Day 17 on which I see the "Power of Less" light.

I believe I’ve mentioned that the first domino in the line that eventually ended in #100DaysToHealth was a book called The Power of Less, which I picked up in an airport back in late March.

I believe I’ve also mentioned that reading the book kind of pissed me off.

I literally slammed it down half a dozen times over the course of the 2 days it took to read it, exclaiming (he’d call it yelling, I suppose) to the Smartboy something like, “This guy’s crazy!! There’s NO WAY I could limit my objectives to one every 30 days!!! I can’t think of just FIVE things to focus on, let alone one!! My business would fall apart, my staff would quit, WHO CAN DO THIS?? NO ONE!!!!!!”

No, I’m not usually like this. I swear. Yes, I’m opinionated, but I’m not mercurial, I don’t generally get angry about a stranger’s opinion about setting goals.

It was unusual enough, in fact, that a few weeks later, I thought I’d better explore why I was having such a strong reaction to such a strange thing, and I decided to go about doing that by asking the question, “If there WERE one thing, what would it be?” It was that question which led, after what was in retrospect a surprisingly long period of picking up and discarding other options, to “Well, duh. My health.”, and that’s how I got here.

Once the decision was made to go all in on daily exercise, meditation, focus, and of course this journaling to keep me honest, I knew that my day-to-day life was going to become temporarily unbalanced. This stuff takes time. Working out, by the time I travel to the gym, do my thing, shower etc is a 90 minute commitment. Meditation and eye exercises are another 30. These blog posts generally take an hour to write. And because little or none of this was happening BEFORE I started, we’re talking about a 2 hours of my day that used to be available for, you know, getting stuff done, just *pouf*. Gone.

So, yeah, I’m behind. But then again, I’m always behind. 

There’s never been a moment that I can remember when I’ve felt like any of my various businesses or projects has been up to date, on time, running like it should. My life, from work to relationships to health, has been a race to keep the balls in the air for as long as I can remember. I run from one thing to another, putting out fires of my own creation, doing most things adequately but nothing extraordinarily, just trying to keep everything running at an acceptable level until that mythical day when I have the spare time to really get in and work on the core issues and systems and blah, blah, blah.

When I made the decision that I was working out every day no matter what, blogging every day no matter what, I knew that I was making commitments that would mean that more balls got dropped in other areas of my life, at least for the duration.

But you know what has, unexpectedly, has ALSO happened?

For the first time in forever, one thing is working really well.

When I look at the physical health side of my life, I see the things happening that I’ve always meant to get around to. I’m losing weight. I’m noticeably stronger. My skin, thanks to the liberal daily use of sunscreen, is softer. My energy level (following 2 weeks of needing daily recovery naps) seems to be getting better. It’s far from where I hope to end up, but I feel good about what I’m doing for my body—and that “feeling good” is, for once, unalloyed by the knowledge that what I’m doing is not enough, that I should be doing more, that I’m failing through lack of attention.

So now I get it. The Power of Less, at least for me, means the power in meeting ONE commitment fully. Of having ONE thing that I can look at and say, “Yes, I’m doing all I can, and it’s working”. It’s the incredibly freeing feeling of being able to say, “This thing that I’d normally tell myself I MUST do is going to have to go undone, because I’ve committed to doing this other thing, and there’s not time for both. Period.”

I’m certain that this revelation is transferable—that I could have “100 days of business” or “100 days of relationship” or whatever. What I don’t know is whether it’s EXPANDABLE. In other words, when my 100 days of health are over, and I have (I hope) new habits that carry me through my days health-wise, can I find the same focus on business and still keep up those new habits? Or is it one thing I a time?

I sure hope it’s the former. Going all in on one big goal, once I just relaxed and accepted the fact that it meant that the other things were going to get less attention, and once I realized that ‘more behind’ isn’t actually tragically worse than ‘behind’, and once I decided to stop worrying about what I wasn’t doing and focus instead on the daily triumphs of what I am doing, is weird. But it’s also great.