R.E.A.L. Way to Live a Simple Life (First of a three-part series in Simple Life)

A simple life does not mean to live life with the bare minimum. Instead, it is about living life fully doing things that are important to you and do away with those which do not impact your life positively. This is the R.E.A.L. way to live a simple life. Here is the 4-step process of living a simple but meaningfully life:


Record: Record your daily activities during a normal week. Find out how you get things done in the office, what you do in the evening and at the weekends how you spend your own time. It is like a time log. From the record, you will see clearly the things that you do to fill up the 24 hours in a day for the whole week.

Eliminate: Armed with the activity list, the next task is to get rid of activities that are non-essential and unimportant. Can you stop watching TV? Can you stop surfing the Net aimlessly? Can you stop sending text messages and chat endlessly? In the office, your “eliminate” by delegating certain tasks to other staff

Automate: Now that you have done away with those small staff. Let us deal with those essential items but non-productive things such as making routine payments. The best thing you can do is to arrange with your credit card company to settle your insurance premiums, electricity, telephone and cable TV bills monthly. At the end of every month, you only need to issue one cheque to the credit card company. The wonderful thing about this method is that you are not only avoiding the hassle of paying so many bills at different places but you earn reward points as well. You accumulate the points and exchange for useful items. At work, you automate by using software instead of doing things manually for all your routine and repetitive work

Live: After eliminating the small staff and automating those essential items, now you can live life your way. You will have the time to do things that mean a lot to you in life. Follow your dreams and passion. Spend quality time with your family. Connect with those people you care about. Spend time reading and learning which you have neglected in the past. Do exercise to shape up your body. Slow down to marvel the wonders of nature. In the office, you have more time to use your creative faculty to look for better ways of getting things done more efficiently but no less thoroughly. You follow the rule of 80/20 to concentrate on 20% of your work to produce 80% of the results.


Can you think of a better way to live a truly simple life? Please share it with us.