The appearance of Spring has always struck me as a much better time to celebrate the New Year than on a freezing day in the middle of winter when days are at their shortest and nighttime starts at 4pm! Springtime ushers in new life everywhere—not only in the welcome reappearance of flowers and green grass and budding trees, but also in the energy and vitality that begins to percolate in all of us. Though we don't hole up in caves with months of food stored in our bellies, there is a kind of human hibernation that is natural in cold weather and the onset of Spring invites us back into the light.

So what are we to do with this infusion of energy, zest, fervor and eagerness? My suggestion: simplify your life so that this electricity you are generating lights up the parts of your world that merit the kilowatt hours!

Between cell phones, email, pagers, fax machines, meetings and the regular daily stuff of life like grocery shopping, laundry, cooking and cleaning it's no wonder that we race incessantly through our days avidly checking off items on the endless to-do list. The promise of technology—that hours of our lives would be liberated by these time-saving high tech devices that surround us—is an empty one. The truth is, that while many tasks can be accomplished more quickly, the quality of our lives is no better. We expect faster response times from others, and of course, the door swings both ways. For most of us, our email, cell phones and pagers can feel more like our jailors than our liberators.

I received an anonymous email message a while back and I saved it because it rang so true to me:

"We have more conveniences, but less time; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness; we've become long on quantity, but short on quality; we have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we build more computers to hold more information, but have less communication; we've conquered outer space, but not inner space."

You know that your world needs to be simplified if your life feels exhausting and overwhelming to you—like an endless race which you can never win. If your days are too busy to find 30 minutes to sit and daydream, to read for pleasure not for work, to drink a cup of tea without jotting down what you've got left to do on today's agenda, to take a calm bath or to putter with no purpose, then your life may be running you instead of the other way around.

Simplifying your life can liberate time, energy and even money! Time is an asset just like cash, and when you have more of it, you have the opportunity to 'spend' it where you choose. So what does 'simplifying' look like and how do you do it? As I've worked with my clients to let go of inessential filler and actively choose what merits attention and notice what deserves less, one supreme truth has emerged: simplifying is highly individualistic and one person's clever solution may be another's nightmare.

Here are ways a few of my clients have scaled down to reclaim their lives:

• I had one client whose life was so jammed and busy that she woke up feeling exhausted every morning. When I asked her what she could cut out of her days she answered "nothing." I encouraged her to look long and hard at how she really spent her time, reminding her that 24 hours each day is what we're given and that no more were going to be coming her way for good behavior. If she wanted to create some space and relaxation, she would have to say "no" to some things that she preferred to say "yes" to.

  With this prod, she began to look a little harder at the things "I absolutely can't give up." She discovered that her hair care was an absolute black hole sucking up lots of time and money. She calculated she was spending about 4 hours and $250 each month in the beauty salon touching up her roots so that the gray would never show. Over the course of a year, she was spending two full days of her life and $2400! On top of that, she blew her hair dry every other day to ensure that the natural curl was tamed. She estimated that she spent 2 ‡ hours a week keeping her hair straight. The grand total there was 130 hours! That was another five and a half days lost annually to the bathroom mirror and the blow dryer.

  This client decided to cut her hair short, let the natural curl take over, and welcome the gray. These simple changes returned to her an entire week of her life each year—not to mention the return of $2400 into her wallet.

• Another client was determined to create some quality family time at home, but between his work schedule, his wife's home business and his children's homework, sports commitments and chat time with their friends, he was stymied and sad. His home reminded him more of an office with each individual intent on a project than a cozy sanctuary where a family connects and shares. His solution? Wednesday nights became family time. No phone, no TV, no computer. After dinner for an hour or two his family would read together, do a puzzle, play a game, play charades, make cookies. It's been 7 months now, and they're still going strong.
  
  
• An anxious client starting up a consulting business spent minutes every hour compulsively checking his email, phone machine and pager. He had become handcuffed to these tools and found himself unable to find the 'off' switch separating work from pleasure. He had also lost perspective on what required immediate attention and what could wait until later. He was finding it hard to actually create quality time to do the work he was hired to do!

  I asked him to track his email, phone and pager behavior for one week, noting how much time he spent in this loop of constant contact. After two days he called me in shock. He estimated that every hour he spent a minimum of 10 minutes checking email, returning calls, looking at faxes. Almost 17% of his time was lost to these tasks.

  He decided to eliminate the pager and he threw it ceremoniously into the garbage. Email time was consolidated into an early morning check, one right after lunch and one in the evening before dinner. He still answers the phone when it rings during the day, but decided to unplug the ringer before dinner and check messages once before bed in case anything critical had arisen.

The ways to simplify are as myriad and as individual as is each person reading this newsletter. Changing established behavior is harder than not, but the harvest you reap is extraordinary and nourishing: It is, after all, your life you are reclaiming.

If you know you're a good candidate for simplifying, but are not sure how to begin, here's what I recommend to my clients.

Chart how you spend your time for an entire week. No kidding! I ask my clients to stop for a couple of minutes each hour and record exactly how they spent their time. It might look something like this:

Monday:
7 -8am
40 minutes waking kids, making breakfast, making lunches, cleaning kitchen, tidying house
20 minutes showering, dressing, grabbed protein bar for breakfast

8 - 9am
15 minutes take kids to school
15 minutes drive to work
10 minutes answering email
10 minutes chatting with friend at office and making coffee
10 minutes called travel agent to organize family trip

OK, you get the picture. This is a VERY arduous exercise and if you do it you will probably be cursing me all week. BUT if you stick to it, it can change your life. On a daily basis tally how much time you spent on or with:

Sleeping
Personal
Care
Chores
Driving
Carpool/Work Errands
Cooking
Child Care
Spouse/Significant Other
Health
Friends
Work
Hobbies
Fun
Relaxation
Email/pager/phone

You will discover by week's end how the minutes of your life are truly spent. After the shock wears off that you actually spent only three quality hours all week with your spouse and 12 hours cooking and cleaning the kitchen you may decide a couple of store-made dinners each week make sense. If you notice that you haven't gotten to the gym for more than an hour all week but spent 7 hours answering emails and pagers you might choose to make some changes there.

When the truth lies right in front of you in black and white, it's very difficult to ignore. The truth will set you free—if you will only let it!

About My Coaching:
As a personal, professional and executive coach, it is my goal to bring dynamic leadership, a compassionate heart, and powerful insight to the lives of my coaching clients. I work to help clients identify and pursue what is deeply meaningful in their lives, and collaborate with them to transform vague yearnings or explicit goals into realities.

You can count on me to challenge you, inspire you and support you. I will be a relentless advocate of your dreams and ambitions and help you take bold steps with your life.

My Background:
I am an optimist with a penchant for finding solutions to complex problems in unexpected places. The daily opportunity to use my pragmatism, smarts, humor and heart to help people create lives they truly love gives me tremendous joy.

After graduating from Princeton University, I spent almost 20 years as a feature film, video and CD ROM producer guiding projects to success. By the late 1990's, I decided to channel my action-oriented approach to life into coaching, with the express goal of helping people live lives by design and not default. I completed my professional training at The Coaches Training Institute in San Rafael, California.

Call me at (310) 393-8082 for a free 1/2-hour coaching session to explore how coaching may benefit you.

Contact Information:
Dina Silver, CPCC
361 21st Street
Santa Monica, CA 90402
Phone: 310.393.8082
Fax: 310.395.7999
dinasil@earthlink.net