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If you feel as though you don’t have enough hours in the day it may be time to declutter your life. Thankfully, this doesn’t have to be a huge task; all it takes are a few small adjustments to add more time, space and calm into everything you do. Below are 8 simple ways to declutter and simplify your life.

1. Make more time in your day

Making more time in your day isn’t as difficult as it sounds – and it definitely doesn’t have to involve getting up at the crack of dawn!

The first step is to think about absolutely everything you do in a day and write it down – including things like making breakfast and reading news. It might be helpful to jot down the things you do as you go about your day to avoid forgetting anything.

Once you’ve completed your list it’s time to go through every item one by one. You may have already noticed that there are a few unnecessary items on there – or tasks that you could streamline – or even things that you could delegate to somebody else.
Viewing a list of your daily tasks will give you better perspective and allow you to plan better.

Often, we don’t realise that we do so many unnecessary things until you actually write them all down. If you manage to trim a few of these down you’ll end up freeing a lot of time for yourself.

2. Purge your stuff

The more stuff you have, the more complex your daily life is. Clutter adds to stress and anxiety and more belongings mean more to tidy (or remind yourself to tidy), more to organise and more to keep track of.

It’s time to have a big declutter session and get rid of as much as you can. This article is a great resource if you don’t even know where to begin. Decluttering your home will make it easier to keep things organised, which saves you a lot of time day to day.

If the thought of decluttering your whole home is a bit overwhelming, a great place to start it your cupboard. Decluttering your clothes minimises the length of time it takes to find things and choose what you’re going to wear each day.

3. Learn to say no

Stop adding additional commitments to your task list when you know you’re at breaking point! Productivity experts recommend learning to limit yourself to a certain number of tasks/commitments for the week and saying no to the rest.

It will be difficult at first, but mastering the art of saying no is probably the single most effective way to simplify your life. You can start small by challenging yourself to just saying no to one thing this week. Try it once and build up your resolve from there.

4. Simplify your finances

Disorganised finances cause a lot of stress and unnecessary drama in your life.
Unfortunately, it also tends to take up a lot of mental real-estate that could be dedicated to something else.

It’s time to set aside an hour or two to sit down and sort through everything. It may even be worth hiring someone to help you if the task seems overwhelming at first.

Once you’re over the initial organisation stage it becomes much easier to keep everything in check. You can also download one of the many apps that help you keep track of your cashflow.

5. Get a wall calendar

An online calendar is all well and good, but having at least one place where your tasks, commitments and agenda are visible at a glance goes a long way to staying organised. This is one trick almost all productivity gurus recommend.

Seeing your calendar multiple times a day will help you mentally plan your days better and also gives you a better sense of everything you have to get done in a month, which will help you not to overbook yourself.

Being able to visualise your weeks and month is also more effective at giving us the ‘big picture’ than looking at a single day at a time.

6. Optimise your flow

There are times of day when you have more energy, feel more creative and work better than others. This could be early morning, late at night or right after lunch. Everybody is different.

Learn when your most productive hours are and take advantage of them. Block off this time to do your most important work. You’ll notice that you get twice as much done in these times than you do in your non-peak hours.

Make a habit of turning off your phone and knuckling down to do your biggest tasks during this time and you’ll notice a massive productivity increase.

7. Avoid multi-tasking

Studies show that productivity and accuracy of work decreases significantly when we multi-task. It sounds counter-intuitive, but you’ll get each individual task done quicker if you separate them out.

Turn off all desktop and phone notifications when you’re involved in a task and don’t focus on anything else until the task is complete.

You can set aside times to have meetings and do the smaller things too, but try to keep tasks separate.

Productivity experts say that switching back and forth between unrelated things (even if it’s just reading a text while in the middle of writing a report) decreases the quality of your work and slows your brain’s processing systems.

8. Make time to plan

Planning is the easiest and most effective way to simplify your life and be more productive. Set aside planning time on a Sunday night to plan your week, and 10 mins each morning to plan your day. You’ll be surprised at how many more things you’re able to get done when you plan.

Humans waste a huge amount of time deciding what to do next, and it also uses a lot of mental energy to plan as you go along. Keep your brain sharper by planning at the start of each week and day and simply following the list.

By including these 8 simple practices into your life you’ll find you don’t need a 25 hour day to get everything done. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and once you’ve mastered it you’ll never look back.