Giving does bring joy. Giving can also bring some pain. As I’ve been giving some things away, I’ve become aware of emotions that crop up in the process of purging my life of things that are not supporting me. Right now, I’m focused on giving up some material things. You can read about my venture into The Simple Life here and and update here.

Just today, I gave away a few more things. I hadn’t touched these things in ages, little ornamental items hanging around my home, and was fully prepared to give them to someone who would put them to good use. As several friends were leaving my home this afternoon, I asked if any of them wanted these items.

At first, one said no, then another said sure. At that moment, I felt some remorse. I immediately conjured up some potential use for this previously useless object. This particular one was a decorative metal bowl (looked like an ornate pot) with rivets all over it. It was the sort of thing you could use to put umbrellas in, or as a glorified waste bin. In that moment, where I was giving it up, I realized that I could use it to put a large potted plant in it!

I didn’t own a potted plant that size, but it was a possibility. I immediately felt a bit of regret for giving the thing away. It’s a silly example, but something I have experienced several times over the past weeks as I have been simplifying my life. Giving brings joy, but you might have to go through a bit of pain to get there.

Now, sitting here typing this post about 1 hour after giving that metal thingamabob away, I feel absolutely no regret about doing that. I’m glad I did. It’s the same thing I felt giving away all those books, shirts and other items that were crowding space in my head and in my brain.

btw….I am doing a little experiment. As of May 3rd, I haven’t turned on my TV once. I never had cable or even any TV stations before, but I did watch plenty of DVDs and downloaded content on iTunes. My rule is simply not to turn on my TV. I might watch YouTube on my computer or something, but the TV is shut down for the entire month! Feels very refreshing. In fact, I’ve draped a big cloth over it so it is literally out of sight and practically out of mind.

My friend visited from Portland, OR a few weeks and inspired me to take a massive step toward living a much simpler lifestyle. He has spend the past year or so as a “vagabonding,” most recently returning from a 4 month visit to Fiji, where he lived on about $10/day….and felt that he was living a fantastic life. Surfing, eating awesome fresh vegan food, and meeting great people every day.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no intention to retreat from the world or make such a radical shift to my lifestyle, but I have been adopting some of the concepts he has been using to simplify his life over the past few years.

It all started when he walked into my apartment, and threw down a modestly filled backpack on the floor. He strolled about my place and made an observation that I have a lot of “stuff.” That was the first time someone has really said that about me. Most people have the opposite reaction! My apartment is very new, and pretty sparse by most standards.

He then pointed out that his entire worldly possessions fit in the that single bag that was laying on the floor. It made me think about all the things that I had, and whether I really needed all of them. Over the past two weeks, I’ve found an incredible amount of enthusiasm, energy and happiness around the process of getting rid of things I no longer need to have in my possession.

After getting rid of this baggage, I feel an incredible “lightness” and much less encumbered. Just walking into my home feels much better. Things are better organized (since there is less stuff to clutter up) so I can find what I need and not bear the psychological burden of looking at a bunch of stuff sitting around.

So what have I down-sized in the past few weeks? Here’s a run-down:

• My ward-drobe has been cut in half. I have dropped off at least 6 large garbage bags of clothing to Goodwill. This was tough to do, since many of the clothes were in great shape and fit me, but most of it has not been worn in over a year (and probably won’t be worn anytime soon). My closet now has plenty of empty space on the hangar rack, and my shelves have just a few stacks of clothes.

• My library has ben cut in half. I love my books, but I had far too many. My bookshelf was tilting to one side from the weight, and they were stacked in piles on the floor and in laundry baskets next to my bed. Many of the books would never be ready (by me) again. They needed a better home, so I’ve given them away to friends or Goodwill. The books I keep are the ones that really matter a lot to me, or ones that I plan on giving away to friends as gifts over the next year.

• My Visa credit card has been canceled. I already have a Visa Debit Card and have decided to use that for all my “card” purchases. I have an Amex card that I will not use, but keep active in case of emergencies.

• My extra checking/savings accounts have been closed. I consolidated all my finances with a single company that is currently my brokerage firm. They have a checking feature to their brokerage, so I closed my separate checking and savings accounts. This way I only need to go to one account to manage my checking/cash balances.

• My extra brokerage account has been closed. I had an additional brokerage account that I used for Roth IRA and special investment vehicles that I have been using for the past few years. These investments have done well (better than S&P consistently), but were a headache to manage (I’ll go into the details of this in another post….maybe). The funds from this account will be consolidated into my single active brokerage account.

• My XBOX and 30 games that I haven’t played in years have been given to Goodwill.

• A box of triathlon and tri-related gear has been given to a friend who is actually racing….since I am not :)

• A whole bunch (3 large boxes worth) or miscellaneous goos have been given to goodwill.

• Two paper bags worth of non-perishable foods have been given away (non-vegan stuff I won’t eat).

• My iMac now has a new home! I have a MacBook laptop, and decided that I no longer needed two computers at home, so I posted the iMac on Craigs List. 12 hours later, someone stopped by my place and paid cash for it.

So there you have it. Hopefully this post has inspired you to think about where you can down-size. As for me, I am far from done with my own efforts, looking forward to giving away some more clothes, books and some nonsense furniture I have sitting around this week!

Had a good conversation with my management team about our team’s focus and balance of time on things that are important (but not super urgent) vs those things that are important and urgent. Turns out we are spending a lot of time on the later.

The problem with focusing too much time on important and urgent priorities, is that you never really have a chance to think about long-term vision, direction and possibilities. If it is urgent, you’re probably looking for a good-enough answer in a short period of time. It’s hard to make a big breakthrough when you are so hyper-focused in this way.

I’ve made the same mistake in setting priorities in my personal life. Putting things off to free up time for the urgent things. I’ve stopped doing that and have felt a much greater sense of control and achievement. For example, I had to make it to my 5:30pm yoga class today. At 5pm on the nose, after over an hour of discussion, the meeting I was in was running long. Normally, I would just skip the yoga class and stay in the meeting.

Not this time….I just got up and left. The discussion wasn’t super urgent or even important. Yoga wasn’t urgent either, but it was definitely important. My absence was noticed from the meeting, but hey, I if you don’t draw the line somewhere it will draw itself for you!

I was reading this post at Tim’s blog, 10 Steps to Becoming an Email Ninja. It has a bunch of great tips to help you deal with e-mail. Where I work, e-mail is by far the preferred mode of communication. It is used, overused and often abused. Even after trimming down all useless email sources, I get 100-200 work-related messages daily. This is not something I am proud of, but it is a fact I must deal with.

Throughout the past 7+ years working there, I’ve adopted a few strategies to help me deal with e-mail overload. Whether you are dealing with hundreds of e-mails daily, or just trying to manage the few weekly messages you get in a more efficient and thorough way, these tips should help.

So I made the commitment last Sunday to unplug myself. It went very well. At first a bit nerve-wracking but once I got over my initial impulses to see “what was going on” online….I actually started enjoying it.

What did I do with all my new-found time?

• I walked around the city a lot
• I ate lunch at one of my favorite places, Pan Africa, an Ethiopian place near Pike Place Market.
• I bought the Sunday newspaper (something I rarely do) and read it at a coffee shop.
• I cleaned my apartment (a little).
• I did laundry.
• I went grocery shopping.
• I went to Yoga class.
• I read a little.
• I just sat around staring out the window.
• I made a bunch of phone calls to friends and family.
• I went to bed a lot earlier than normal (like 9:30pm).

It was great. Gonna do it again this Sunday.

Starting tonight at midnight…through Monday (whenever I get up), I will be completely computer-free! I am not even gonna boot up my machines (well…they are always on…so I’ll start by turning them off).

I expect a boatload of productivity, flashes of inspiration and lots of creativity tomorrow…or maybe at the very least I will finally get those bags of clothes over to Goodwill and my car cleaned out. Either way, it is going to be a good day.

These are all things I have been guilty of (and sometimes still am). Though, in my effort to pull the slack time out of my day and put it into more productive endeavors, I’ve purged most of the these things from my routine.

How about you?

1. Checking e-mail first thing in the morning. This scrambles your brain for the day before you’ve even had a chance to think.

2. Not making a commute productive by taking mass transit or carpooling. Since I’ve started taking the bus a few months ago, my commute (30min morning, 1-1.5hr evening) has gone from being a nuisance to a pleasure. I read, listen to music and just relax. I also get a forced walk to and from the bus-stop, which is a great way to unwind after the day. I know this one isn’t really “in the office” but it has a big enough impact on your day that it deserves attention.

3. Not getting into the office at least 90 minutes before your first meeting. If you don’t get in early enough you’ll start your day off with randomizing meetings, which sets a poor tone for the day. Like it or not, the morning is often the time of the day when people are most creative, and best suited for solitary work on big projects and such.

4. Responding to e-mails as they arrive. Without attention and focus is tough (impossible) to let the creative parts of your brain really shine. Despite the fact that smart people tend to take pride in their ability to multi-task, science has shown that it actually decreases intelligence and creativity.

5. Checking personal e-mail at work. Yet another randomizer. 99.999% of personal e-mail can wait until you get home.

6. Having small gaps between multiple appointments. These just eat away your day. It is dead time. Be proactive about managing your calendar so this doesn’t happen.

7. Reading papers, e-mail newsletters or distributions lists. Again, you can go for months without reading the news and still be more informed than your co-workers. It’s called listening to other people and just being aware of your environment. Proactively seeking out more news to ingest is a sure-fire way to waste time.

8. Not having an 80/20 mentality for figuring out what to work on. No matter how much time you free up with great time management skills, it won’t matter if you can’t figure out what the important things are for you to focus on. You will always find something to do to fill up your day. Is it the right stuff?

9. Finishing meetings after the scheduled ending time. If you have 5 meetings and let each one run over by 5-10 minutes, you are wasting a significant chunk of your day. This tends to be the result of a lack of leadership by whoever called the meeting. Don’t be afraid to set a hard rule and politely leave at the agreed upon time. Eventually, the meeting organizer will learn to keep to a schedule.

10. Not ignoring the phone. All workplace phones have voice-mail. Use it. If your workplace is very phone-centric, just make it a point to return calls at set times during the day, or use caller ID (common for workplaces) and set rules for who you will pick up for. Let everyone else go directly to voice-mail.

It’s been a week since I’ve implemented my twice a day e-mail policy.

In practice, there have been a few times when I’ve “slipped” and checked outside of my predetermined times. There have also been a few times when I had to check (or at least that is my excuse) for business critical reasons. But even considering these times, I’ve pretty much stuck to it.

Through this single measure along I’ve saved AT LEAST 15 hours of time. As a byproduct, I’ve been able to make a lot more progress in other projects. I also just feel better, with an overall sense that I am actually PRODUCING value and not just CONSUMING it.

I’m starting to crack down hardcore on my TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS. I hate the term “time management” because the thought of having to “manage” anything can in itself be an utter waste of time. However in this case, the fixed cost investment will be well worth it.

The way I figure, since I an 27 years old right now….I have about 25,000 days left to live..give or take a few thousand (yes, I expect to live to at least 100 y/o).