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20 Simple Strategies for Getting Healthy

Post written by Leo Babauta.

While most people want to lose weight, get fitter, get healthier … it can be tough forming the habits.
It took me many starts and frustrations before I learned how to live a healthier lifestyle. In 2005, I was 70 lbs. heavier, a smoker, addicted to junk food, sedentary, couldn’t exercise for more than a few days without quitting.
Today, I am much healthier, leaner, fitter. I eat healthily most of the time (with regular indulgences) and I’m able to stick to a meal plan if I want, and avoid junk food most of the time.
How did I change? I learned a few simple strategies. These aren’t for everyone, so pick and choose the ones that might fit in your life, and give them a try!
1. Toss out the junk food. Having junk food in your house or workplace makes it too hard to stick to a healthy diet. If at all possible, toss everything out that’s sugary, fatty, greasy, salty. The best strategy is not having it around. Clean out your pantry and fridge!
2. Find some healthy recipes and buy the ingredients. There are thousands online. Find one or two to start with, easy ones that don’t take an hour to prepare, and go buy the ingredients today.
3. Cook in bulk. I find it easiest to stick to a healthy meal plan if I prepare things in advance. So cook big batches of veggie chili or soup, or tofu veggie stir fry, and put the bulk of it in containers in the fridge or freezer. I like to divide things into meal-sized containers so I just heat things up when it’s mealtime.
4. Stock up on healthy snacks. When you’re hungry for a snack, what will you eat? Have healthy things to munch on at home, at work, and for the road. Fresh fruits, chopped veggies, raw nuts, dried fruits are some of my favorites.
5. Socialize in healthier ways. Instead of going out to bars or unhealthy restaurants, can you get together for tea, or a game of basketball, or a walk in the park? Or find a healthy restaurant to eat at?
6. Find a workout partner. Get your spouse or good friend or coworker to go on walks or runs with you, or meet you at the gym or a workout class. Having someone do it with you makes it fun and easier, and you’re more likely to show up if you have an appointment to meet someone.
7. Use social media for motivation. You can use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or your favorite online forums for motivation and accountability. Publicly announce 2-week or month-long health challenges, and have people keep you accountable. Try Fitocracy — it’s a social fitness game that can make getting fit fun.
8. Play outside. It’s important to go outside every day and get some fresh air and sunshine. Move around, take the kids out and play, find a friend and take a walk or throw or kick a ball around.
9. Find healthy options for eating out. Instead of eating at fast food or chain restaurants where everything is deep fried, can you find more local restaurants where there are some healthy options? Make a list, and go to those places when you go out.
10. Make water & tea your default drink. Many people drink soda or sugar coffee drinks all day. This is not necessary for a healthy or enjoyable life. Water can become your favorite drink, and (unsweetened) tea can be very healthy. I love a mindful green tea ritual once a day.
11. Schedule active breaks. If you’re on the computer all day, schedule short breaks every 30-60 minutes where you stretch, walk around, maybe do some squats or pushups, drink some water. Exercise doesn’t have to be just once a day.
12. Get your spouse on board. It’s hard to make changes if your significant other is resistant. So early on in the process (read: right now), share your thinking, share your reading materials, and ask them to help you get healthy. Don’t ever force them to change, but see if they can be on your team.
13. Start small — don’t overdo it. Big changes tend to be hard to sustain. Make one small change on this list, and then try another, then another. Each step along the way, you’ll get used it and it will become your new normal. No step needs to be very difficult.
14. Have fun exercising. Create challenges for yourself, and your friends. Find sports you like to play. Use running as a form of meditation. Exercising doesn’t need to be boring or hard — it can be one of the best parts of your day.
15. Drink red wine. One or two glasses of red wine can be very healthy, and can add some pleasure to your new healthy lifestyle. I’m a believer in making a healthy lifestyle one that you enjoy, so add healthy foods you love, activities you enjoy, a mindful tea ritual, and an end-of-the-day wine ritual.
16. Explore berries, kale, raw almonds and walnuts, avocado, flaxseeds, quinoa, tofu, tempeh. These are foods that many people don’t eat on a regular basis, and some people have never tried some of these. One by one, explore these foods, as I find them to be very healthy. Some of them take some time to acquire the taste, and others (like tofu and tempeh) just need the right seasonings — they don’t have to be bland!
17. Add healthy ingredients to your meals. If you don’t want to change your entire diet, start adding some healthy stuff to your usual meals. For example, if you normally eat spaghetti, try ground turkey or meatless grounds instead of beef. Add some finely-diced kale and carrots, and some flaxseeds. You can do this to many recipes.
18. Try new ethnic foods. Don’t look at changing your diet as a sacrifice. Think of it as a joyous adventure. Want to try going meatless a few days a week? Try some healthy dishes from India, Japan, Thailand, the Mediterranean. It can be a lot of fun, even for the whole family.
19. Stop smoking. OK, this isn’t the easiest strategy, but it is one of the most important. I quit smoking on Nov. 18, 2005, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. It takes about a month of focused effort. Here are my tips.
20. Diet before exercise. One of the easiest ways to start getting healthier is to start improving your diet — it’s fairly easy to add some fruits and veggies, for example, and maybe cut back on some of the sweets. Starting exercise takes a bit more focus, and doesn’t always get results as quickly. On the flip side, if you start exercising, don’t let that be an excuse to eat whatever you want — it’s easy to negate the benefits of your morning run with a donut and sugary and fatty coffee drink.

Eva’s List: Traveling Light for Women

Post written by Leo Babauta and Eva Babauta.

When I wrote my 16 Essential Tips for Traveling with a Family a couple weeks ago, I had a ton of people ask the same thing: “I’d like to see Eva’s packing list!”
There’s an idea, it seems, that it’s much easier for a man to pack lightly than a woman. And while there’s some truth to that, I think it’s a matter of changing long-held ideas of what you need when you travel.
Luckily, we have my wife Eva to tell us what she packed, and what the experience was like for her. This is her first post on Zen Habits, and I’m happy to have her join me here.
Some context: Eva and I took five of our kids on a 3-week trip across southern Europe, in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Cinque Terre, the French Riviera (Antibes), and Barcelona. We brought only a small backpack each (no luggage, no roller carry-ons), and found the experience to be great.
Eva hasn’t always packed this lightly. She used to need a heavier carry-on duffle bag that I would usually end up lugging around for her (we have never traveled with big suitcases since we started traveling in 2008). But on those trips, she would begin to realize that there were a lot of things she brought that she really didn’t use or need, and slowly she has radically changed the way she packs, to my everlasting delight.
Small note: Eva & I share a toothbrush & toothpaste, both of which were in my backpack.
And now, let me turn it over to Eva:
Eva’s Packing List

By Eva Babauta
I definitely did not travel as lightly as Leo did. But, I think that I did a pretty good job of traveling light.
Here’s my packing list, carried in one backpack.
In my 15-inch packing folder were:
a pair of shorts
underwear
4 thin comfortable tank tops
a pair of pants with adjustable drawstring hem
a bathing suit
a sports bra
In a small pouch I had travel size toiletries:
facial wash
moisturizer
contact solution and lenses
deodorant
I also packed:
a pair of shades
a book
my iPod shuffle and earbuds
camera with battery charger
When we left San Francisco I wore:
jeans
a tank
a light jacket/hoodie
my New Balance Minimus shoes — very comfortable and good for walking running and light hiking
While in Europe I realized that I really didn’t need the jacket I wore or the extra pair of pants that I packed so I left them behind in one of the apartments.
I was very happy that we were each all able to travel with just one small bag and it saved me the trouble of having to keep track of extra luggage and the added stress of standing around at baggage claim. We made it through customs easily and avoided the long lines because of this.
I realized that it’s OK to wear the same things over and over again. No one cares what you are wearing. They’re too busy having a good time to even notice.
Having a big family means lots and lots of dirty laundry. I am so thankful that our kids agreed to minimal packing. They each packed three t-shirts and one extra pair of shorts/jeans. It made washing and folding so easy.
Packing lightly means that everyone (including the little ones) can be responsible for their own things. Our little ones (6 and 8 years old) did a very good job of repacking when it was time to leave one city to go to the next. They were able to carry their tiny backpacks the whole trip without being tired. We each packed for ourselves and I didn’t have to pack anything extra in my bag or carry theirs.
Things I used to pack which I now realize I don’t need:
Hair straightener and product — I simply tie my hair in a bun which is perfect when it’s so hot.
Lotions shampoo conditioner toothpaste — just buy some when you get to your destination. They don’t have to be the brand you’re used to.
Extra pairs of shoes — find a pair that is comfortable and can be used for everything.
Fancy clothes/shoes — no need to pack these. You can buy a nice dress and pair of shoes if you decide that you’d like to go somewhere fancy otherwise there is no need.
Baby wipes or hand sanitizer — grab an extra napkin when you eat out and shove it in your pocket for later.

Tea Rituals for Focus, Health & Slowness

Post written by Leo Babauta.

As I write these words, I sit with a bowl of matcha, the Japanese powdered green tea used in traditional ceremonies, and enjoy the quiet morning hours.
Tea is a form of meditation for me, a way of being present and practicing paying attention. It is a way of slowness, of savoring life.
And it is a way of focus for me. I find that if I’m having trouble concentrating on one thing, pausing to brew some tea is a great way to regain that focus. I’ve gotten some of my best writing done with the aid of a cup or bowl of tea.
I’m no tea expert, so this guide won’t be a guide to how to brew the perfect tea or how to choose great teas. In comparison to actual tea experts, I will have many novice errors. I am fine with that, as my purpose here is simply to share some rituals I use for focus, for slowness, and for health.
All three of these rituals help with focus, slowness and health. I’m giving them separate names only to help show how I use them, but really they can be used interchangeably.
The Focus Ritual

When I need to get my most important work done, I will often take a few minutes to brew some tea. This is a small ritual that signals that it is time to stop with all the distractions (and yes, I have many of those), and clear away everything but what I want to focus on.
I heat up some water in a kettle. I’ve used a metal kettle and an electric one. The electric one gets the job done just as well, though obviously is less traditional. Filtered water is best, but the water in my house tastes so pure I often won’t bother.
I scoop some matcha with a bamboo ladle into a tea bowl. I use two scoops of matcha, as much as the bamboo ladle can carry. I use a rustic looking bowl because I enjoy the rough texture in my hands as I drink.
I fill the bowl halfway with water, and use a bamboo whisk, inexpertly. I rapidly whisk the tea and water until there’s a light green foam at the top.
I rinse the ladle and the whisk, and put them away. I savor the smell of the tea, the lovely color and brothy look of it.
I clear away everything on my computer and desk but what I need to write, and my bowl of tea. So the browser gets closed, all apps but my writing app, all other devices shut down.
I take a sip of the green tea, and enjoy its thickness, its slight bitterness (people often offset this with delicious Japanese sweets or crackers), it sweetish aftertaste and fine grit left on my tongue.
I sit, I breathe, I write. Then sip, and repeat.
The Slowness Ritual

Modern life has a tendency of becoming rushed, of moving from one appointment to the next, one email to the next, until our days are a blur. I find tea to be perfect for helping me to slow down, to return to the natural rhythm of life.
So in the afternoon, when things become rushed, I pause. I put some loose, whole-leaf tea (a sencha or an oolong) into a small teapot as the water heats up. I take a moment to enjoy the sight of the consistency of the leaves, hand-picked by farmers from small farms in Japan or Taiwan, and breathe on the leaves to evoke their fragrance.
I pour just a teacupfull of water into the pot, and pay attention to my breath as the tea steeps for about 30 seconds (I like the tea lighter, not bitter). This breathwatching is a short meditation, like the rest of the ritual.
I pour the slightly steeped tea into a small cup, about half the size of my fist. I savor the color, texture, smell, and try to see what aromas I can detect (I’m not very good at this).
Then I sip. The first sip is a revelation, as the rushed world fades away and the delicate tea hits my tongue, washing it in its warmth and with flavors that began their journey in the earth, thousands of miles away in a country that has been doing this for a millenium or two.
The tea is not overpowering, but subtle. It is mostly water, with only a slight essence of the leaves infused into the liquid, so timid that I have to really pay attention to notice it at all.
The moment is entirely floating in this whisper of a broth, slowed by the hesitation of my attention as it stops its monkeying around and starts to enjoy the stillness.
The Health Ritual

My life is ruled by four liquids: water, coffee, wine and tea. All have their health benefits, but arguably tea rises slightly above the rest.
I drink water throughout the day and night, and it is the lifestuff that runs through me. Coffee is a shared experience with my wife Eva, and has always signaled the start of a good day (every day). Wine is our unwinding ritual, and means that the day has been good.
Tea is a signal for slowness and focus that I use in the middle of the day. It’s also a way for me to satisfy little hunger cravings that used to trigger unhealthy snacking. I use tea to make my mouth happy, so it doesn’t look for sweets, salty snacks, or grease.
So between lunch and dinner, I often have tea. It might be a bowl of matcha, or a pot of loose-leaf tea brewed repeatedly as I work or relax. It’s a healthy snack that makes my day better.

The 7-Step Write a Book Fast Program

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I’m often asked about writing (something I’ve done professionally for 22 years), and one of the most common things people want help with is writing a book.
I’ve written a number of books, including 110,000 words of a novel in a month (in addition to blogging regularly), and numerous non-fiction books. I could share a lot of tips for writing a book, but my favorite secret is how I can write a book in just three days.
I’ve written several books this way, and really, it’s the same process I used to write 110,000 words in a month. If you want to take several years to write a book, that’s fine, but you’ll want to skip this post. If you want to finally get that book done, here’s how to do it.
And trust me, it works.
Create a Time Limit. I like to narrow the topic of my book down to something very specific, and keep it short and simple. If you do this, set a short time limit — a couple of times I set a three-day time limit for myself. I write quickly, so you might want a limit a bit longer, like 5 or 7 days, or two weeks if the book is longer or you are a slower writer. For a novel, 30 days is a good limit.
Make a Public Challenge. This is really key. Tell people about your time limit, and when you’ll be doing it. For example, if you set yourself a limit of 5 days, tell them when the 5 days will be, and what your challenge is during those 5 days. Tell them that you’ll report to them each day during the challenge. You might make the challenge public on Facebook, Twitter, email, a blog, Google+ or a forum, for example. The challenge will motivate you to stay focused and get the writing done.
Get Your Pre-Writing Done Beforehand. Before the challenge starts, do the research and make the notes you need. I will often outline my non-fiction book and save any information I need to my hard drive, so I don’t need Internet access during writing. For novel writing, I’ll make character sketches, plot notes, think through different themes, etc. Going on runs or taking long walks helps me to think through my writing before I write.
Find a Distraction-Free Zone. I like getting away from my home and finding a tea house or library without Internet. I will often use headphones to keep from being distracted by people around me. I’ll close my browser and all programs but my writing tool. I’ll get other things done before the writing session starts.
Get Some Inspiration. I like to read other writers as inspiration, and read about the writing habits of other writers. Sometimes music serves as good inspiration, or inspirational quotes from writers I admire.
Work in Bursts. When I’m ready to write, I go to my distraction-free zone, play some music, and set a timer. I like to write in 15- or 30-minute bursts, take a 5-10 minute break, then repeat. During my break, I will walk around, do some exercise, stretch. Again, walking helps me to think through my writing.
Report Your Success. Every day, stick to your commitment to report your success — or failure, as the case may be. Don’t let embarrassment stop you from keeping yourself accountable. This accountability will help you stick to it, and the reporting of success is like a celebration of your accomplishment that will motivate you to keep going as well.
That’s it. It’s a simple formula but it works well for me, for any kind of writing. In fact, it can work for any kind of creativity and any kind of work at all.
Happy writing, my friends.

16 Essential Tips for Traveling with a Family

‘Not all those who wander are lost.’ ~J.R.R. Tolkien
Post written by Leo Babauta.

Traveling with a family is a completely different beast than traveling solo or as a couple — I’ve done both numerous times, and the two experiences don’t even seem related.
Eva and I just got back from a 3-week trip through southern Europe with five of our kids. It was a wild adventure, going through six foreign cities on foot and by train, speaking broken bits of three foreign languages, exploring cities and coastlines all day long, soaking in sun and history and wine.
We loved it. We exhausted the kids, but came back wiser, tanner, and better off for having seen more of the world and its peoples.
This post isn’t meant to give an account of our trip, but to share some of what I’ve learned about traveling with a family, in hopes that it will help other families who travel.
Here are some random things I’ve learned:
1. Pack light as hell. If you’re traveling in multiple cities, that means you’re dragging everything you pack around for miles. We each carried a tiny backpack (mine was 16 liters) with just a change of clothes, a book and a few toiletries. My packing list: a t-shirt, shorts, 2 pairs of quick-dry boxers, 2 pairs of socks, a book, deodorant, razor, toothbrush, 11″ Macbook Air. That all takes up very little space and weighs a tiny amount. In addition I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, underwear, socks and tennis shoes. There was a big contrast between us, with our small backpacks, and others who had roller luggage, big backpacks, suitcases and other heavy things they were lugging around everywhere.
2. Stay in central apartments. We avoid hotels, as we’d have to rent several rooms for our large family. It’s cheaper to rent an apartment, which also comes with a kitchen and often a washer/dryer and a living room. It’s much more comfortable. We will rent an apartment in each city we visit, and try to find ones that are central, so we can walk to the best areas from our home base, and come back for naps if necessary.
3. Walk everywhere (with some mass transit). The best way to explore a place is by foot, not car or tour bus. You cover less ground on foot, but you only really see a place when you walk it. Bikes would be next best, but not manageable for a large family. We have good walking shoes and are in good walking shape from walking around in our home city. It’s so much fun to walk through winding medieval streets, stop and drink from ancient fountains, grab a croissant or gelato whenever you like, see locals walking around, stop in a little shop if it catches your fancy, see nature up close. And it’s a good workout. We learn to use the local mass transit system a bit, when we’re in a city, so we can easily get to further areas and walk around there.
4. Get lost. You don’t really learn a place until you get lost in it. I always get a map of where we are, and try to orient myself, but I also like to put the map away for a bit and get a bit lost, so I can find my way through exploring and wrong turns. You also discover the most unexpected things when you allow yourself to get lost. Wander, explore, discover, be surprised.
5. Gelato will keep kids happy. Kids get tired walking, and bored of historical sites and museums. But if you buy them a gelato every afternoon, they perk up, and smiles suddenly appear as if from nowhere. After sampling a bunch of different gelato flavors the first few days in Rome, I discovered I always regretted not getting chocolate gelato. So I came up with a rule for myself: Always get chocolate gelato. I never regretted it for the rest of the trip.
6. Use your trip as a language course. Knowing we were going to Italy, France and Spain, we learned a bit of the languages before we left. The kids had fun learning to say hello, thank you, and where’s the bathroom, among other phrases. We never got fluent, but I think we all learned a bit about cultures and languages, and it was a great start. There’s no better way to practice a language than visiting the country.
7. Ask locals for recommendations. Guide books and the Internet are great, but the best recommendations come from people who really live there. Before we left, I asked for recommendations from locals (on Google+) and made a list. While we were in each city, I would ask locals we met for recommendations as well, and came up with some delightful discoveries.
8. Avoid tourist traps. We tried to avoid the most touristy places, though of course you can’t avoid seeing the historical sights like the Colosseum in Rome or the Duomo in Florence. But if you do go to highly touristed places, avoid the shops and restaurants that surround them. They are expensive, bad quality, and aimed at the tastes of tourists instead of locals. Walk 5-10 minutes to find something better.
9. Have something to keep kids busy on trains. I don’t mind train rides at all, but the kids get bored. So they each have some kind of device, like an iPod touch or game device, to play games, listen to music and watch movies. Not my favorite thing in the world for them to do, but so much better than complaints of being bored for several hours.
10. Naps are good. We tend to leave each morning for exploring, and then come back after a late lunch for a nap. The kids get tired walking around in the sun, and so do we. A nap of an hour (or three if you’re jetlagged) is a good thing, and we usually would head out when the day was cooling down for some evening sightseeing and dinner.
11. Buy groceries. We tend to buy cereal and yogurt and fruit for breakfast, along with coffee and maybe some things for dinner or snacks. This allows us to save money, eat something a bit healthier than pastries and pizza at least one or two meals of the day, and relax at home in the mornings and during our afternoon break. It’s one of the good things about having an apartment.
12. One or two days isn’t enough to see a place. I found 4-5 days a better number. In one or two days, you’re rushing through the major sites and don’t get to relax, or if you go at a slower pace you don’t get enough of a sample of a city to really know it. Of course, if you don’t have kids, you could spend a week or three in a good destination, but with kids I’d recommend a medium timeframe like 4-5 days.
13. Spice up the history lessons. Traveling makes history come alive. I will usually do a little research and then tell the kids stories about the sites we’re visiting. Still, they get bored with that sometimes, so you have to spice up the history with tales of wars, romances, pirates and tragic deaths. I’m not saying you should make stuff up (though I won’t tell if you do), but look for that stuff in the histories and highlight it.
14. Have relaxation days. While exploring cities by foot is great, sometimes you need a longer break than an afternoon nap. So we’d have days where we lounged around on the beach or parks most of the day instead of sightseeing, and it was a great way to recharge the batteries.
15. Wine makes things more relaxed. Eva and I would often have wine with lunch, and definitely with dinner. It made us more relaxed as we had to manage herding five kids around busy streets that we didn’t know, using languages we couldn’t speak. We smiled more, breathed easier. Also, red wine is like health food.
16. It’s a grand adventure. Things will go wrong. You’ll not only get lost, you’ll lose things, miss trains, find the place you’re going to closed. You can make the best of plans, but the truth is, you don’t control things. Life has its own plans. The key is to smile, accept the way things are, and see it all as part of your great adventure. And this is the philosophy you should convey to the kids, even before you travel, to make their experience all the more enjoyable and enlightening.
‘Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.’ ~Kurt Vonnegut

Limit Screen Time, Limit Sitting

Post written by Leo Babauta.

One of the hazards of our modern lifestyle is our tendency to become more and more addicted to staring at screens, and more and more sedentary.
We look at laptops and desktop computers, iPhones and Androids and iPads and iPods, TVs and movie screens, play video games, watch videos, surf the web, socialize online, work online. And we’re sitting the whole time.
I’m a victim of this as much as anyone else. My family and I are drifting toward this lifestyle, and while I’m no Luddite, I do believe that we should live less as victims and more consciously.
Too much screen time means less active time, less personal socializing, less focus on the present, less time for cooking healthy food, less time reading novels, painting, making music, making time for the ones you love. And too much sitting means fewer years on your life.
So what’s a better way?
Limits.
Limit how much screen time you have each day. Limit your sitting to short periods with breaks in between.
I realize that many people have jobs that require them to have a minimum amount of computer time, and probably mostly sitting. So I don’t recommend a certain number, only that you figure out a limit and work with that.
What I’ve Been Doing

Though I’ve set limits for myself in the past, I’ll admit that they’ve eroded in recent months, so that my screen time has grown over time. And not just for me — for my wife and kids. So recently Eva and I set limits for ourselves, and we’ve been working with them.
We find them to be great. I find daily limits to be a better balance than going on week-long or month-long digital sabbaticals, which aren’t realistic for many people.
Here’s an example:
We set a limit of either 4 or 5 hours of total screen time a day. (We haven’t figured out what’s best yet, still experimenting.)
That total is broken into 30-minute chunks. So if it’s 5 hours total, that’s 10 chunks of 30 minutes.
At the start of a 30-minute chunk, I set a computer timer and put a tally mark on a text document, so I know how many chunks I’ve used today. When the bell rings, I close my laptop.
After the 30-minute chunk, I take a break of at least 30 minutes. I try to get up and move, stretch, play with the kids, get outside. I also often read a novel. The moving is good for my body, and helps me to think.
If I have things I want to look up online, or write online, I’ll just make a note of it and do it when I start my next 30-minute chunk.
This isn’t the only way to do it — you’ll have to find the limit that works for you, and the chunk size that works for you. But the idea is to set limits, and to break the total up into pieces so you’ll take breaks and do other things.
Benefits of the Limits

We’ve loved it: we’re reading more books, spending more personal time with each other and the kids, getting more chores done, exercising more, playing outside more.
It also means that because we have a limit, we have to figure out the best way to use that time. We have to make choices — what’s worthy of our limited time, and what isn’t? This means more conscious use of our time.
We haven’t instituted the limits with the kids yet, though we have been talking to them about it and getting them thinking about what would work best for them. And we do tell them to take breaks from devices throughout the day, so they’ll do other things.
For the kids, this has meant they have more unstructured, imaginative play, more reading, more art and music, more activity. Kids get addicted to screens just as much as adults do, and it’s not a healthy thing for them. We’re trying to teach them ways to live a healthy lifestyle, which is a lesson with lifelong benefits.
We’ve found this lifestyle to be healthier, better for relationships, better for our peace of mind. And to me, that means it’s something worth keeping.

Simplify.

‘In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.’ ~Henry David Thoreau
Post written by Leo Babauta.

The tendency of life in our society is to become more complicated: Internet, television, shopping, work, family commitments, possessions, eating, debt … these things pile on top of each other endlessly.
This is a rather bad formula, as our days have a limited capacity, and so do we as humans. We can only do so much, only handle so many tasks and possessions and social commitments, and filling ourselves to those limits means we stress our breaking points.
It takes a bit of conscious effort to simplify, but it’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever learned to do.
Simplify everything. That might sound hard, but with practice it’s actually fairly easy, and leads to a quiet, content, lovely life full of space, with only the things in it that matter to me: my family, my writing, with some reading and workouts thrown in.
So how do you simplify? As simply as possible.
Here are a few ways:
Block off some disconnected time. The Internet is amazing, but always being connected means you’re always pulled in a thousand directions at once. It’s hard to focus, hard to connect with others, hard to get out into nature and be active. So schedule some time every day for disconnection: maybe a block in the morning where you get your best work done, and a block in the afternoon when you get out and active, or connect with friends or family.
Start eliminating commitments. List your commitments, and pick one to eliminate today. It’s a simple matter of making a call or sending an email explaining that you can’t do the commitment. Trust me, they’ll find a way to live without you. You’ll start to free up time for what’s more important to you.
Start purging possessions. Every day, find 5 things to donate or give to friends. Or clear an entire shelf or countertop, leaving only the things you actually use, getting rid of the rest. Slowly your possessions will be simplified to just the essentials.
Ban shopping for 30 days. You can do this. Don’t buy anything except the essentials (food, toiletries, basic supplies). If you think you really need it, put it on a list to be evaluated after the 30 days.
Wash your bowl. When you’re done eating, mindfully wash your bowl. When you’re done with anything, get in the habit of pausing before moving onto the next thing, and cleaning up after yourself. Put your food away. Put your clothes where they belong. Put your keys in one spot. Clean the sink before you leave it. This simple habit will keep you mindful while saving you lots of cleanup later.
Schedule time for what’s important. What’s most important to you? Your spouse or kids? Creating? Reading novels? Cooking, gardening, crafts, carpentry? Make the time for it.
Get outdoors once a day. Too often we are stuck at a desk or on the couch. Get outside, take a walk, enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. Go for a hike or a run with a friend. Play some sports. Run around and play tag with your kids. These simple activities will change your life.
Eat some plants. Learn some simple recipes that incorporate super healthy foods you might not be eating: kale, spinach, broccoli, quinoa, berries, flaxseeds, lentils, avocados, black beans, squash, raw almonds and walnuts, garlic, turmeric, cayenne, cinnamon. These simple plants will make you strong like oxen.
Drink tea. Green tea brewed from relatively fresh whole tea leaves is calming, healthy, and wonderful. A daily tea ritual keeps you grounded and mindful.

Why Killing Time Isn’t a Sin

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I recently read a travel tip from someone who reminds himself that “killing time is a sin”, and so makes the most use of every bit of downtime, even on an airplane: “read a good book, learn a new language with Rosetta Stone, write to my friends around the world who haven’t heard from me in too long”.
I have no objections to reading books, learning languages, or writing to friends. It’s the idea that downtime must be put to efficient use that I disagree with. While I used to agree with it completely, these days I take a completely different approach.
Life is for living, not productivity.
Make the Most of Every Minute

There is a tendency among productive people to try to make the best use of every single minute, from the minute they awake. I know because not too long ago I was one of these folks.
Got time on the train or plane? If you’re not doing work, maybe you can be enriching yourself by learning something.
Got time before a meeting starts? Organize your to-do list, send off some emails, write some notes on a project you’re working on.
Driving? Why not make some phone calls or tell Siri to add a bunch of stuff to your calendar? Why not listen to a self-help audiobook?
Watching TV with the family? You can also be answering emails, doing situps, stretching.
Having lunch with a friend? Maybe you can talk business to make it a productive meeting.
This is the mindset that we’re supposed to have. Every minute counts, because time’s a-wasting. The clock is ticking. The sands of the hourglass are spilling.
I used to feel this way, but now I see things a bit differently.
Is This What Life Is To Be?

It might seem smart and productive to not let a single minute go to waste (they’re precious, after all), but let’s take a step back to look at the big picture.
Is this what our lives are to be? A non-stop stream of productive tasks? A life-long work day? A computer program optimized for productivity and efficiency? A cog in a machine?
What about joy? What about the sensory pleasure of lying in the grass with the sun shining on our closed eyes? What about the beauty of a nap while on the train? How about reading a novel for the sheer exhilaration of it, not to better yourself? What about spending time with someone for the love of being with someone, of making a genuine human connection that is unencumbered by productive purpose, unburdened by goals.
What about freedom? Freedom from being tied to a job, from having to improve yourself every single minute, from the dreariness of neverending work?
An Alternative

Killing time isn’t a sin — it’s a misnomer. We’ve framed the question entirely wrong. It’s not a matter of “killing” time, but of enjoying it.
If we ask ourselves instead, “How can I best enjoy this moment?”, then the entire proposition is reframed.
Now we might spend this moment working if that work brings us joy. But we might also spend it relaxing, doing nothing, feeling the breeze on the nape of our neck, losing ourselves in conversation with a cherished friend, snuggling under the covers with a lover.
This is life. A life of joy, of wonderfulness.

The Wisdom of Allowing Things to Happen

The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.
~The Daodejing
Post written by Leo Babauta.

This has been what I’ve been learning over the past couple of years. Allowing things to happen.
It goes counter to our usual instincts in Western society — we are doers, creators of our destiny, we make things happen … we don’t wait for it to happen! That’s what I was taught from an early age, in school and by every motivational sports movie I ever watched. So allowing things to happen is not my normal way.
I have never been one to be passive, to let things happen instead of making them happen, to let go of control of things.
But here’s what I’ve been learning:
This control we think we have over our lives and our destinies … it’s an illusion. As the guy who had his life turned upside down by a heart attack, the woman who lost her father to death and had to drop everything, the family who lost their home to a hurricane, the entrepreneur that was doing well until the economy collapsed and no one was spending, the hard-working employee who was laid off when the economy tanked, the cyclist who was hit by a car, the car that skid because someone ran onto the road who had been obscured, the mom whose son has autism despite her doing everything right during pregnancy … it happens every day, where we think we’re in control but we’re really not. Do we control all the people around us who affect our lives so intimately? Do we control the overwhelming power of nature? There’s so much out of our control that what we think is control is really an illusion.
To control your cow, give it a bigger pasture. This is a great quote from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi, talking about controlling your mind. I see the cow and her pasture as a form of allowing things to happen — instead of tightly controlling something, you’re opening up, giving it more room, a bigger pasture. The cow will be happier, will roam around, will do as she pleases, and yet your needs will also be met. The same is true of anything else — stepping back and allowing things to happen means things will take care of themselves, and your needs will also be met. And you’ve done no work.
You have less stress, less to worry about. Imagine allowing things to happen naturally, and things work out, and all you did was smile and watch. You don’t have to worry about shaping things, about controlling something that doesn’t want to be controlled. You don’t have to push, and fix leaks, and put out fires. You just let things work on their own. They happen.
Things will surprise you. Let’s say you’re allowing something to happen. You might want it to go a certain way, to a certain outcome. That’s your goal. But what if you let go of this idea? What if you say, “I don’t know what will happen.” (Btw, you really don’t.) What if you say, “Let’s see what happens.” Then things will happen, but not the way you planned. The outcome might be completely different than what you’d hoped for. But it can still be great, just different. It might even be wonderful, and surprising. Surprises are good, if we accept that things always change and that change is good.
You learn how things work. Instead of trying to make things work the way you want them to work, just watch them work. You’ll learn much more about human nature, about the nature of the world, as you see things work without you controlling it. It might change you.
That’s all very good, Leo, you’re thinking. But that won’t put the food on my table.
Maybe you’re right. And so, don’t let me stop you from what you need to do. Carry on. I’ll just sit back and watch.

The Zen of the Barbell

Post written by Leo Babauta.

There was a time when I shunned lifting weights, because I felt they were unnecessary and for guys looking to get buff. I was also a bit fearful of them, because I didn’t know much about them.
Today things are a bit different. I still think you can get a great workout without going to a gym, but I also love lifting barbells loaded with weights. There is something satisfying about putting your entire body into lifting something heavy, an activity so intense that it requires all of your attention.
There is Zen in the iron of the barbell, in the heft of the weights, and every session of lifting barbells is like zazen for me.
Consider my workout the other day:
I ran almost a mile, hard, focusing on my breath and the light touch of my feet on the ground as I sped along the concrete.
Then I lifted the weighted barbell from the ground — a deadlift — progressively adding weight from light to oh my goodness that’s heavy. Every part of the lift required my attention, or I would either not lift the weight or injure myself: my hands gripping the iron, the alignment of my spine, the relation of my hips to the rest of my body, the force of pushing through my heels against the ground.
Finally I ran back home, hard, sprinting up the final hill with complete focus, finishing winded, panting, wiped out.
A few sets of heavy deadlifts between two hard short runs: a total body workout that stimulates every muscle, strengthens my bones, focuses my brain. That’s a pretty good use of half an hour or so.
In other workouts, I will do heavy squats, the bench press, bent-over barbell rows, power cleans, push presses. I’ll add in some weighted chin-ups and dips. These all work out my entire body, exhausting me in a short time. And as I do them, my mind is on almost nothing but my body, the barbell, and my breath.
I don’t write this to suggest that everyone should lift barbells (though I think it’s great, and more people should try them — women and those of us who are aging come to mind). I write this because the focus I learn from the practice of lifting the barbell is something so useful in daily life.
It is a practice, learning to be mindful of what you’re doing right now, and not always thinking about what you have to do later. It’s a practice that you get better at with repetition, as with anything. Does my mind never wander — do I have complete focus all the time? Of course not. I have the same monkey mind that anyone has, but the practice is learning to be aware of that wandering, learning to return your attention to what you’re doing right now.
My mind starts to wander from the weights to the work I need to do later. I start thinking of all the things I need to do before my trip, or something I need to do with one of my kids, or how sweet pretty and loving my wife Eva is, and I miss her. But if I let myself stay in this future-thinking, the barbell will hurt me. I will round my back and pull a muscle (as I’ve done a few times before), or drop the weights on my chest or feet. This is a danger that won’t allow me to be elsewhere, and so I come back from the future. I am here, right now, with a weight in my hands that must be pushed, or pulled.
The returning, and the staying with what I’m doing right now, is the practice. The awareness. I am not good at it, admittedly, but I have gotten better by doing it over and over.
This practice helps with anything I do. If I’m writing, my mind normally gets pulled in every direction, but if I’m to write something worthy of your attention, I have to return to the idea and the writing. I have to be aware of the urges to check email or Twitter, or the wandering to other things that might (or might not) happen later.
When I am with one of my children, I often am elsewhere, mentally. The practice helps me to return to them, to be with them only, and the moment becomes instantly better.
It makes the moments I have with my wife, on one of our dates, so much better. Our connection is more complete, more genuine.
It means that when I take a walk, it is an experience of walking and nature, and not a planning session. It means that a shower is a moment of cleansing, purifying, relaxing. It means a meal is an experience of savoring textures, flavors, smells.
Tea becomes a meditation ritual as well. So does a glass of red wine in the evening.
The barbell sits there, inert, not wanting anything, not expecting anything of me. It becomes a simple tool, one that must only be lifted up, against the forces created by a massive Earth, and put back down. A simple tool that is practice for a way of living — a bell of mindfulness.