Specifically I try to listen when I say the word should.  I say should a lot.

I should do this, or do that.  I should go here, or go there.  I should help that person.  I should, I should, I should.  I say it a lot, but don’t always do what it is that I said I should do.

So recently I’ve set a trigger for myself for when I catch myself saying should, I pause and do that thing that that I just said I should do.  A lot of the time its a spur of the moment type of though that requires immediate action.

“I should stop and help that person broken down the side of the road”

“I should fix that squeaking thing that’s driving me nuts”

“I should stop at the store on the way home to make dinner”

“I should go running”

I used to let all these should’s come in and pass through my head leaving a long “someday” to do list of things I should do, or worse a long list of things I should have done.

Now with that trigger set, I find myself turning around a lot more and going back to do those things.  If I hear should, I turn that into a must and do it right then if the should calls for it.

Do you find yourself saying “I should…” a lot?  Do you find yourself regretting not doing those things?

Your Truly Simple Action this week is to listen to yourself.  See if you find yourself saying should and start to listen and recognize the pattern.  Then start pausing when you hear yourself saying it and taking immediate action on that should.

Ben…

Truly Simple Actions The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time.  Take time this week to do this one simple thing. Previous TSA’s:

I am not going through hell right now, but I am nearing the finishing of a huge project that I am eager and ready to be finished.  I’ve been working on a major remodel of our rental house for the past 2 months on nights and weekends and I am ready for it to be done.

I love the work of remodeling and fixing, but its taking all my time away from my family and friends and other things I’d like to be doing so I am ready for it to be done, but its not done yet.  I can see the finish line.  Its almost there.  Just a little bit more, but I am tired.  Tired of running to Home Depot several times a day.  Tired of being away both day and night.  I am just ready for it to be done.  So what do you do when you are in a a situation that you can’t get out of?  You get into it.

Dive in head first.  Get behind the project and make it move forward.  Every day, just a little further until its done.  I am near the finish line and I will finish strong.

I am almost there.  I will keep going and finish strong.

Your Truly Simple Action this week is to finish strong on that project that you are stuck in that you may not want to be in anymore.  Finish it.  Get it done so you can stand back and look at the great work you’ve done.  Get it finished so you can move on to all those new things you want to start.

Ben…

Truly Simple Actions The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time.  Take time this week to do this one simple thing. Previous TSA’s:

This could be as simple as putting things away around the house, or fixing that broken item that’s been broken for a while.

Just quietly do something nice for someone around you when they are not looking.

Don’t say a word.

Just wait for them to notice and smile and feel good when they do.

Ben…

Truly Simple Actions The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time.  Take time this week to do this one simple thing. Previous TSA’s:

I was chatting with my friend Rhett the other day and he mentioned that he liked my post on 5 Ways to Simplify Your Email and he also mentioned he just upgraded his phone and despite the people transferring over all his info, he still lost half his contacts.

Keeping up with friends and family these days has never been easier.  We have Facebook, and Twitter and all sorts of ways to text, call or reach out to our loved ones.  I created a Facebook group for my dads side of the family ,as it is very large and spread out, so we could all keep in touch.  I love all the ways technology makes it easy for us to keep up with those we care about.

That said, it can be a total nightmare when you lose your phone if that is the only place all your contacts are kept.  So this post is first about keeping your contacts in a safe place so they are not at risk to be lost forever if you lose your or upgrade your phone.  The best way I have found to do this is to keep all of my contacts in my email (gmail) account and then sync those to my phone.  That way when I get a new phone I can just sync all of my contacts at once and I can never lose them.  They are always online and I can access them anywhere I have internet.

So the first part of this Truly Simple Action for this week is to get all of your contacts out of your phone and into an online service where they can be kept safe.  I recommend Gmail, but other email clients may work as well.

You can do this one by one, but that does not sound like a fun way to spend an afternoon, so lets let the computer do the work.  If you have an IOS device, here is a simple guide to getting your contacts to sync between your phone/tablet and gmail.  If you have an Android phone or tablet, since those are already running a Google OS, it should work by default, but here is some info to help if you need it.

Once your contacts are in sync you can create one on the phone and it should sync over to gmail to keep it safe in the cloud.  Isn’t that nice?  Be careful, because the sync works both ways.  If you delete a contact on your phone, it will delete on gmail too.  Once they are all on gmail, you can get on your computer and do a little contact cleanup as it is much easier to do with a keyboard and mouse vs trying to do it all on a little touch screen phone.

Now that all your contacts are safe, part two of this Truly Simple Action this week is to use them.  Go through your contact list and reach out to a few old friends this week.  Out of the blue, just send them a note or give them a quick call and tell them how awesome they are.  Such a simple idea, but sometimes we don’t do it enough.  The awesome feeling both you and they will get from this will amaze you.

So keep your contacts safe, and use them.

Ben…

Truly Simple Actions The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time.  Take time this week to do this one simple thing. Previous TSA’s:

And it is awesome that we have these choices, and we need to choose wisely.

So your Truly Simple Action of the week is to make good choices with your money.  Buy experiences and not stuff.

If you want to be happy, buy experiences and not stuff.  This has been studied quite a bit recently to show that those people who spend their money toward experiences and not accumulating things are happier.

It makes sense.  So instead of that next big thing you want to buy, look toward how you could spend those dollars on an experience.  Take a trip.  Plan an adventure.  Go camping with your friends.

The stuff you want will be there later and will probably be cheaper.  The experiences you miss may not come around again.

If you are in debt you need to work to pay those off.  This isn’t permission to max out the credit card on some trip to Jamaica.   But if you are just spending cash willy nilly on crap you don’t need, stop it and buy some real memories with that money.

I’ve got to run to the post office and send the IRS some more money now.

Ben…

Truly Simple Actions The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time.  Take time this week to do this one simple thing. Previous TSA’s:

I had a truly horrible weekend.  I don’t have many bad days.  I am usually extremely happy and very easy going, but sometimes things all go awry, and I know exactly why this happens.

One of my strengths is that I am able to get an amazing amount accomplished.  This also stems from one of my greatest weaknesses which is unreasonable expectations.  I expect a lot from myself and I set out to accomplish it all.  When this goes well it goes great.  I kick ass and get more done that most people.  When it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong and frustrates me more than anything.  As per last week’s TSA, I have been doing too much lately and it has come back to bite me in the ass.  The combination of too much going on with not enough hours in the day has set me up for some frustration as of late.

I need to slow down.  I need to not let my expectations frustrate me in the face of the reality of how long things really take to complete.  I need to try to do less and be OK with it.

If any of this sounds familiar, let this note to myself be a reminder to you to slow down.  If you are in the same boat as me I would love to hear how you deal with this?  Telling myself to slow down is easy.  Putting it into practice is really difficult for me.

So your Truly Simple Action this week is to slow down, but I want you to tell me how you do this.  How do you pause and reset your expectations toward reality and let things take the time they should take?

I would love to hear from you on this.  Please tell me in the comments below.

Ben…

Truly Simple Actions The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time.  Take time this week to do this one simple thing. Previous TSA’s:

The negative side affects are clear as I do not like being exhausted or spending so much time away from my wife and family.  The benefit from being busy and doing too much is that it forces you to focus on the priorities and find the things in your life that you waste your time on.  In the last several weeks I have barely watched an hour of TV.  I haven’t played video games or wasted time online in weeks.

If you want to find the areas in your life that you waste your time, take on too much.  Fill your schedule with way too many projects that have deadlines and you will quickly realize what you you waste your time on and what you can cut out.

All that said, I miss my wife, walking my dog, spending more time with friends, and will be happy when all these projects are done and behind me.

Ben…

Truly Simple Actions The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time.  Take time this week to do this one simple thing. Previous TSA’s:

Big lofty goals like this one are nice, but they are too big and lofty and can easily be forgotten as you don’t do any meaningful action to work towards them.  If you’ve read any of this site, you know we are all about the meaningful action so today we take some.

Your Truly Simple Action for this week is to clean up just one area in your house.

Pick an area.  Any area.

Clean out that junk drawer.  Organize your closet.  Get rid of some junk you don’t need and make some money doing it.

Just pick one area that is cluttered and aim to tackle that area this week.  Start small.  Don’t aim to clean out the whole house because you will never do it.  Just pick one small area and get it done.  This will not only feel awesome, but set the path toward your goal of being organized.

It’s a good idea to pick an area that you see often.  This is good for two reasons.  First you no longer have to look at that cluttered area once you’ve cleaned it up.  All those nagging reminders of, “oh yeah, I need to clean that up”, will be replaced with awesome feelings of accomplishment.   Second, those positive feelings of seeing that cleaned area combined with the great feeling of accomplishment for getting it done with lead toward more opportunities to clean and get organized.

So that is it.  So simple.  Just clean one area.  Its not hard.  You have time.

Write down on a sticky note right now the area that is popping into your head to clean.  Put that note somewhere you’ll see it.  Schedule a day in your calendar to clean that area.  Do it tonight.  Just get it done and let those positive ripple effects start to happen.

Ben…

Truly Simple Actions The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time.  Take time this week to do this one simple thing. Previous TSA’s:

When it comes to your inbox you are in control of what messages you receive and how and when you see them, so its time to take control and simplify your digital life and clean up your email box.

Your Truly Simple Action of the week is to take control of your inbox.  Here are 5 simple ways to do just that.

Unsubscribe Ruthlessly

First you need to unsubscribe to every email that is not providing you value. If you aren’t getting valuable information from the emails coming into your inbox, stop getting them. Every email you get from a company has an unsubscribe link in it somewhere. They are usually at the bottom, but can sometimes be a little tricky to find. Go through your inbox this week and as you get emails in that you no longer wish to receive, simply unsubscribe from them. Do this each day this week. By the end of the week you should have at least 90% of the unwanted emails stopped. This is a quick and easy process that only takes a few seconds per email and you only have to do it once.

Filter, Filter, Filter

Next, when you are getting emails you really want to get, it’s time to filter them appropriately. I’m using Gmail as my email, but most email clients offer this same functionality. If yours does not, switch to gmail.

Filter all your emails that come from businesses into a few categories. Here are some of the filters I have set up:

• Stuff to buy – everything that is an ad from a store
• Stuff to do – events, races, concerts, things happening around me
• Travel – all my airline, travel emails
• Restaurants – everything from a restaurant
• Social – any email from a social network (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc)

You can set up whatever filters make sense for you, but start with a few categories and you can always add more as they make sense.

Now with those filters set up, it’s time to use them. Filter all those types of messages so they get filtered and skip the inbox. Yes I still get those messages, but I don’t see them until I want to see them. This is the key to managing your email. You can still get all the sales emails you want, but you don’t need to see them until you are ready to shop. This is the best of both worlds. When I am ready to buy something I search through my email for some deals or discounts, but otherwise I am not having to look at ads and sales that do not interest me. This also works great for when we want to go out to eat, I can check my restaurant filter and see if any of my favorite restaurants are having any coupons or deals.

Here is how you filter your emails in Gmail

Open the email you want to filter.  Click on the More button and then select “Filter messages like these”

This will start to create the filter for you.  It will automatically filter by the email address and thats what we want.  You can filter by almost anything as you can see there, but we are fine with the email address so click “Create filter with this search”

Next check the box to skip the inbox.  We don’t need to see these messages in our inbox, thats why we are filtering them.  Then check the box to apply your label.  Select the appropriate label or create one.  I filter all my airlines emails into my Travel filter.  Then check the box to apply that filter to all those messages that match that filter.  Then finally click the Create filter button.

That’s it!  This whole process takes only a few seconds once you get the hang of it and you only have to do it once per email sender and then all of those emails will now get filtered for you.

Archive everything

Ok, once you filter out all the business email your inbox should be only getting messages from family and friends. This is a simple and awesome inbox. It should be filled with personal communications of people you actually want to talk to.  This is a good place to be, but we can get better.  Its time to clean out the inbox again.  Don’t worry we aren’t going to delete all your email, we are just going to archive it.  Archiving, lets us get all that email out of the inbox, but saves it for searching later.  You can always go back and find any email you wish, but we don’t need to keep it in our inbox.

This one is easy, simply check the box to select all the mail (1) and then click the text link to select everything (2), and then click the archive button (3).

This is a clean inbox. Take a moment and revel in its beauty.  Now don’t freak out, all your email is still there and you can search for it anytime you need it, but now you have a clean starting point to which you can be organized.

I archive all of my email every friday.  So at the end of each week, I take everything, and get it out of the way.  A clean slate is a nice way to end the week.

Don’t Push

Now that you’ve got your inbox under control its time to control your smart phone.  Turn off all push functions and notifications for email.  It is YOUR email and YOU are in control of when you want to check it.  Don’t let that little phone push you around and teach you to respond to every beep and buzz in your pocket like a trained monkey.  Turn off push email so your email only comes in when you want it it to.  Second, turn off all notifications so again, you get to check email when you want to.  You are in control!

Not in the morning

And one last tip on email.  Do not check it first thing in the morning.  This is hard as you might use your phone as an alarm clock right next to the bed as I do.  I also still struggle with this one, but its important.  DO NOT check your email first thing in the morning.  Just as you are taking control of your inbox, you take control over when you check it.  Checking it first thing in the morning is a really bad idea as it tends to hijack your day and you haven’t even gotten out of bed yet.  When you check your email first thing in the morning you are giving permission to everyone who has emailed you to give you marching orders for the day verses doing what you wanted to do.  You will want to respond to any fire drill you find in your inbox and that is not a good way to start the day.  Don’t check your email.  It will be there later.  Do what you want to do first.  Get done the things on your to do list first.  Those fire drills will be there later and you can take care of them later if they haven’t already sorted themselves out.  Don’t let others dictate your day.

Remember, you are in control.  This is your inbox.  This is your life.

I hope you take some time this week to accomplish this Truly Simple Action and see how these simple rules for email can make your life better.

Ben…

Truly Simple Actions The goal of the TSA project is to improve your life and help make this world a better place, one simple action at a time.  Take time this week to do this one simple thing. Previous TSA’s: