Find more time in your day and get some much needed relief from stress and anxiety by taking a minute to simplify your life with these tips.

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If there’s one thing that I’ve been able to learn from being a stay at home dad turned successful online coach, running my own business through the middle of a pandemic, all while juggling #DadLife and married life and everything in between, it’s this:

Stop making things so damn complicated when they don’t have to be.

That’s it.

We tend to overthink the process of how to be an awesome parent.

Then that trickles down into our desire to be the best entrepreneur on the planet and live up to some expectations that influencers like Gary V or Elon Musk set.

Only to turn to our home life and determine that we need to have all of the bells and whistles of living life the way Oprah Magazine breaks down in the February issue.

As a result, we spin our wheels trying to be someone we are not.

It’s when we break free from that need to live in someone else’s shoes that we begin to see the real success.

That’s when we finally start living our best life. No regrets or expectations, excuses or reservations.

In today’s article, I’m going to break down a few things you can start doing today to simplify your life.

From parenting to business, from productivity to self care, these are all things that you should do now in order to get out of your own way and stop making things so damn complicated.

Let’s get into it.

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Simplify your life by first auditing what you need simplified

In order to simplify your life, you need to start with a common practice that I preach here on this fancy website: set aside some time to sit down, jot down some notes and take inventory.

You’re going to write down:

• Everything that you do throughout your day/week.
• What do you enjoy doing?
• Where are your biggest stressors?
• Which things do you do every day/week that you absolutely hate?

And it’s going to be our goal to remove as many things that you hate doing as possible from your life.

Whether that be outsourcing those things in some capacity or simply removing them altogether.

We’ve talked before about creating a time audit with your day to find more time to workout with a busy schedule. You’re going to be doing something similar here.

I want you to spend a few minutes listing out all of the regular things you do throughout your day. From waking up to prepping lunches, commuting to school pick ups, dinner to bedtime.

List it all out

Get a general idea of how much time you spend on each task.

Be mindful of what you have to do (like work and make food for the family) versus what someone else could potentially do for you.

And then make an additional note of the things you enjoy doing versus things you hate.

For instance, maybe you do the laundry every single week. And maybe you absolutely hate the thought of doing another round of track-marked underwear from your teenage son.

Perhaps it’s time to outsource this task.

This is where you’ll likely come in with, “But, Pete … I don’t have the money to be paying someone to do my laundry.”

To which, I’d answer that you would be surprised how little that costs to have a laundry service pick up and drop off your clothes.

If money is tight, you can look within to outsource things.

Are your kids old enough to learn how to do the laundry? Teach them and outsource it.

If nothing else, teach them how to do their own laundry. Now you’ve eliminated the track mark problem.

It’s this kind of thinking that will allow you to simplify things and get a little more time back into your day.

Other things you can outsource without much additional cost:

• Grocery shopping
• House cleaning
• Home repairs / improvements
• Calendar management – you can find a virtual assistant to manage your family’s calendar and hold you accountable and keep you on time
• Dog walking or pet care
• Travel arrangements
• School pick up and drop off – get creative here, maybe you can create a carpool rotation with a neighbor or friend

The goal is to remove so many distractions from your life in order to free yourself from the continued push and pull of the complications surrounding our things and our schedules.

Structure promotes freedom.

It’s cliche, but true: Time is your most valuable resource.

You can make all of the money in the world, but if you have no time to spend it, was it worth it?

It’s time you spent some more time thinking about how to free up some more time for yourself.

Here are a few additional ideas to provide some more inspiration to simplify your life:

Technology is your friend

There’s an app for that. Seriously.

The goal is to utilize technology to help simplify your life and your schedule, not add more drama to the day to day tasks.

For you that might mean having a shared calendar with family members so you can see everyone’s time commitments in one place.

Using apps like password managers can save time and provide additional layers of security.

But then sometimes you need technology to help keep you away from overdoing it with your technology.

Huh?

Let’s say you have a problem focusing and getting work done on your creative projects.

That’s where an app that uses the Pomodoro Technique can help you stay focused with dedicated time blocked off on your schedule for certain tasks.

You’ll be less likely to browse social media if you’ve scheduled actual time blocks into your day for work.

Then at the end of that period of productivity, you can take a 10-15 minute break to recharge and reset, or browse social media to see what your favorite neighborhood fat loss coach has been posting.

Technology is supposed to make things easier. Remember that.

Unsubscribe from emails (except for mine, of course)

Protect your inbox and keep yourself distraction-free from the onslaught of marketing and sales emails designed to get you to buy more stuff that you don’t need.

Go through your regularly-scheduled emails and remove 20 percent of them today.

You’d be surprised how that little bit can just create a little more peace of mind and clarity in your day to make things simpler.

Remove unnecessary junk from your living spaces

You have too much stuff.

There’s nothing that will set you more free than downsizing your ginormous home into a smaller one and being forced to unload excess crap.

If that’s not something you’re into doing, at least spend some time every few months by unloading the extra physical stuff you have around the house.

Do not become a prisoner to your possessions.

If you haven’t already, click through my quick guide to decluttering your home.

Protect your schedule

Your time is your most valuable resource.

I understand that having a family and work and everything in between can be quite demanding. Trust me, I totally get that.

But, I’m here to tell you that if you set the right priorities, and make a dedicated effort to free up more time in your day to day life, you’ll be able to do it.

And once you do, it’s up to you to be religious about protecting that schedule from bullshit. It’s totally okay to skip out on things if it means spending some more time to yourself, on yourself or with your family.

Fuck FOMO.

Be okay saying No

As you get older, you’ll get a little more comfortable making others uncomfortable by simply declining things. It’s okay.

Just say no.

You do not have to sign up to work that extra weekend all of the time (some of the time is probably good for future earnings and promotions, I guess).

Likewise, always giving in to your kids’ demands to be shuttled here or there is a zero sum game for you, too.

Just. Say. No.

Stick to the Staples

Eliminating decision fatigue will be one of the more under-looked aspects of our process to simplify your life. But, it’s well worth the time to do so.

I ask all of my online coaching clients to come up with staple foods that they enjoy and can fit their macros or calories pretty well and then plug those foods into a rotation.

Having staples that you can turn to without much thought eliminates stress and anxiety around eating.

And removing an extra layer of stress through your day can help alleviate overall stress.

It frees you up to stop thinking about things and just execute.

Definitely check out my article on how to simplify your fat loss nutrition for a few tips on how to make this work.

Automate. Everything.

Build systems into your day that allow things to run without giving much (or any) thought.

For example: You can develop an automated savings plan that deposits money to an account automatically at each pay period.

While we’re talking about money, if you can afford to do so, automate your bills to be paid each month.

Do it through a credit card (AMEX is great for this, if you can pony up for the annual fees), pay that card off in full each month (automatically, of course), earn massive amounts of points.

This is how I built up over 400,000 AMEX points in only a few years.

Write your To Do Lists before you go to bed

This is one of my bigger productivity tips that I share for folks trying to crush their mornings with successful practices.

Take a few minutes at the end of each day to plan the following day. Jot down everything going on, tasks that need completed, meetings that must be met and anything else happening.

Doing this brain dump the night before will avoid anxiety at the middle of the night while you try to figure out what you need to do in the morning.

Now you can get up and take immediate action.

Slow down and simplify your life

Stop rushing the process. Whether that’s business or personal or even fitness life. Take the time to make the time by simplifying a few things in your daily routine.

In doing so, you’ll discover more freedom in your day to focus on things that you enjoy. Things that matter most to you.

Let me show you how to simplify your life … 

I’m here to help you out. 

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Simplify your life” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

If you enjoyed this post, maybe you’d like more knowledge bombs from me. I’d be honored if you join my mailing list to get regular updates every time I post something pretty dope.