How to Simplify to Amplify
Simplifying is the key to amplifying. Do less to achieve more. If you’re looking at your circus, counting your monkeys and thinking there’s absolutely no way to axe anything, read on.
Research is giving us a greater understanding of our human experience, and one thing that we now know is that laziness is so much more than an unwillingness to be productive. Our nervous systems were not designed for modern fast-paced lives, for switching gears and compartmentalising so many compartments. Avoidance, procrastination, apathy, numbness and “laziness” are signs that your nervous system has overloaded and shut down. A bit like a computer that overheats. The best response? Self-compassion instead of self-beration. Dr Devon Price is a social psychologist, author and professor at Loyola University Chicago. He holds a PhD in psychology and focuses on areas like neurodivergence, trauma, identity and social behaviour. For him, “Human beings aren’t designed to be constantly productive. When someone isn’t doing something, it’s not a moral failure — it’s an unmet need.”
Attention dwindling and motivation fading? Lean into it. Rest. Remember, it only counts as rest if it’s screen-free. A break might come at the expense of other obligations, but you’ll see that it gets easier to set a boundary in this space and take a break when you need it, even if you feel guilty the fi rst few times.
1. Learn how to do less
Forcing yourself to show up feels safer than resting. Social conditioning teaches us that perseverance equates to success. Undoing that social conditioning feels unsafe and counterintuitive, but it’s important to learn that feelings are not facts.
• Feeling like you can’t axe things from your schedule doesn’t mean you can’t.
• Feeling like you need to show up no matter how hard it is, and that your life will be better for it, isn’t a fact.
You can spot what needs cutting when you think logically, but if you let your feelings creep in, it’s over. Guilt, pressure and FOMO will talk you out of it. If logic says it can go, let it. It’ll feel hard at first, awkward, even wrong, you’ll feel like a bad friend if you say you can’t be at that party, a bad sister if you say you can’t cater that event, a bad parent if you say you can’t volunteer at the next school activity, but your brain will catch on. Do it a few times, it gets easier. You’re training it to feel safe with less.
2. Starving isn’t a strategy
The most powerful way for someone to move from where they are to where they want to be in life is to liftthe handbrakes. Like a car. The handbrakes are more about the things you’re not doing, the little habits that put fuel in the proverbial tank, and you’re probably not refuelling on all counts.
Food is the first of the handbrake habits to readjust. Here’s what to axe:
• Complicated meal plans
• Calorie counting
• Starving all day, then bingeing at night
Simplify, eat regularly and eat what fuels you. Eat an earlier dinner and a slightly later breakfast, but do not skip meals. Protein is the gold standard here. If you can only have a protein shake on the go, so be it, but fill your day with lots of protein. If you’re skipping meals, you’re setting yourself up for cravings, energy slumps, poorer choices later in the day and you’re destroying your base metabolic rate.
3. Movement snacks: Better than the gym?
Did you know that doing jumping squats every 45 minutes to an hour is more powerful for your metabolism, heart health, stress levels, insulin resistance and mental health than an hour at the gym?
• Your body responds better to consistency, even if that consistency is small.
• How does it add up when compared to other popular gym workouts such as high-intensity interval training (HIIT)?
• Let’s look at the cumulative effects of doing 10 jumping squats per hour (10 hours per day) versus a HIIT workout at the gym for 30 minutes three times per week:
• After one month, you’d have done roughly 3600 squats, which equates to around 9000 calories burned, and it would have taken about 390 minutes, compared to only 4222 calories burned in the gym.
• At six months, you’d have done 21,600 squats, coming to roughly 54,000 calories burned, while the gym workout would have resulted in roughly 25,331 calories burned.
• At 12 months, you’d have done 43,200 squats and burned roughly 108,000 calories doing jumping squats, while the gym workout would have given you roughly 50,661 calories burned.
Can’t do jumping squats? Just do star jumps (jumping jacks), climb a staircase or anything else to get your blood pumping for one minute every hour.
4. Sleep science
A good sleep routine isn’t magic. It takes weeks for your brain to adapt to a change in routine and for good sleep to become predictable and truly restful.
This handbrake habit will improve your focus during the day as well as increase your motivation and ability to persevere through challenges. Then there’s also this sneaky little fact: your brain only releases leptin (the hormone that signals when you’ve eaten enough) after six hours of consecutive deep sleep. Quality sleep busts cravings and boosts satiety.
Decision fatigue reduces impulse control and self-discipline, so this might be the hardest handbrake habit.
You need to axe:
• Late-night scrolling (put your phone away at least two hours before bedtime)
• Using wine to wind down
• Allowing yourself to reach a “second wind”
Simplify to:
• One simple wind-down habit (shower, book, meditation)
• Same bedtime, same wake-up time
• Go to bed an hour before you intend to sleep
Drink more water
Stop waiting until you’re thirsty to drink water. Stop relying on coffee. Drinking water sounds simple, but why is it so difficult? If you’re not a natural water drinker, you’ll know what I mean. Simply have one glass of water every time you pour yourself a tea or coffee. Aim for 1L before lunch and another after lunch. Here are the facts to entice you:
• Drinking 500mL of water increases metabolic rate within 10 minutes and peaks around 30 minutes.
• Even mild dehydration (one to two per cent) causes your brain tissue to shrink, which impairs short-term memory, focus and decision-making.
• Dehydration jacks up cortisol, your stress hormone, even if you don’t feel “thirsty”.
• Mid-afternoon back pain? Spinal discs dehydrate during the day and need water replenishment.
Keep things simple
No one will be more invested in your wellbeing than you, so get invested. When you start setting boundaries around your time and not choosing your schedule over your hydration, sleep and nutrition, other people learn to respect you and your boundaries. You teach people how to treat you by setting the tone.
By investing the extra time and energy into lifting these handbrakes in your life, you actually grow your capacity. Your emotional, physical and mental capacity all increase over time.
Stop over-extending yourself, over-planning and under-executing, and stop relying on motivation. You need to create a framework that supports success, and skipping even a single beam in the framework will compromise the structural integrity of the success you are building. These handbrake habits are the framework. They are the scaffolding.
It starts with one day at a time, one habit at a time. It’s important to change your mindset so that your wellbeing becomes your priority — not schedules, obligations or people pleasing.
This article is featured in Wellbeing Magazine 222
