I once had a t-shirt that said “Life is short, make fun of it.” I don’t agree with the first part of that message but I think I’m beginning to understand the wisdom in the second part.

I’m in a process of simplifying my life. I’m removing nonimportant things so I have less to worry about. It feels great. If you’ve never tried that, you cannot even imagine how awesome it is. Let me share with you the four areas I’m in a process of simplifying.

This is not a new year resolution. I’ve been implementing these changes in my life for many weeks now. It’s also not a guide for you. I can’t know what’s good for you. That’s up to you. I’m sharing this only because I’ve done it and it might inspire you to try some of it too.

1. Less Stuff Around Me

I threw away a lot of stuff from my appartment. I had an incredible amount of crap that I was keeping “just in case” or “to be sold” or “to be used when something else is sold” or “this might come in handy”, etc. Now that it’s gone, I can see that it was an incredible drag for my piece of mind. I didn’t expect that. I probably could find a way to explain it if I wanted to know but I don’t want to be bothered now. It just works. It feels great and I highly recommend you try the same. There’s still a lot of useless stuff to throw out in near future so I’m expecting the same or even better feeling again soon :) My ultimate goal is to keep only stuff I use regularly and to have as little as possible of it. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not becoming a monk or hermit or something. I’m still keeping my car, my huge flat-screen tv, I still read, listen to music, watch movies and have fun with many other things every day at home and at work. I just now know that I need a lot less than I thought a couple of weeks ago.

2. Less Information

I threw away a lot of information from my life, both physically and in electronic version. All those useless notes… My Delete key has really been abused. I thew away all paper notes I’ve ever created. What a waste of paper, time and storage space. They were useful when they were created, now it’s not needed anymore. I’ve put everything I want to keep in Evernote. I’m only half-way done here, though. I’m still keeping a lot of files and paper notes that should be thrown away.

3. Reading habits

I should also probably start reading less and start experimenting more in 2011. Reading itself can be very useful but reading too much might be a total waste of time. Use it or loose it - it applies to many things - including reading. It doesn’t make much sense to read stuff that is not going to be implemented into reality. I don’t really know how I’m going to tacle this but I’m following too much stuff today - I need to trim it down. It applies to mainly to Google Reader (blogs, news, …).

4. Why I Will Not Follow You On Twitter

Some months ago I unfollowed many people on twitter and I’m only keeping 60-80 of them that I can actually follow, read and enjoy. I’m not a fan of those who follow thousands of people. I don’t really understand the concept of “follow me and I’ll follow you back” and I don’t appreciate it. It cannot mean anything else that they just clicked “follow” and use some sort of filtering mechanism to read only what they care about. It’s also probably the reason why follower numbers are completely useless. Well, my filtering mechanism is the people I follow. It helps me to read EVERYTHING from people I care about. Thank you.