Are you a "human doing"-- running from place to place, over-scheduled, over-committed, with your priorities lost in the trivia of life? If so, this book is for you. With it, you can adopt tactics to reduce the clutter of your life, the complications of your daily routine, and your living costs in terms of time, energy, and money. You'll free up time and energy to devote to your dreams and goals.

This is the ebook edition of the popular hypertext work Live Simple at www.december.com. This ebook edition is formatted for easier reading or for printing on paper. It contains all the chapter content, tactics, case studies, and notes from the online hypertext edition in one single file in an easier-to-use (and print) PDF format.

Throughout this book, you'll find specific things to do (called "tactics") to help you manage possessions, choose and arrange where to live, streamline daily routines, identify and support dreams, and use resources effectively. These tactics help you reduce clutter, gain a strong focus on personal goals, and save time, money, and energy.

Contents

Chapter 1: You Can Simplify Your Life

Are you facing the need or desire to simplify your life? You might be newly laid off, retired, or a student, homemaker, or entrepreneur who has to make do with less. This first chapter introduces you to the idea of simplicity. We will look at case studies of complex lives, and I will describe how the people in these case studies could simplify their lives. I'll then describe in more detail this book's purpose (and its biases) and how you can use this book to simplify your own life.

Chapter 2: Rule Your Stuff

When it really comes down to it, you need very little stuff. This chapter is all about finding out what that little is, organizing it, and taking care of it. Being able to let go of stuff is essential to simplifying your life. Having a lot of stuff can trap you into a home, a city, or even a relationship that you do not want. Stuff can drag you down. By having less stuff, the more mobile, flexible, and agile you will be to pursue your dreams.

Chapter 3: Optimize Your Place

Being in the right place is crucial to simplifying your life. In the right place, you will have the resources, motivation, and energy to pursue your dreams. In the wrong place, commuting times, inefficiencies, and a lack of excitement and motivation will bog you down. This chapter is all about choosing your place so that it fits you. We will start with helping you choose your region, then narrow down the focus to a city, then your neighborhood, and finally your home.

Chapter 4: Hone Your Routine

Waking up, preparing for your day, going to work or school, working, recreation, social activities, shopping, and errands--these are what your life is made of. Are you able to accomplish your routine activities efficiently? Or do you feel like you are spending much of your time running around accomplishing little? In this chapter, we'll look at how you can establish habits that more efficiently engage your time, give you greater ability to be productive, and prepare you to spend more of your energy following your dreams. The clutter of tasks and errands need not rule your life. This chapter is about overthrowing unproductive daily and long-term habits.

Chapter 5: Live Your Dream

This is where the simplicity work gets exciting--without your dream, my suggestions for simplicity might be just empty directives. In all the work of this book, you are arranging your life and clearing out its clutter so that your dream can have room to live. This chapter gives you ideas for stating, supporting, and unleashing your dream. Knowing your dream and living it--this is the whole purpose behind simplifying your life.

Chapter 6: Tap into Resources

You are inevitably and intricately interdependent with others. This chapter is all meeting your needs by tapping into resources. Other people, the Internet, and your own records can help you efficiently get what you need when you need it.

John has given presentations about the Web and Internet to a variety of audiences worldwide and has taught courses in computer science, expository writing, computer-mediated communication, and creative writing. From 1985 to 1989, he developed software and graphical user interfaces to analyze aircraft requirements for military missions at Boeing's military division. His poetry has been published in many literary magazines including Mid-American Review, Sou'wester, Passages North, and others. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics from Michigan Technological University, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Wichita State University, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee, and an M.S. in Communication and Rhetoric from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.