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Simplification – Part II June 19, 2009

Posted by atharkhan in : Personal , 2comments

A couple of days after that last post, it occurred to me that simplification need not be limited to physical objects. My life is cluttered with plenty of other distractions such as email, social networking sites, and even people. So, I used Rescue Time to track my activities on my personal laptop. I found that I was spending a shockingly disproportionate amount of time processing email, keeping in touch with contacts, and participating in networking sites.

First, I used a combination of Xobni and X1 to estimate a ratio of how often I initiated the conversation. Using this approach, I was able to delete about 2425 contacts which I had added to my email addressbook over the last 10 years. There were indeed plenty of people that I would have loved to stay in touch with because they were “important” but I figured that having an important person’s contact information did me no good if that person wasn’t particularly interested in keeping in touch with me. Perhaps it was a hint that I should have taken a long time ago.

Now, when I visually scan my addressbook, at least I can identify (somewhat) more quickly, the people I have not spoken to or corresponded with in some time. It also eliminates the guilt of failing to keep in touch.

Then, I installed LeechBlock, a FireFox extension that limits the amount of time that I can spend on any given website. Looking at my Rescue Time statistics for this week, I didn’t waste much time at all.

Simplification June 4, 2009

Posted by atharkhan in : Personal , 1 comment so far

Since the last post, we’ve been eliminating as much excess stuff as possible. We had no need for a patio chair so it was sold via Craigslist. Other items that have “left” the apartment one way or another include shoes (even new, unworn ones), clothes, CDs, papers, and electronics.

I’ve also been working on consolidating electronics wherever possible. A couple of examples: Instead of a a 500GB NAS, a 300GB NAS, and a 300GB USB Drive, we now have one mirrored 2TB Firewire 800 drive. Similarly, instead of a router, an ethernet switch, and two WDS repeaters, we now have a single 802.11n router.

I’ve also been conducting an experiment — i.e. I will not wear anything twice unless everything in the closet has been worn once. And, if there are clothes that I hesitate to wear (because they are ill-fitting, need repair, or simply because I don’t like them,) then they don’t belong in my closet. Basically, the premise is that if I can’t wear it to work or on the weekend, I don’t need it. This helped identify a bunch of clothes that needed alteration — some were too big (yaay!), and others were (sadly) too tight. Either way, they are now being fixed or discarded.

All in all, I think we’re getting closer to leading simpler and more enjoyable lives.