The Power of Less: Healthy Habits Made Simple
by Vin Miller
Change is often difficult, and in regard to health, it can be overwhelming and discouraging to the point of giving up. However, by focusing on simplicity, it might be easier to start living a healthier life than you realize.
I recently read a book called The Power of Less, and although it’s about productivity, it’s principles are very much related to the discipline needed to implement and follow a healthy lifestyle. The author, Leo Babauta, is a minimalist by nature and is passionate about the topic of simple productivity. In contrast to the typical productivity philosophies that aim to help you cram even more work into your already busy day, the idea of simple productivity is to be more efficient, practical, and logical with your time so that you have more opportunity to simply be happy and experience the joy of living.
We all want happiness, and because our health is such an important part of this, we should all want excellent health as well. As such, I think simple productivity is an excellent concept that can help us live a healthier life without it taking too much of the time that we’d like to spend doing other things.
Set Limits
Many of us are frequently tempted to plan more work for a single day than what’s humanly possible. Despite this, we often do it anyway and it usually leads to nothing but frustration. By recognizing your limits and knowing how much you can comfortably handle or accomplish, you’ll be much more effective with the tasks that you choose to focus on, and the process will be much more satisfying.
There are so many important factors involved with a healthy lifestyle that it’s easy to be overzealous and try to incorporate them all at once. I’ve done it myself and I can assure you from personal experience that it’s an unnecessary source of stress which can be more of a hindrance to your health than the good habits that you’re trying to implement.
Choose the Essential
Once you’ve embraced the necessity of setting limits, it often leads to the uncertainty of what to eliminate. Your personal values, passions, and goals, which hopefully include excellent health, are what will allow you to make these choices. This is critical because if you don’t know what you value in life, you’ll likely find happiness to be elusive regardless of how well you manage your time. As Yogi Berra is known for saying, “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
If you don’t already have a very clear understanding of what you value in life, I suggest that you spend some time thinking about it. Even if you do have this understanding, it’s still a good idea to reflect on it every so often. Once you’re aware of your values, you’ll become much more effective at making wise choices that are more likely to promote satisfying accomplishments. Every aspect of your life can benefit from this including your job, relationships, hobbies, obligations, and especially your health. Furthermore, the satisfaction that often results from living in accordance with your values is a strong and positive emotion that can be just as beneficial to your health as more obvious factors such as diet, exercise, and sleep.
Focus on One New Habit at a Time
Even when you have a solid understanding of your values, life can be so busy that it’s easy to lose sight of them. This is especially the case with new habits that haven’t yet become a natural part of your daily routine, and if you lose focus of them for long enough, you may forget about them entirely. An easy way to avoid this is to focus on implementing just one new habit per month. By doing so, you’ll be much more focused on it, less likely to forget about it, and your chances of making it a permanent part of your life will increase dramatically.
If you’d like, you can even prepare a schedule of habits to implement over the next few months. Here are a few simple examples that could make a significant difference in your health and wellbeing.
- Eat only natural whole foods with the exception of an occasional treat.
- Establish healthy sleeping habits. Better sleep is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to improve your health and wellbeing.
- Dedicate some time each day to relaxing and reducing stress.
- Eat only organic produce, pasture raised meat, and uncontaminated fish. When possible, buy it from local farmers or other reputable sources.
- Spend at least 3 days per week engaging in a well balanced exercise routine including strength training, self massage, stretching, low intensity aerobics, and interval training.
- Drink more water each day and make sure that it’s filtered.
- Get an adequate amount of natural sun exposure on a regular basis, and if this isn’t possible, consider supplementing with Vitamin D.
Take it Slow
As someone who’s very focused on achieving, I often catch myself trying to accomplish more than I should. It’s important to have a balance between aggressively pursuing goals and taking time to simply relax and experience your life for what it already is. As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, simple productivity is not about finding more time to do more things, but rather to make time for what’s really important and not obsess about the rest.
Taking a slow and measured approach to change is not only an easier way to implement healthier habits, but it’s also a healthy habit in it’s own right. This is because it’s less stressful and more rewarding. Accept the fact that you’re not going to reinvent your health or your life overnight. In fact, it might take quite a while and the more prepared you are to accept this, the better off you’ll be. Finally, it’s also important to remember that most habits worth implementing are long term pursuits that should be embraced as a permanent part your lifestyle and approached with a good balance of ambition. Relax and enjoy the process!
The Power of Less
If you’d like to learn more about simple productivity, especially in regard to your professional life, I highly recommend that you check out The Power of Less and also ZenHabits.net which is Leo Babauta’s blog.
The Power of Less does discuss other aspects of life and even includes a chapter about health and fitness. Even though I disagree with a few things that are mentioned about saturated fat, soy, and endurance exercise, I think this chapter contains a lot of great information that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.
For more suggestions of healthy habits to consider implementing in conjunction with the principles of simple productivity, sign up for my free course, 7 Simple Steps to a Leaner, Happier, and Healthier You!
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What a great post, Vin. I’m a Leo Babauta fan and I love the way you’ve applied The Power of Less to food.
I’m taking notes. Your tips really simplify the struggle (at least for me it’s a struggle at times) to eat well.
Thanks, Beth! I’m glad you found it helpful! Leo provides many great principles in the book that I think can be applied to just about anything!
Go Leo!
Actually I think Yogi Berra is famous for being a baseball player and manager
Very funny, Mr Literal!
It is possible to be famous for more than one thing! Even though I know you’re joking, it’s a valid point and my literal side compelled me to change the wording.
That book is so awesome I have been giving it away.
I think focusing on one habit is a great technique to pick up from The Power of Less. The more I focus on single-tasking instead of multi-tasking the more productive I am.
Dave
The Minimalist Path
Hi Dave, thanks for your comment! I agree, the one habit per month is one of my favorite pieces of advice from the book. Although, depending on the habit, I think it’s possible to do more per month. I think the key is doing them sequentially so that they have your undivided attention until they become a natural habit.
Practical and handy tips, Vin! If I may add: Once your positive habits are in placed, it’s useful to introduce some variations to inject some freshness in them. I learned this the hard way.
Recently, I was growing sick of my own cooking. You see, I cook most of my meals and my style of cooking is rather bland and I used to like that. But lately, I grew so tired of my food that I almost given up on cooking altogether. Good thing, I realized my mistake and started to change things here and there. It took me slightly more time to cook now since I try not to do the same dish as the day before, but it beats any affordable takeaways.
This is a great point! I have very boring eating habits myself, but I’m too concerned about my health to ever let the monotony of cooking get in my way. However, I could certainly see how other people might. I think this point is equally relevant to exercise as well. It can be hard to get excited about exercise when you’ve been following the same routine for months.
On point. I’ve been focusing on healthier habits and this has motivated me even more.
Looking forward to checking out the rest of your site and learning some more.
Thank you.
Hi Oscar, thank you for your comment and your feedback! I’m happy to have inspired you with additional motivation and I hope you enjoy the rest of the site.
Thank you for the reminder to slow down. I’ve recently experienced that in trying to be healthy and balanced I often stress myself out even more by adding too many new, good habits to my life. And there’s no rush, as long as baby steps are taken every day!
Hi Kamna, you’re quite welcome! Taking things at a measured pace is a health tip in it’s own right that’s easy to forget. As I’ve mentioned in the article, I’ve overlooked it many times myself.
Wow, thanks for the book rec! I have found the same principles to be true in my own life. For example, I started homeschooling my daughter (4.5 years) who happens to be ready to do kindergarten work. I decided to keep it simple; a fun, hands-on, game-based math program and a low-stress, phonics program that involves about 20 min. each day for each. I decidied to let the rest of her education be “organic” in the stories we read, the food we cook, the nature we are a part of. It’s been so peaceful!
Also, I find that paleo cooking is way more simple than before. Veggies, meats, good raw dairy occiasionally. No grains to sprout, grind, soak, etc!!!
One thing that has also helped me is that I stopped feeling “guilty” for the things i didn’t accomplish in a day. I have been learning to prioritize and trust that tomorrow will provide oppportunities to complete the necessary tasks.
Now, for the sleep tip….yeah, well it’s 1:30 AM, what can I say? I could use some improvement there!
Thanks for the good stuff, Vin!
Hi Carrie, thanks for sharing your experience! I sounds like you have a great homeschooling plan in place.
I totally agree that following a traditional diet based on natural whole foods makes healthy eating much more simple. Not only in regards to cooking, but also understanding.
It sounds like getting to bed earlier might be a great candidate for a new habit to work on for this month!
I naturally disagree with what he says about nutrition and exercise (only those you pointed out)! It came from my intuition that resistance to nature is futile [laughs].
You truly got to suggest Leo to read your blog! though I feel calling your blog a blog is an understatement.
The problem with many people is that they are not aware of what they doing, because most are stuck in a routine.
They just have take a pause, shining light on what they are doing, that is called awareness. Your time (or other limited resources) is like RAM, which should be used effectively, not on unneccesary apps!
Quit unnecessary apps.
I have several ideas how blogs like yours and leo’s should have special features:
• Like calling past articles as archives is an understatement, because some articles are true classics.
• Recycling articles instead of writing new ones (improving them), so an article version history should exist, like in Wikipedia.
• Concept maps highlighting the sole purpose of the information blog, how articles or categories flow from the purpose and how articles relate to another. (this thing requires advanced web standards which I do not know). Explaining this requires a whole blog post!
• Highlighting important points in the text.
… and other big ideas.
Using minimalism for the sake of minimalism is being obsessed with it. You have be concerned about the audience/user to make it effective. When i visited his minimalist blog, I just did not like how it looked, too minimalist! So minimalism also has its limits, so does simplicity.
I feel i found a solution for obsession: if appropriate, be concerned about yourself or the audience/user: that should be the main ingredient for evetything you do.
I simply feel I can have the genius of Einstein if I use my intuition, so does everybody.
(that sentence came from my gut feeling or intuition). To bring out my full power, I only need to have a high self esteem, not ego, which is the complete opposite.
sincerely raw words from ægil!
Hi ægil, thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I like what you said about minimalism and think that some people get carried away with following a primal or paleo lifestyle in the same manner. For some people, it almost seems to become more of an identity than a means to fulfill a purpose.
I think your idea of concept maps is a great one. Tags and categories definitely isn’t enough and I’ve actually been thinking about ways to categorize the site better.