Eight Ways to Simplify Your Life Online

Facebook recently announced that they have passed 500 million users, making them larger than the population of Canada, the US, and Mexico combined, and sparking a new wave of articles celebrating, censuring, and critiquing the site and the "new world" it represents. Many of the articles have very legitimate points, in particular the ones that analyze its cost on our society. But as a young twenty-something whose primary communication tool is the Internet in general and Facebook in particular, what am I to do if I want to simplify my online life without losing track of my friends who pretty much only use Facebook to organize events and keep in touch?

At the bottom line, of course, it all comes down to self-discipline-- knowing when to say you have spent enough time online. However, simple steps abound by which you can get your life online back under control.

With that in mind, I have compiled a list of eight ideas for doing exactly that. The first five are directly related to how you use Facebook, the latter three are more broadly applicable.

1. Hide and Seek. One of Facebook's most helpful new(er) features is the capacity to hide things in your newsfeed. If your friends are playing Farmville and the notifications keep showing up all over your feed, just click "Hide"! If you change your mind (you probably won't), you can always go find it and reverse the decision. You can also hide people that you are not interested in seeing in your newsfeed, but consider the following:
2. It is okay to de-friend people. Really. If you are so uninterested in them that you hide them and never go to their profile page, consider a purge of your friends list. Chances are good that most of them won't notice, but if they do, they can always re-friend you later. Or, if removing someone as a Facebook friend is really too hard for you to do...
3. Make lists. Another delightful new-ish feature on Facebook is the ability to make lists of your friends, creating an effective filter for whatever groups of people you choose. My favorite thing about the lists? You can make one of all the people you might want to talk to on Facebook chat, and set it up so that you appear online only to those people. Goodbye to hearing from that old classmate you've never really wanted to keep in touch with anyway.
4. Cut down your use of applications. Seriously, are these games (FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, etc) really why you signed up for Facebook? Are the bumper stickers and quizzes and pieces of flair? If so, disregard this item. If not, go in to your applications list and remove them. All you need are the basics...plus maybe one or two apps that you really enjoy, don't suck a lot of time, or otherwise enrich your online life (for me, those two are Scrabble and Selective Tweets; I've uninstalled everything else).
5. On Notice. You can get a lot of different notifications on Facebook. Tagged photos, comments, wall posts, links, accepted friend requests...but you don't have to let them take over your regular email inbox. Unsubscribe.
6. Feed the addiction carefully. Google Reader has become one of my favorite online tools. I set up feeds to it for blogs, entertainment, and general news. I love the ability to flip through it quickly, and to select particular articles that I want to read more in-depth. It's also a good way to share articles (as is Twitter). That being said, it is important to be very self-controlled with how many feeds you subscribe to. Set a cap and stick to it.
7. Limit your time. This is the piece of advice given every time someone writes suggestions about using the Internet, but it's a good one. Set a limit on how much time you are going to spend on a given site. There are some instances where this is easier to pull off than others. For example, I generally limit myself to half an hour on my Google Reader at a given point in the day. This includes reading the posts that I select as worth a closer read. That's relatively easy to do. Facebook, on the other hand, is one of the biggest time-suckers on the Internet, and defining time on there can be much more of a challenge. This is why you have to learn how to know when to...
8. Shut it down. I mean this in two regards. First and most important is to know when to shut off your internet or your computer entirely. If you need to focus, if you are getting a headache, if you know you've spent hours staring at a screen without getting anything accomplished, just power it down. If you have an extended period coming up where you are going to need to be very productive (final exams time in college, for example), it is also worth considering deactivating your online accounts like Facebook and Twitter, or getting a friend to change your password so you can't waste time on them.

As a millennial, I love all my various ways of connecting with people online. But I have also grown to recognize increasingly the importance of managing that online life in a responsible manner in proportion with the amount of time I spend with people in person and doing other important things. Self-discipline with the Internet can be hard to acquire, but it is well worth the effort it takes to develop.

Reposting from Zen Habits

Apologies again for the drought in posting. Striving to live simply is an ongoing battle, and this summer that has especially been true in terms of commitments. Working two jobs and seeing friends is a great thing but it does consume a good deal of time!

I just wanted to call to your attention this excellent guest post on my favorite simple living site, Zen Habits: How to Simplify When You Love Your Stuff. It aligns very nicely with my philosophy on purging vs purchasing items: if you have space and it adds to your happiness or helps you to follow your passions, then that's okay. The point of simplifying is to have more space in your life for the things you love, not to remove the things you love from your life. The link to the full article is here; excerpted below (all credit to the author).

Living simply and detaching from material things will make you happier. There is real research and lots of anecdotal evidence to support the truth of this. But is it possible that some material things can add to our happiness, sense of contentment and joy in life? If so, how do you go about deciding what’s good stuff and what’s bad?

Perhaps the deciding factor is motivation. Do the things that you own or wish to buy support your ego, or do they enliven your soul? Some material things can afford you a sense of warmth, coziness, beauty, fond memories, or comfort. There are other things that offer only that fleeting rush of acquisition.

The Rain, Walking, and Other Musings

3 June 2010

It rained today.

Not the kind of gentle drizzle that lasts all day, nor the sudden skies-opened-up downpour that you know will last no more than five or ten minutes...nor still the off-and-on sun showers that serve only to confuse and tease you. No, this was the kind of storm that starts quietly and builds...the kind that you can watch as it grows, if you are fortunate, into a full-on thunderstorm that lasts for an hour or two.

I watched it build initially from my office window around 4:30. I watched the clouds roll in and turn a day that had been bright and sunny from the moment I woke up into a gloomy twilight. I say "gloomy" there-- it evokes an accurate image, to be sure, but when I left the office and headed into the open air, I did not feel an atmosphere of gloom at all.

The initial stage of my commute home is a 20-minute walk across the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which crosses the Potomac River and the C&O Canal, and then takes me through part of Georgetown's semi-famous M Street shopping district. Though part of me had hoped that the rain would hold off until I reached my bus stop, the drizzle was just beginning as I walked out the door of my building. I briefly contemplated altering my route so I would be inside on some mode of public transportation, but quickly decided against it and proceeded on my way.

I relate easily to this quote from Henry David Thoreau's essay "Walking":

"I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least-- and it is commonly more than that-- sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them-- as if the legs were meant to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon-- I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago."

You see, my job keeps me inside pretty much all day staring at a computer screen. It's not a bad gig overall, but I find it hard to be so sedentary-- which is rather strange actually, since I don't lead an incredibly active lifestyle to begin with. I find it hard to be trapped, so I have grown to relish my morning and evening commutes, particularly the walking component. And I have walked it-- and will walk it-- in virtually all types of weather short of a hurricane.

I don't find walking in the rain to be such a bad thing. Personally my main concerns are for the books, notebooks, and technology that I inevitably carry in my backpack; I could care less about what I'm wearing, although after a certain amount of drenching a dry pair of pants and socks become a highly appealing prospect. I have been caught in enough downpours to always carry an umbrella in my bag, even if it's sunny out, so I generally feel free to take it out and saunter along in bad weather, largely unconcerned with the precipitation around me.

I fell into a state of near-total bliss walking along this afternoon in the rain. As the world rushed by around me-- pedestrians running for cover, cars plowing through puddles and getting mired in traffic-- I strolled along, unhurried, looking down at the water below and absorbing the water falling from above.

Once I crossed into Georgetown-- at 5:00pm, normally a beehive of pedestrian activity, mainly tourists shopping-- I was somewhat startled to find that the sidewalks were as clear as though M Street had shut down (though the normal traffic snarl continued). My fellow walkers-- perhaps more ill prepared than I, or perhaps simply more sane-- had run for the nearest store, restaurant, or overhang to wait out the weather. I can't say that I blame them; at this point the rain was falling more heavily and thunder had started to rumble in the distance as the storm really moved in.

It's amazing how getting caught in a downpour can make some people friendlier. People see you in a similar boat and they are more inclined to smile and make conversation, if only briefly. It's a short respite from the usual bubbles that DC residents find themselves in for most of their lives.

The storm lasted about an hour. As I sit here drafting this post in a Starbucks near my home, sporadically nursing a hot chocolate, the rain is starting to slow. Knowing the weather here, in an hour or so it'll be sunny again, hopefully turning into a pleasant and mild evening. I have every reason to expect that it will be so.

The nature of DC in the summer is such that thunderstorms are virtually guaranteed at least every couple of days. They are necessary to cool the air and break the humidity, if only temporarily. Nature needs a respite; so too do we humans. Many of us dread getting caught in a downpour, but what I have grown to realize is that, looked at in the proper way, the rain can be a break, a necessary and not unpleasant interruption that reminds us to really be aware of our surroundings. I didn't have my iPod on while I was walking in the rain-- in part because I didn't want it to get wet but also because it meant I was more aware of my surroundings. Perhaps this is an overly poetic way to look at a drenching, but the opportunity to really be present in life and in the world around you is one that I admit I rarely take advantage of, so I was glad for this experience.

Ten Favorite Zen Habits Articles

One of my major inspirations for writing this blog was my consumption of Zen Habits by Leo Babauta. Leo's ideas and tips have helped me along my own path toward simplifying and improving my life, and although I find that not everything he recommends works for me (after all, he's a married father of six who lives in Guam and I'm a college student in Washington, DC), many of his ideas can be adapted to suit my life better. I plan to write more soon about how I have adapted some of Leo's ideas to work for me, but for now here are some Zen Habits pieces that I regularly peruse when I am looking for an inspirational pick-me-up.

1) Handbook for Life: 52 Tips for Happiness and Productivity. Just like it sounds, this piece offers a number of helpful tips for streamlining your life, and making it happier, simpler, and more productive (three concepts that, in my opinion, are closely linked).

2) 55 Ways to Get More Energy. Everybody has those days-- or times of day-- where your energy just fails and all you want to do is take a nap. How do you get around that when you really need to stay awake and do work? Guest author Greg Go offers some awesome tips.

3) 10 Simple Ways to Live a Less Stressful Life. I am increasingly of the opinion that stress is an overrated part of life. While it has some benefits when present at a reasonable level, our normal high-stress lives are both unhelpful and dangerous. I am quite jealous of Leo, who lives on Guam and works from home, but he does know a lot about how to reduce stress from his previous high-stress job. These ten ideas are useful because they are basic enough to work in almost anybody's life, with maybe some modifications. Reducing stress is a valuable lesson.

4) 12 Ways to Decompress After High Stress. So even after reading #3, some stress still managed to creep into your life? Don't worry, it happens. It's inevitable, actually. But I agree with Leo here-- it is imperative to decompress and let your body rejuvenate after a period of insane stress. Here he presents 12 ideas on how to do that.

5) 12 Ideas for Establishing a Calming Routine. A good way to maintain calm in your life is to establish routines that help you to center yourself on a daily basis. Whether you prefer your quiet time in the morning or the evening or both, it's worth looking into.

6) Feeling Down? 7 Ways to Pick Yourself Back Up! 'Nough said. These are very practical tips for pulling yourself out of a standard day-to-day melancholy.

7) How to Actually Execute Your To-Do List: or, Why Writing It Down Doesn't Actually Get It Done. My name is Carolyn and I am a list-maker. I admit it freely. I rely on lists to keep myself organized, but for years I had issues actually doing the stuff on the tasks list. I've since gotten a lot better at "just doing it," and articles like this one helped a lot with that. Goes through a lot of the common obstacles to getting things done, and offers tips on overcoming them.

8) Let the World Pass You By. I live in Washington, DC, which is one of the biggest go-getter places I've ever been. What ever happened to just sitting and watching the world go by? Leo reflects on the same idea.

9) Sounds of Silence: How to Find Some Quietude in Your Life. I defy even Leo to try to find quiet while living in a dorm on a university campus in a city. However, I agree with him on the value of silence, and I do my best to find my quiet time on a regular basis-- usually it winds up being on a walk on side streets late at night. But without some degree of quiet, how are you supposed to really be able to think and relax?

10) 21 Easy Hacks to Simplify Your Life. Leo's written a lot of pieces on simple living, but this is probably what I would consider his "101" course on the topic. Basic and beneficial ideas to start off anybody's move toward simple living.

Whew.

Week One of Semester Two of Junior Year is complete. Based on my experience during this first week and my projections of due dates, etc., here are some predictions about my life this semester:

1) It would be most beneficial for me to learn how to read and walk at the same time without walking into stuff.

2) Even if I can't do that, I will probably be carrying a book around with me just about everywhere, on the off chance that I have a few free minutes.

3) This is because I have two classes in which I have to read a book a week. On top of three other reading-intensive (but not quite as intense) classes.

4) Seeing my friends is, once again, going to be heavily centered around eating. Partly because we all like it, but mostly because everybody's gotta eat, so meals are the only time that people can squeeze in a bit of socializing.

5) If I'm not going to be eating with a friend, I will be eating and reading.

6) Every healthy simple living habit I have developed will simultaneously be necessary and put to the test this semester. The inclination to get up earlyish, doing my stretches, eating breakfast, taking a walk almost every day, attempting to stay away from junk food, getting to sleep at a reasonable hour-- I am going to need all these skills, but they are going to get really hard.

7) Same goes for every good academic habit I have been attempting to develop over the past three semesters.

8) Planning ahead is going to be really, really important for my papers if I don't want to pull many/any all-nighters. Also if I want to maintain and improve my GPA.

9) Extra stuff-- like meetings for the USMA (the club I'm in here), applications for summer internships, figuring out housing for next year, etc.-- are all going to be really challenging. I may have to take a careful look at which are really necessary and which are not.

10) I am definitely not going to be blogging every day or even close to that. New goal: write on here once a week. It may simply be updates like this, or thoughts related to simple living that I spent part of the week musing about. But yeah...I wouldn't be looking for posts more than once or maybe twice a week, if that week is particularly quiet.