Trying to do it all?
Let it go.
Maintaining a perfectly clean house?
Let it go.
Catching up on every episode of The Bachelor?
Cue the Frozen soundtrack.
If I could give you only one piece of advice to free up more time on your calendar every week, it would be to stop doing dumb, useless nonsense.
Harsh? Yes, but I would guess that you and I both engage in activities all the time that never have to happen at all.
Typically, when we think about free time, we are thinking about spending less time on the things we dislike (responsibilities, obligations, and so on), to spend more time on the things we love.
In reality, we are routinely spending time on things we enjoy, but those activities have a very low return on investment.
The ROI of our normal weekly habits is weak at best.
Does watching every episode of your latest TV show bring you happiness, or do you watch every episode out of some vague sense of loyalty?
Are you surfing the Internet for life‐altering information that could springboard you to success, or do you scan social media sites again and again because it is more entertaining than getting back to work?
We do things all the time out of habit.
We engage in activities that are mediocre or good, but far from great.
We say yes to new tasks, projects, and events for a multitude of reasons, few of which directly relate to pushing us closer to what truly lights us up.
In other words, we are busy—very busy—with all kinds of activities that never bring us the results we want deep inside.
We want better health, but we spend our time eating foods that make us fat and avoiding activities that challenge our muscles.
We want a fulfilling career, but we settle for the employer that hired us and the boss that makes us miserable.
We want a purpose‐driven life, but we gave up on that dream decades ago.
Free time is nice, but it is not the goal—it never was.
Purpose, passion, and an authentic zest for everyday life is so much more meaningful.
I do not claim to have all the answers, but I am certain of one thing: if we are to reach a point of true contentment with our lives, it will not show up in mundane activities that distract us from our most important work.
Our busyness is an epidemic, and letting go of just about everything is the cure.
Now that you have evaluated your life and work in this season, and clarified your vital few goals, it is time to systematically remove the obstacles standing between you and your simplified life.
The fourth step of The Free‐Time Formula is to cut the nonsense, and it is divided into two parts: letting go and reducing friction.
In this chapter, we will walk through four strategies to help you identify what nonsense looks like in your world, and how you can expeditiously eradicate it.
In the next chapter, we will look at a variety of methods to improve your efficiency, so you can finish your work faster and with greater ease.
I put twelve projects on hold to write this book.
I have dozens of ideas to build my business and have an impact on more people through a wide variety of pursuits: video courses, merchandise, high‐end coaching services, hiring and training new employees, and many more.
When I began the writing process, I had to get clear on what mattered and what could be classified as pure distractions to my main objective: crafting an inspiring, actionable, and transformative book just for you.
Writing a book that meets my high bar is tough all by itself.
Writing a stellar book while also trying to juggle an incredible amount of other work is next to impossible. I had to make cuts, and doing so required me to identify what I now call “nonsense.”
Anything that is a distraction to your vital few goals is nonsense.
Anything that never has to get done is nonsense.
Anything you would regret doing, or never regret not doing, is nonsense.
Anything that you know deep down is useless, silly, or ultimately not the highest and best use of your time is nonsense.
We need to find and eradicate the nonsense in your life, right now. To be clear, nonsense is subjective, so you will need to make these cuts on your own. However, once you know what matters, the rest should make itself known right away.
Begin by reviewing your vital few goals, and then analyze what else is true about your current circumstances.
Acknowledging that you already waste time is a great first step. Directly responding to that waste by minimizing or eliminating it is brilliant, powerful, and the next most effective move you could make.
Owning less is a critical step in the process to free up time, and an adoption of minimalism may be the most efficient way to dump what you do not need.
Minimalism can mean owning a tiny number of material possessions, but that is a narrow perspective and one that misses the boat on what it truly means to live with less.
Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known as The Minimalists, define minimalism as “a tool to rid yourself of life's excess in favor of focusing on what's important—so you can find happiness, fulfillment, and freedom” (Millburn and Nicodemus, 2017).
According to Joshua Becker, author of the popular book on minimalism, The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want under Everything You Own, there are many incredible benefits to letting go of your excess stuff (Becker 2016, 8).
And, even if the idea of minimalism inherently sounds too restricting, I highly recommend Greg McKeown's Essentialism approach, “the relentless pursuit of less but better” (McKeown 2014, 5).
Either way, adopting the principles behind minimalism can lead directly to the removal of physical stuff, as well as tasks, projects, events, and commitments from your calendar to free up enough tangible and intangible space in your life.
Due to my adoption of minimalism, I chose to make quite a few changes over the last few years:
I realized that I only consistently wore about 30 percent of the clothes I owned, so I donated the vast majority of the remaining unworn items. I freed up space in my closet and learned to value the remaining clothing so much more.
By itself, paper can consume an office. When I switched to a digital‐only system, I found that I regained an enormous amount of space and improved my productivity at the same time.
Everything belongs somewhere, and once I embraced that mantra, I found a permanent home for all of my possessions. Sometimes that home was the trash or recycle bins, and sometimes I kept things in storage. Once I knew where it belonged, it went there and stayed there.
Getting rid of junk is revolutionary, whether it be superfluous material goods or excess body fat. The process of reorganizing each area of your life will clear your mind and calm your nerves.
Minimalism is freeing. It will bring clarity to your day that you otherwise would never experience.
Now, it's your turn.
Plan a day to purge your stuff. It will lighten your burdens and free your soul, I promise.
Nashville is a beautiful town, and after six years in our apartment, my wife, Tessa, and I decided it was time to plant some roots.
We bought a great property outside the city near some cows and a river. The neighborhood is nice, and our neighbors are great people.
But (there's always a but), the previous owners of our house did next to nothing with the landscaping, leaving us with quite a bit of work. I had very little knowledge or experience in taking care of a yard, aside from mowing the grass as a kid.
The kicker is that our neighbor directly across the street is a professional landscaper.
Talk about keeping up with the Joneses!
I now needed to learn how to take care of my yard at a level I was not prepared for. In the first season, I did the bare minimum, simply ensuring the house would not become overrun with weeds and moles.
In the second season, I went all in, spending hundreds of hours mowing, trimming, sweeping, mulching, planting, weeding, digging, sweating, and learning more than I expected about half‐moon edgers and electric versus gas‐powered multifunction yard tools.
Today, my lawn is nice. I am proud of the work I did and the work I continue to do to keep everything looking beautiful.
However, there is one major problem with this scenario: my yard does not have to look beautiful.
Keeping my grass cut short is not one of my vital few goals. The status of our shrubbery or the height of our roses bushes has nothing to do with my long‐term vision for a better life.
I created and solved a problem that never existed. No one told me the yard was a mess when I moved in—I made that up!
My perfectionism told me that I needed to make my yard look as good as my neighbor's—you know, the guy who designs professional landscaping blueprints for a living.
What I needed then, and what you may need now, is a “Good Enough” policy.
Most things in life will have to abide by this policy, or you will drive yourself mad. Most projects, tasks, priorities, and expectations will reach a point of good enough, and then you must stop.
Any effort exerted past good enough is wasted effort.
Perfectionism will tell you to keep going. It will demand you design a yard more jaw‐dropping than the pro across the street.
Perfectionism will keep you up late at night, slaving away at a project that never has to be finished. That is not how you will free up time or accomplish your grandest goals.
Holding every idea, task, and project to a high bar is not only impossible, but it is also a recipe for burnout on every level. You will not make it.
The solution is simple, but challenging if you expect the best from yourself: you have to let go.
Let it go.
Let all of it go.
Turn on the Frozen soundtrack again. Buy the CD and play it in your car (if cars still have CD players).
Perfectionism, 4.0 GPAs, and being better than everyone around you at everything will not lead to a better life or the free time you are looking for.
Instead, it will burden you more than the real problems you need to solve and hold you back from accomplishing the vital few goals you are trying to finish.
Reject perfectionism, accept good enough, and center your greatest talents on the ambitious pursuits that will truly transform how you live.
The most direct method to cut nonsense and create free time on your calendar is to purge your current commitments in all areas of your life.
If you have not yet opened your calendar or to‐do list to delete, postpone, cancel, and eliminate anything you can, this is your moment.
I go through a formal Weekly Review process (which you can read more about in my first book, The 5 AM Miracle) to thoroughly vet my calendar on a routine basis.
My review process includes a vitally important step of looking forward to the next week and clearing whatever I can to make room for my top three weekly goals.
Depending on the level of your attachment to the scheduled tasks, projects, and events already booked on your calendar, and your willingness (or lack thereof) to let someone down, this process could be your greatest challenge so far.
To help expedite the purge, follow a few simple steps:
Purging your commitments is not a single event—it is a lifestyle.
Saying no to others and yourself is about to become second nature, and it may be the one skill that sets you apart from your old self (and everyone else) faster than anything.
Later in the book, we will cover the specifics around cutting distractions from yourself and others. For now, keep your eye on the prize: eliminating absolutely everything you can from your calendar, task list, project list, personal responsibility list, or any other list you keep that tells you to do stuff.
No more doing—it is time for letting go.
The best action, in this case, is inaction. The more you eliminate, the more freedom you will have, instantly.
If you get good at this, and I hope you do, you may find a new favorite pastime in simply abolishing accumulated nonsense in all nooks and crannies of your life and work.
Like gutters in a bowling alley, you will need clear indicators to alert when you are off track.
Spending time on unimportant tasks is common, and it happens to all of us in one form or another. However, this is a slippery slope.
How much nonsense is too much?
How can you clearly know when your schedule has gotten out of hand versus when you are doing well for this season?
The key is to create your beacon lights, your nonsense alarm system that will alert you to a productivity emergency.
Begin by creating your Must‐Do List, a simple index of items near and dear to your heart, tasks that you are fully committed to accomplishing every week.
Then, at some point down the road, there will be a busy week and a hectic schedule. Some, or many, of the goals on your Must‐Do List will be sidelined and left undone. Though you have committed to a few key objectives, some will not get done.
This is your sign.
The alarm bells are now ringing. You are too busy.
If you have gone through the letting‐go process outlined in this chapter and are still finding yourself too preoccupied for the few items on your Must‐Do List, your life may be more off course than you realize.
This is your wake‐up call.
When your Must‐Do List is not getting done, this is a warning that you need to make a change, and it needs to happen right away. Continuing at the current pace will lead to increased stress, fatigue, mood swings, and burnout.
Build your beacons. Clarify your priorities. Know what must be accomplished to keep you at your best, and when those few things are threatened, you know what to do.
Free time is nice, but it is not the goal—it never was. Purpose, passion, and an authentic zest for everyday life is so much more meaningful. If we are to reach a point of true contentment with our lives, it will not show up in mundane activities that distract us from our most important work. Our busyness is an epidemic, and letting go of just about everything is the cure.
Anything that is a distraction from your vital few goals is nonsense. Anything that never has to get done is nonsense. Anything you would regret doing, or never regret not doing, is nonsense. Anything that you know deep down is useless, silly, or ultimately not the highest and best use of your time is nonsense.
The most direct method to cut nonsense and create free time on your calendar is to purge your current commitments in all areas of your life. If you have not yet opened your calendar or to‐do list to delete, postpone, cancel, and eliminate anything you can, the time is now.
Ideally, anything that is not part of your vital few goals (potential nonsense) should be minimized or eliminated completely. Once you know what matters, everything else needs to go.
You may not be a hoarder, but the physical stuff in your life can act as a barrier to your progress. Adopt a healthy form of minimalism, reduce your footprint, and just let go.
Take time out of each week to thoroughly review what has landed on your calendar—and then cut whatever you can. Take time out to do the same process for your to‐do list, project list, and any other optional activity that does not serve your vital few goals.