Have you ever tried a packing party? What is a packing
party?
Assume you are moving from your current address and box
everything you own. Only get out what you need to keep your life going. Give
yourself two weeks. Anything you have not unboxed isn’t necessary for your
life.
You can easily get rid of it without hurting yourself too
much.
A packing party will open your eyes to the things that
really matter in your life. We walk around with much more than we need because
we have never taken the radical step to question why we have certain things in
our life. This exercise can help you travel light along the journey of life. It
is a minimalist and essentialist dream. What are some of the ways in which we
can apply this to our lives?
While for many of us the idea of packing up all the stuff we
have and getting out the necessities is a stretch, this discipline has a lot of
value in many areas of life.
Your contact list.
If you take a long and hard look at your contact list, you
will realize that you haven’t spoken to 80% of the people therein, for more
than two years. A lot of them are random contacts you pick up along the way
telling yourself you will get around to engaging them when you have some time.
Five years later and you have never found that time. What makes you think you
will get time in the sixth year. Some of these contacts belong to a remote
server somewhere out there where you can retrieve them if need be. They have no
business clogging your primary contact list. Our lives would be simpler if we
kept our lists short and sweet. How does your contact list look like? Is it
something you are proud of or can it do with some culling? How about moving all
your contacts elsewhere and only retrieving those you need for the next one
month. Any contacts you don’t interact with for the next ninety days can be
kept where it is until the situation changes.
Your play lists for music, movies etc.
As I speak my own movie folder has about 350GB worth of
data. You can be sure I have watched almost all of it but there’s only a few
movies and series which have a chance of being watched again. If I followed my
advice strictly (which I intend to do) I will be left with 50 GB of this. What
will that mean? It means I will have more space to store the things that really
matter and are critical to my work. It will also have an impact on the overall
performance of this laptop I am using just to name a few of the benefits. Run
through your own movie and music folders and see what needs to go. In these
days of Netflix and others, you don’t need to clog your computer with a lot of
unnecessary baggage unless that Netflix is also part of the baggage you need to
let go of.
Your Social Media tools/App list
This morning I deleted three apps which I have never used
ever since I bought my current phone. You never really pay attention to some
things until when they start being costly to maintain. It took a warning about
the space available on my phone for me to take a look. I am planning to delete
more. What’s the point of an App you haven’t used for over a year. One good way
to do this is to uninstall every app on your phone and only reinstall what you
need to use as the need arises.
This article was inspired by the invasiveness of Social
Media and its impact on our ability to do high quality work every day. In his
book Deep work, Carl Newport makes
the case that social media is a hindrance to our abilities to do meaningful,
high impact work. While he doesn’t advocate for a complete severing of links
with social media, he calls on us to really examine our engagement on it and
see what value it offers. He proposes that we take a 30 day sabbatical from
Social Media and see what impact it has on us. If we find it necessary, then we
can go back. If our lives and activities can go on without it, then there’s no
point going back there. This is a big one. What would happen if you went
offline for the next thirty days? There is no better way to find out than to
actually take that step. A lot of the tools we use and cling to, are nothing
more than a narrative we have told ourselves and been told many times over
until we have come to believe it. When everything is analyzed, you realize
there are very few tools we need to function. Ask yourself where there is
impact and focus your attention there.
Your friend list.
This is a hard one. How do you choose your friends? I will
use Jesus as a good example of managing friends. During his ministry here on
earth, Jesus interacted with thousands of people. He commanded huge crowds
wherever he went. What if He tried to form intimate bonds with each of these
people? Would he have had the impact he had? It is impossible to have much
impact if you stretch yourself too thin. Jesus had a solution for this. Beyond
the huge multitude, he also had a smaller circle of 120 disciples who were in
the upper room on the day of Pentecost. Then here was the group of 72. Out of
this large group he chose 12 who walked very closely with him. And out of the
12, there were three Peter, James and John who were bosom buddies. Wherever he
went these three would always be there. The best way to categorize your friends
is to position them all at the level of the innumerable multitude. Let them
choose whether they will be in the 120, 72, 12
or 3 basket. This will be determined by the degree of their engagement and
involvement in your life. Some people will give up everything to be with you,
others will give you up for anything. You need to spot the difference.
Subscriptions.
There are so many things we subscribe to in life. Some of us
have no idea how much we lose every month through subscriptions we stopped
using years ago. Think about what comes into your inbox and mailbox. Do you
really need all of it? Sometimes our inboxes are overcrowded because we have
subscribed to things on a whim. We need to do a better job of controlling our
subscriptions. There are services you no longer need but you still keep paying
a monthly subscription for. What are some of these subscriptions for you? Be
radical enough to cancel all and see which ones you really need for the next 90
days. Only renew the ones vital to you and forget the rest. Not only will it
save you money. It will also save you time and make your life simpler. The
challenge of our generation is that we have too many options to choose from
that we end up duplicating some of our subscriptions without detecting it.
What else do you think you can add to this list? I know for
sure that this list is not conclusive. Go ahead and share some of the things
you are going to pack starting now.
As you grow older, keep your list of things short and sweet.
You will realize you can function just fine without a majority of the things
which look like indispensables right now.
A lot of interesting stuff is going on right now. We have the Crossroads Virtual Summit coming up in less than two months.
You can be a part of it by following the link below to register or share it with others between the ages of 17-25 years.
https://www.mtickets.com/buy/crossroads-virtual-summit/991
My book Blessed to be a Blessing has also been nominated for the ACABA Awards. You can vote for me by following this link.
https://africanauthors.net/nominee/blessed-to-be-a-blessing/
I am also opening up the opportunity to join our Free Introductory class for Optimize Your Life. Feel free to book your spot following the link below if you haven't already. The time for you to level up is now.
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