Reddit mentions of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

So I found that article's "solutions" pretty useless (wow, watch my diet? Get more sleep? Why didn't I think of that?), but it raises a really good issue about how we're very overscheduled. Right now I'm working full time, studying full time, and I have a toddler. I also have a few hobbies that take up about 5-10 hours of my week. It's a pretty busy life but I wouldn't have it any other way. Here's my advice based purely on what works for me:

1. I don't make to do lists, they're discouraging and depressing. The urgent stuff is in my head already because it's urgent, and I keep a set routine so I learn to associate Wednesday nights with laundry, Tuesday nights with taking dinner snacks for class, etc. Everything else probably isn't important enough to remember.
   
   
2. I say no a lot. To social functions, out of state weddings that would suck a lot of time and money, movie night on the couch when I have some major stuff to get done tonight...it's all short term gains for long term pain, e.g. more work on the other end. I also say no to endless conversations about how everything is soooo stressful omg. It's become acceptable to just talk about this stuff without being solution focused at all. I know you're stressed and hurting. So let's do something together to help you feel relief. I don't want to just complain.
   
   
3. I say yes a lot. I say yes to my own time, my own wellbeing, to help from my spouse, and my own health. Time for myself, by myself, is never time wasted. I love to feel connected to my body so I say yes to massages, hikes, and exercise. I love to learn and I get bored/depressed if I don't learn something new, so I say yes to classes or activities as much as I can. I love to wear fun clothes so I say yes to sewing things and thrift stores. What keeps me happy makes my family happy.
   
   
4. I schedule my social life. I have a standing lunch date with a friend once a week. I make it a goal to make two other social engagements a month. It's enough but not too much.
   
   
5. I spend more money than I would like to. Right now time is my most precious resource, whereas I can always make more money (maybe not enough but hey). I love eating healthy but it takes so long to prepare, so I buy exactly what I want for lunch each day and don't feel bad about the expense. I cook a big meal once a week and I bake once a week and that's it, everything else is pre-bought. I miss cooking and baking but right now, it's something I choose to say no to.
   
   
6. I don't care about what other moms do. I've worked on a crisis line long enough that I know everyone is fighting their own battles, no matter how perfect their life seems to be. I get jealous sometimes but I also know my own limits. Some moms prioritize something like exercise whereas others might prioritize time to read or be creative. It's their life. None of your business.
   
   
7. I take the long view. We've all heard the phrase that the days are short but the years are long, so it helps me de-stress to think about why I'm doing this parenting thing: because watching her grow is amazing. Because I made her. Because she learns something new every day. It's not about a cute nursery or after school classes, it's about having the privilege to oversee this little human's life. And that makes me fine with a messy kitchen or weird stain on the carpet again.
   
   
8. I recommend the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less to learn how to focus on what's really meaningful to you. It's not about motherhood but almost all of the anecdotes are relatable for anyone who just has too much going on. We've fallen into a trap of believing busy = productive and productive = good, so we need to break that line of thought.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less changed my life. It's one of three books I recommend to everyone, I even keep spare copies around to hand out.

Not sure if this will help but I just wanted to share my opinion. With codependency, we tend to lose our identity, I've definitely lost mine before in relationships and I wrote a blog post on my experience here so you're not alone. When we lose our identity we tend to forget/lose what's important to us to start people-pleasing others. (https://famous4love.com/identity/)...

But what's been helping me lately was this idea called essentialism. It's very similar to the idea of boundaries which my therapist recommended but it's more inwardly focused on helping you find what's the most important (essential) to you and how to stick to only that and say no to other things. Totally worth looking into since it seems like you need help finding a purpose or something that's vital for you to focus on. Here's the book I started reading. —https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Greg-McKeown/dp/0804137382

Sim, encontrei muito poucos.

Penso que basta alguém com a ambição de querer deixar uma marca no mundo ou outra motivação que passe por criar algo, para arranjar um bom co-founder. O problema é que ter ambição nos dias que correm... Há muitas distracções.

Neste ultimo projecto, estava eu a preparar um pitch para um grande investidor que tivemos a milagrosa sorte de ele ter um tempinho para falar connosco, estava um dos co-founders a curtir a vida num concerto e a ignorar as chamadas. Ou seja, nem perante um momento life-changing ele teve o minimo de responsabilidade. Felizmente isto caiu mal a todos os restantes membros (recentes) do grupo e então pude "despedi-lo" sem deixar um mau ambiente no projecto.

Here are all the books with amazon links, Alphabetical order :)

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• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591396190
  
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh et al. Link: http://amzn.com/160941280X
  
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown Link: http://amzn.com/0804137382
  
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston Link: http://amzn.com/1590597141
  
• How Google Works by Eric Schmidt et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1455582344
  
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk Link: http://amzn.com/006227306X
  
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson Link: http://amzn.com/0307720748
  
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1400064287
  
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck Link: http://amzn.com/0345472322
  
• Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0385346654
  
• Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim S. Grover et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1476714207
  
• Rework by Jason Fried et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0307463745
  
• Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin Link: http://amzn.com/1591842948
  
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss Link: http://amzn.com/0307465357
  
• The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth by James Altucher Link: http://amzn.com/150100994X
  
• The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson Link: http://amzn.com/0060008768
  
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Link: http://amzn.com/0062273205
  
• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen Link: http://amzn.com/0062060244
  
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Link: http://amzn.com/0307887898
  
• The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by MJ DeMarco Link: http://amzn.com/B004BDOUAI
  
• The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday Link: http://amzn.com/1591846358
  
• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1885167776
  
• The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0984999302
  
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell Link: http://amzn.com/0316346624
  
• Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591848369
  
• Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out by Marc Ecko Link: http://amzn.com/1451685319
  
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0804139296

I'm not in humanities/social sciences but here's my weekday routine.

• 4:50am alarm.
  
• 5:30am -- In my home office for some time for prayer, journaling.
  
• 6-7am -- An hour of grading each morning before going to work.
  
• 7-8am -- Get my kids up, fed, dressed, and off to school.
  
• 8:30am -- In the campus office.
  
  What happens during the day depends. I teach two classes 9-11am on MWF and a class 11:30-12:45 TR. I hold office hours 4x a week and I try not to plan anything during then. Some days I have committee meetings, and some of those are on my campus while others are at our second campus so there's a bus ride involved. I set aside 9:30-11am every TR for research and academic writing. I usually grade and prep courses for a couple of hours each day. The rest of it is sort of flex time depending on what the big needs are.
  
  But then the rest of the day is kind of fixed. Between 4-5pm I leave to go get my kids from after-school care. Then the rest of the evening is devoted to family -- making dinner, helping with homework, playing video games with the kids, maybe doing a quick outing to the mall or something.
  
  Basically I force myself to stop working at this point because family >>> career, also I have found that when I work in the evenings the quality of the work really sucks. I am a lot more productive the next day after just relaxing and being with my family and getting a decent night's sleep and then hitting it early in the morning. Although, I do like to read stuff in the evenings that might be sort of profession-related, for example I'm reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown right now and it is really helping me think clearly about my job and my career and daily work.
  
  On the weekends I prefer not to work at all. However today (Saturday) I need to find some time to do a little catching up on grading. Sundays I do not work at all because of religious observances, although I do my GTD weekly review every Sunday afternoon.
  
  For context, I am in my 20th year of being in the profession, got tenure at one school (small liberal arts college) before leaving and am up for tenure and promotion to full professor next year at my current institution (large regional teaching-focused university with a research component) so if people are thinking this is some kind of slacker schedule then just realize that it's working fine for me.

Im reminded of this book: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

If you really want to make the most of your free time, get good at doing nothing. Unscheduled time is hugely important for generating new ideas, reflecting on your life, observing what's around you, and enjoying what you have.

Then, get good at doing less. I recommend reading about essentialism so that you don't become a burned out, unfocused college graduate with 50 different and unrelated things on your resume.

You sound like a naturally talented, smart, engaged person, so life will probably be kind to you. It'll be up to you to find where your key areas of interest are and nurture the hell out of them.

Two books that I heard about from Pat Flynns blog may help:
http://www.amazon.com/The-ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordinary/dp/1885167776
and
http://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-The-Disciplined-Pursuit-Less/dp/0804137382

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less Hardcover by Greg McKeown
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0804137382/?tag=itemid-20

Highly recommended!

> saying no

If your boss would be receptive, try giving him/her a copy of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-The-Disciplined-Pursuit-Less/dp/0804137382

I'd recommend reading it yourself. It's good stuff.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown is one of the best books I've read this year: http://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-The-Disciplined-Pursuit-Less/dp/0804137382