CONTEXT

Burnout is more common than ever before.

Why? Because we take on too many things at once (and never have enough time for the really important things).

Greg McKeown wrote about this in his incredible book Essentialism. It’s all about “doing less, but better.”

In other words, get the right things done… not the most things done.

Declutter your life with these 3 minimalist tips:

THE METHOD

1. Choose 1 important thing. Do it really well.

If I asked you what your priorities are right now, you could probably list them out. There are about ~5 of them, right?

There should only be 1 at a time.

I love this quote from Essentialism: “The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular… It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.”

Try this: Every night, I choose what my 1 thing is for the next day and write it in my calendar. When I wake up, I put my phone in Do Not Disturb mode for 1-2 hours and get that 1 thing done.

2. Make ‘no’ your default. 

Inevitably, other things will come up. They’ll try to distract you from your 1 important thing. A shiny new project. An “urgent” request. But you must be able to differentiate between things that are “urgent” vs. truly important.

Just because an opportunity arises does not mean you have to say yes. Be absurdly protective of your time.

3. Create (and maintain) boundaries.

If your working hours are between 9am and 6pm, don’t answer that 10pm email. It can usually wait until morning. If you don’t respect your boundaries, no one else will either.

One important boundary to focus on is getting enough sleep. 1 less hour of sleep might seem like 1 more hour to get stuff done… But 1 less hour of sleep actually = 2+ fewer hours of productivity tomorrow. (Read one of my most popular newsletters about avoiding the 6 sleep traps here.)

CLOSING THOUGHTS

“Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”

– Greg McKeown

Until next week,

Jade

P.S. Thank you to everyone who joined Archimedes last week! For those who don’t know, I launched an exclusive community to teach you exactly how I grew from 1k to ~550k followers across social media in 1.5 years. (And how to make money from it.) JoinArchimedes.com

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