Sunday morning I read The Power of Less by Leo Babauta. I’m a big fan of Leo’s Zen Habits blog (I was turned onto it a few months ago by Amy) and I had high hopes for the book. It delivered.
Several times a week I hear from a friend or colleague that he or she is overwhelmed with the amount of stuff going on in their world. Occasionally someone ends up in my office in tears as they struggle to make sense of the madness that has become their life. I continuously gets email responders from people I email that say some variant of “I’m way behind on email – be patient” which is often foreshadowing for their subsequent blog post or tweet that says “I’ve declared email bankruptcy – starting over.”
A decade ago I figured out a rhythm that works for me. I’ve always managed to get through an enormous amount of stuff, but I would periodically go off a cliff and just completely melt down from complete exhaustion. I’d either end up asleep for a week or in bed with a nasty cold (trying to sleep, but mostly just feeling shitty) until my body (and brain) recovered. My ultimately solution was a combination of some of the things I’ve talked about in my Work-Life Balance posts (and that I’m writing about now in my Work-Life Balance email newsletter).
Some of my tactics show up in Leo’s book. As I read through it, I thought to myself that “everyone I know that struggles with being overwhelmed” should read this book. As fits the title, it’s not a long book, but it’s well organized, has a clear philosophy throughout, and is easy to relate to and understand.
I was already a fan of Leo’s, but now I’m even a bigger one.