You’re a Medium reader. You’re smart (not because you read M but because you’re smart you read M). And still, you can improve yourself.

I have a tool that’ll help you improve yourself. I stole it from the idol Leo Babauta.

It’s about simplifying your life. Self-improvement through a simpler life.

Simplifying your life is about removing distractions and spending your time with the most essential things in your life.

The 2 lists that will do the trick

The ‘Essentials’ List

These are the trees you want to focus on.

What is essential? What are the most important things in your life? What do you love the most? What gives you the most value?

As I stole the idea from Leo Babauta, here’s what he states:

Create a life that focuses on the essentials — what you value and love the most, what you’re most passionate about.

For most people that ‘Essentials’ List looks something like this:

Friends & Family

Work

Self-Mastery

Now, you could be more specific (e.g. for self-mastery: meditate, read great books, eat healthy, and work out).

If I was your coach, I’d give the following HOMEWORK:

Give yourself 10 minutes and list your 4–5 most essential tasks, people, and activities that give you the best bang for the buck (or for your time). What do you value most in your life?

What’s the point of all this?

The idea is that you want to spend most of your time with your essentials. These are your self-identified most important things in your life. When you spend time with those, you’ll get most out of your life. Simple as that.

That brings us to the second list.

The ‘What I actually Spend My Time with’ List

The name of that list speaks for itself.

For me, that list looks like this:

Self-Mastery: meditation, working out, reading, journaling, self-reflection, preparing food

Work: writing, reading, blog promotion, and sometimes frustration ;-)

Family & Friends: eating dinner, playing games like Jass (traditional Swiss card game) or the good old Nintendo 64, watching sports games, going out, and doing other activities together like playing soccer or badminton

Time Killers: mindlessly surfing the WWW (mainly porn, haha. Just joking, you know Facebook, YouTube etc.), watching series (I stopped that), watching TV (I stopped that), playing video games (I combine that with social time, so it’s ok)

Often, I’m quite happy with my ‘What I actually Spend My Time with’ List. I got much better in the last year (I got rid of the TV and I stopped watching series… these were my worst time wasters).

On some days though, I could put the Time Killers easily on top of that list… You know, the not-so-productive days.

Plus, I should stop using the Social Time as an excuse for wasting time with unessential activities such as playing video games, watching TV, and binge-drinking ;-) I’d rather spend quality social time with my besties (e.g. go for a coffee and talk about essentials or do some fun activities together).

(By the way, the Time Killers are the bushes and weed you don’t want to focus on. Focus on the damn trees.)

Now it’s your turn. I know, I’m not your coach, but I’d give you some more HOMEWORK:

Give yourself 10 minutes and list all the things you spend your time with. Really EVERYTHING. And then compare that list with your essentials. What do you see? What could you change in order to spend more time with your essentials?

Here’s a crucial time spending rule:

Whatever is not essential, minimize it.

Or, to go back to the title…

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential. — Bruce Lee

So, once you’ve identified your essentials and the things you actually spend your time with, it’s time to hack away at the unessential. In other words, it’s time for ruthless elimination.

Okay, there we go. These 2 lists can have a massive impact on your life. Seriously. Just seeing that you don’t spend most of your time with your essentials can be an eye-opener. At least it was for me.

If you keep on reading, you find 4 tips that help you focus on the trees, not on the bushes and weed.