple “Important Information Enclosed” envelopes a day–ones that never contain important information? Does your recycling bin teem with unopened junk mail? Do you want to get rid of it? Then a service called Catalog Choice may be for you.

The service provides 4 ways of combating junk mail:

A free general membership allows users simply create an account and search for companies to opt-out of unwanted catalogs, coupons, credit card offers, donation requests, and other junk mail. You can also enter their zip code to get delisted from phone books. Catalog Choice then acts on users’ behalf to get their opt-outs processed by the senders.
For $20/year they protect your name from being sold by data brokers–the guys who buy and sell your address to direct mail marketers.
For $6.75, you can buy one of their self-addressed envelopes which handles up to 15 places to be unsubscribed from.
MailStop™ Mobile is their free download in the iTunes store that allows customers to use their mobile devices to take pictures of unwanted mail. Once uploaded, Catalog Choice will process and manage the opt-out requests.

While it might seem easier to just toss the stuff, these daily paper assaults create clutter and confusion in our homes, not to mention a significant amount of waste. By shelling out $30/year or so on Catalog Choice and switching all of your bills to paperless, you can probably achieve a mailbox that stays empty for weeks.

image credit: Smallbiztrends

Correction: Previous version of this post did not include “General Membership” or “MailStop™ Mobile” as part of Catalog Choices options.

May 30, 2012August 8, 2013

Kyoto Hotel Offers Travelers Posh Pods

Japan always seems to be one step ahead of the rest of the world in space-saving living. Case in point is a capsule hotel in Kyoto called 9 Hours. The name is based on the idea of 1 hr to shower, 7 hrs to sleep and 1 hr to rest.

While capsule hotels have been around for a while in Japan, they have been more focused on function than form. 9 Hours’ super sleek interior and ample amenities give a luxury feel to what is essentially sleeping in a cubby.

The developers express that they are not interested in replacing full-size hotels–merely providing an alternative for people who may literally need a place to sleep and nothing more.

The video asks if the US and Europe are ready for this style of hotel. We suspect it’ll come down to cost. If a space is 20% the size and 20-30% the cost of a standard hotel room, it will create a compelling argument for booking a pod. Ultra-sleek environs like 9 Hours will make the decision to go with a capsule easier as well.

What do you think? Have you stayed in a capsule hotel? What was your experience. Would you? If not, why not?

via Monocle

May 24, 2012December 20, 2013

5 Tips for Editing Your Diet

We tend to focus a lot on hard goods like knives and moving walls here at LifeEdited, but one of most urgent places to bring editing is our diets. According to the CDC, today’s average restaurant portion is 4 x’s larger than it was in the 50’s; a 26 lb increase in average weight is surely correlated.

We are always promoting the idea of less and better when it comes to products and architecture. Suffice to say, this principle works with food as well. Here are 5 tips for editing your diet at both restaurants and home:

The CDC suggests ordering the smaller portion wherever possible (i.e. the pint vs the quart of Kung Pao chicken), sharing meals with a friend or wrapping up half your meal from the get-go. These strategies probably works best with higher quality meals that don’t excite your appetites like a Extra Value Meal from McD’s (see tip #5).
Try not ordering a meal for yourself the next time you go out to a restaurant. In order to avoid being branded a mooch, explain your experiment to your meal-mates and get their approval first. Offer to offset the bill. Oftentimes, people either leave a big portion on their plates or eat that extra amount because they don’t want it to go to waste. By taking a portion of their food, you are helping keep their portions sane as well.
Join the “Small Plate Movement.” Seriously, there’s a movement, which, as the name suggests, promotes using small plates to affect dietary habits. One challenge they offer is to eat off of a 10″ plate for a month. One case study they cite found that people ate 53% more snack mix when their bowl was bigger. At the LifeEdited apartment, we searched for a do-it-all plate, finally choosing one by Arzberg called the Tric soup plate. It is 8.3″ diameter with a 1″ rim, so it can work for virtually any course.
You don’t need to be stuffed to be nourished. Many of us don’t consider a meal over until we feel uncomfortably full. Experiment with stopping short of that feeling. Eating fiber-rich foods like greens and other veggies help you feel fuller faster, without the bloat.
Cut out junk food. It’s kinda obvious, but poor quality food is worse than poor design. You just don’t need it.

via Treehugger

Bathroom Brawl