6 Best Ways To Simplify Your Life
I want to start by clearing up a misconception that I think trips up even experienced people: simplifying your life is not the same as removing stuff. Most of us already know how to declutter a desk or unsubscribe from a few newsletters. The problem runs deeper. Modern life isn’t cluttered by accident; it’s cluttered by design. We’re surrounded by systems that reward responsiveness, optionality, and constant engagement.
From my own work, I’ve noticed that complexity sneaks in not because we’re careless, but because we’re competent. Capable people accumulate tools, commitments, and inputs because they can handle them—until one day they can’t. Simplification, then, becomes a design challenge, not a discipline problem.
What changed my thinking was realizing this: complexity compounds quietly, but its costs show up loudly—in decision fatigue, shallow focus, and the sense that everything is urgent but nothing is important. That’s the lens I’m using for the rest of this article.
Cutting Down Mental Noise
Attention Is a System, Not a Trait
Let’s talk about inputs, because this is where simplification actually starts. We love to frame attention as a personal quality—“I just need to focus more”—but that’s misleading. Attention behaves more like a system with throughput limits. Once you exceed those limits, performance degrades, no matter how skilled you are.
I learned this the hard way while juggling multiple research feeds, Slack communities, and “must-read” industry updates. None of them were low-quality. That was the problem. High-quality noise is still noise. My thinking felt informed but oddly shallow. I could reference everything and synthesize nothing.
Why Filtering Isn’t Enough
Experts tend to respond by improving filters: better RSS rules, smarter algorithms, tighter Twitter lists. That helps, but only up to a point. Filtering still assumes that most incoming information is potentially useful. In reality, usefulness is contextual and time-bound.
A concrete example: I once followed every major voice in my field because I didn’t want to miss emerging ideas. What actually happened was convergence. Everyone reacted to the same signals, shared the same hot takes, and reinforced the same narratives. More inputs reduced variance, not ignorance. The moment I cut 70% of those sources, my thinking became sharper and more original.
Designing Input Rules That Run Without You
What worked better for me—and for others I’ve compared notes with—was switching from reactive filtering to proactive rules. Rules decide in advance what gets in, without asking for your attention each time.
For example, instead of “I’ll check industry news when I have time,” I now limit deep industry reading to one predefined window each week. Another rule: no real-time consumption of breaking news unless it directly affects a current project. That alone eliminated dozens of micro-decisions per day.
The key insight here is that rules simplify life by removing choice, not by improving choice quality. That’s uncomfortable for high-agency people, but it’s also liberating.
The Hidden Cost of Staying “In the Loop”
There’s also an identity layer we don’t talk about enough. Staying informed feels responsible. Disengaging feels risky. But most “being in the loop” is just social insurance. We want to feel prepared, relevant, and hard to surprise.
The irony is that constant low-level monitoring trains us to think short-term. When your inputs are fragmented, your outputs follow. I noticed my work becoming more reactive—faster responses, fewer deep ideas. Once I reduced inputs aggressively, my work cadence slowed down, but the quality jumped.
Simplifying inputs isn’t about knowing less; it’s about thinking better.
Less In, More Signal Out
Here’s the payoff most people underestimate: when you reduce cognitive noise, you don’t just gain focus—you gain sensitivity. Patterns become easier to spot. Weak signals stand out because they’re no longer buried under volume.
A friend of mine in product strategy described it perfectly: “Once I stopped consuming everything, I started noticing what actually mattered.” That’s been my experience too. Simplification at the input level creates compounding returns everywhere else—decision-making, creativity, even emotional regulation.
And that’s why I think input simplification is the most leveraged place to start. Everything downstream depends on it.
Building Systems That Reduce Decisions
If simplifying inputs is about protecting attention, simplifying systems is about protecting energy. This is where most experts nod along in theory and quietly resist in practice. We like optionality. We like having ten ways to do something because it feels powerful. The problem is that every option is a decision waiting to happen, and decisions are more expensive than we admit.
Over the years, I’ve become convinced that the most effective simplifications don’t feel clever at all. They feel boring. They replace judgment with structure. And once they’re in place, they almost disappear—which is exactly the point.
Below are six system-level simplifications that consistently punch above their weight.
Standardize What Repeats
If something happens more than twice, it deserves a default. This includes meals, workout routines, meeting formats, weekly planning, even how you start and end your day.
I used to vary my daily schedule because I thought flexibility improved creativity. What actually improved my output was doing the opposite: fixed start rituals, fixed deep-work blocks, fixed shutdown times. Creativity thrives inside constraints, not in endless freedom.
Standardization doesn’t mean rigidity. It means you only break the pattern intentionally, not accidentally.
Collapse Tools Ruthlessly
Experts love tools. I definitely do. But tool sprawl is one of the fastest ways to reintroduce complexity under the guise of optimization.
At one point, I had separate apps for notes, ideas, tasks, research, and long-term thinking. Each one was excellent. Together, they were a mess. I spent more time deciding where something belonged than actually using it.
The simplification move was painful but effective: one capture system, one task manager, one calendar. Everything else had to justify its existence. Fewer tools forced clearer thinking, because ambiguity had nowhere to hide.
Eliminate Low-Value Optionality
This one stings a bit. Optionality feels like upside. But most optionality just creates background stress.
Ask yourself this: how many open loops are you maintaining “just in case”? Side projects, half-formed collaborations, vague commitments that technically exist but never quite move forward.
I’ve learned to aggressively close doors that aren’t clearly leading somewhere. Not because they’re bad opportunities, but because open options demand mental rent. Simplification often means choosing fewer paths and walking them further.
Batch Aggressively
Context switching is the tax we keep pretending we don’t pay. We do. Every single time.
Batching similar actions—emails, meetings, errands, even thinking tasks—reduces cognitive friction dramatically. When I started batching communication into two daily windows, people worried I’d become less responsive. Instead, my responses became clearer, faster, and more useful.
The real benefit of batching isn’t time saved. It’s attention preserved.
Define “Enough” in Advance
One of the sneakiest sources of complexity is perfection creep. Without a clear definition of done, work expands to fill whatever attention you give it.
I now define “enough” before starting most projects. Enough research. Enough polish. Enough validation. This isn’t about lowering standards; it’s about preventing infinite refinement.
When “enough” is explicit, decisions become trivial. When it isn’t, everything stays negotiable—and exhausting.
Create Defaults You Can’t Easily Undo
The strongest systems are slightly annoying to override. Automatic savings, fixed schedules, pre-committed routines. These aren’t about discipline; they’re about friction in the right direction.
I once moved all optional notifications behind an extra login step. It was inconvenient. It was also transformative. Good defaults do the right thing even when you’re tired, distracted, or unmotivated.
That’s the real goal of system simplification: fewer moments where you have to be at your best.
Reducing Commitments Without Burning Bridges
If systems are the infrastructure of simplicity, commitments are the load they carry. And most of us are overloaded.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: complex lives are usually overcommitted lives. Not because we’re reckless, but because we say yes to reasonable things for good reasons. Over time, those reasons pile up and quietly crowd out everything else.
The Maintenance Cost Nobody Calculates
Every commitment has an ongoing maintenance cost—status updates, emotional labor, mental background processing. Even “inactive” commitments take up space because they haven’t been resolved.
I started noticing how many of my obligations existed mostly as guilt. Projects I should get back to. People I owed follow-ups. Ideas I promised myself I’d explore.
Once I started evaluating commitments based on maintenance cost instead of surface value, my priorities changed fast.
Identity-Based Commitments Are the Hardest to Drop
The toughest commitments to simplify aren’t logistical—they’re identity-based. The ones tied to who you think you are: the helpful one, the ambitious one, the person who always says yes.
I had to confront this when I realized that some collaborations only existed because I liked being seen as involved. Letting them go felt like shrinking my identity. What actually happened was the opposite. My identity got clearer because it was less diluted.
Use Asymmetry as a Filter
One framework that’s been incredibly useful is asymmetry. For any commitment, ask: what’s the downside if this goes poorly, and what’s the upside if it goes well?
Many commitments have capped upside and uncapped downside. Those are complexity traps. Others have limited downside and meaningful upside. Those are worth keeping.
This lens helped me exit several “reasonable” commitments that were quietly draining me without offering real leverage.
Time-Box Before You Commit Forever
Instead of saying yes indefinitely, I now default to time-boxed commitments. Three months. One quarter. One cycle.
This does two things. First, it lowers the psychological barrier to saying yes. Second, it builds in a natural reevaluation point. End dates simplify exits—for everyone involved.
Surprisingly, most people respect this more, not less. Clarity is kind.
Decide Exit Criteria Early
Here’s a move more experts should use: decide in advance what would make you stop.
If this project doesn’t hit X by Y, I’m out. If this collaboration starts requiring weekly syncs, it’s no longer viable. If this role expands beyond its original scope, I’ll reassess.
Exit criteria remove drama. They turn emotional decisions into mechanical ones.
Simplification Is Ongoing, Not Event-Based
The biggest mistake I see is treating simplification like a purge. A weekend declutter. A dramatic reset.
In reality, complexity grows continuously, so simplification has to be continuous too. I do quarterly commitment reviews now, the same way I review goals or finances. What’s still aligned? What’s quietly expanded? What’s overdue to end?
Simplicity isn’t minimalism. It’s maintenance.
Final Thoughts
If there’s one idea I hope sticks, it’s this: simplifying your life isn’t about having less—it’s about designing for ease over time. The most powerful simplifications are invisible once they’re in place. They remove decisions before you feel them, reduce load before it becomes stress, and create space for depth without constant effort.
For people who already operate at a high level, simplicity isn’t a retreat. It’s an upgrade.
