Important Announcement
Hello Revolutionaries! It’s time for an important troop briefing. This will be the last DO LESS Revolution post at Magpie Girl. Why you might ask? Because the Revolution is going underground briefly so it can re-emerge as an Ecourse on doing less and living more.

 Through comments and emails I’m finding that while this material is helpful, some of us need a hand to hold. So I’m working hard to offer a 6 week course with soulful, focused assignments; on-line group support and personal coaching. This will help you pare down your life, allow you to focus on the essential, and move you into a more concentrated, powerful form of living. I’m super excited to offer this course to you, and hope it will be available as an advanced preparation for the over-booked holidays. (A calmer Holiday Season… wouldn’t THAT be nice?) If I can’t get it prepped by then, we’ll do it in January as a New Year’s soulcare practice. So stay tuned for some personalized, focused support coming your way!

The One Goal Concept
But before we take our hiatus, let’s talk about the One Goal. Remember when we were choosing our Most Important Tasks (M.I.T.s)?  Well some of us were struggling to identify those M.I.T.s , even with the help of our Guiding Values. It’s a common problem. But Leo Babauta’s concept of One Goal can really help. Leo’s theory is that if you have just One Goal, say for the next year, and you break that down into sub goals, it will keep you focused and motivated. (For a more detailed left-brain take on this process see “Chapter 7: Simple Goals and Projects” in The Power of Less.)

My application of this theory has been to name One Goal for my vocational life – my “calling” as it were.  To me, this is not something I chose, but something that chose me-a powerful internally motivated pull towards work that has attracted me my entire life.  However, even though I’ve been moving in this direction for a long time, I could not name my One Goal until recently. Let’s look at my One Goal and how I use it. Then I’ll give you a handy-dandy assignment to help you uncover your own. Read the rest of this entry »

For more about *8Things, click here.

You know you have them. Those tricksy little things that suck away your time and cast your good intentions into the corner of the universe reserved for socks-that-get-lost-in-the-dyer.

I am a particularly good victim to these little items. And while I’m not sure what to do about them, I thought if I made a list, I’d at least recognize them when I see them. So here are my *8Things:  Enormous Time Suckers:

1. Hulu. I admit it. I’m a Hulu whore. You can’t even stream Hulu in Europe — unless you are such an addict you find a work-around. (Hello Hotspot my old friend…) When I ran out of episodes of my favorite shows, I started watching stuff I do not even like. (Private Practice Rachelle? Seriously?)

2. The Tryanny of “The Best.” I spend loads of time — and I’m talking hours of dithering– tyring to decide the best use of my time. New method? Step 1: Write down 3 things that have to get done today or somebody’s gonna be disappointed about something. Step 2: Start one.  Step Three: Repeat the mantra “Nothing is ever wasted.”

3. Facebook Applications. I use FB like it is my own personal office assistance.  It’s truly valuable to me. Until the elusive appeal of the ‘Pick 5′ application comes around. Or the siren call of the the books and music boxes. That way lies madness.

4. Organizing. Junk drawers, sock drawers, linen closets. I love them all. When the girls were toddlers I would set up the dollhouse everyday, just to have some order (and to avoid the need to order my own big house!)

5. Regret. Lots of energy spent on this…less so nowadays tho, thanks in part to this. (Phew.)

6. Worrying. My favorite things to worry about are my kids, especially the one who doesn’t live with us. Right now tho, I’m worrying less about him and more about Eden, who is not at all challenged at school and who is having trouble making Danish friends. School worries are huge for me.

7. Wondering.What would it be like to be emotionally balance? What is the 19yo up to? Can you make gluten free challah? My mind rarely quiets down.

8. Obsessing about Food. Okay, this is kind of a necessity right now, because I’m re-learning how to eat without gluten or sugar. But I do think my mind spends waaaay to much time on food, and my body spends too much time preparing it. (The children, they need to eat HOW often?) I have separate blogs to “help” with this obsession, the theory being if you give it a place to live it won’t knock on your door as much.

What is your *8Things: Time Suckers list? Put it in the comments below or grab a button and play along. And for a soulcare challenge, why not try to curb the enthusiasm of one or two of them?  Me, I’m eliminating the “email me when there’s something new in my Queue” option on Hulu.  What will you do? Do tell, and thanks for being here!

The DO LESS Revolution is on much needed R&R . Please come on back next week for my guide to the DO LESS Vacation. Happy Canada Day and Fourth of July!

Hello Comrades!

Have you been writing down your M.I.T.s (most important tasks) most days? Did you create your list of Guiding Values? Oh, Leo would be so proud!

Today in The DO LESS Revolution we are going to experiment with “Choosing the Essentials”. Like Leo says, when you choose the essentials you do less but accomplish more because you are doing what matters to you.  I call this Concentrated Living, where every hour is full and rich – not because it’s jammed packed with activity-but because each activity is deliberately chosen and done with intention. As I’ve said before, all of us have a finite number of hours in day. Don’t you want to be present to them?

The concept of Choosing the Essentials is all about picking the thing you must do and wantto do in a way that reflects your values. If your daily to-do’s are all things that are valuable to you, your life is more satisfying and you live with less regret. Now, that’s not to say that everything you do is something enjoyable. Changing the diapers may never be fun, but raising healthy kids is worth its weight in gold, right? So a-diaper changing we go.

But there are plenty of things in our day that we can enjoy, and IF you identify your Guiding Values and use them to Choose the Essentials, more of your hours can and will be spent doing things you enjoy – things that nourish you, inspire you,  and leave you feeling satisfied at the end of the day. (Rather than regretting what you didn’t do, or trying to go to sleep while you race over all the Most Important Tasks that didn’t get done in the flail of urgent-but-unimportant stuff you did do.)

The Shorthand Version
The way you Choose the Essentials is basically three steps:

1. Take your to-do list (make sure you’ve done your bulk reduction program on it found here.)
2. Put it next to your Guiding Values list.
3. Find the ones that match, and make them your Most Important Task for the day.  

The Storied Version
(You knew that was waaaay to few words for me right?) The best way I can think of illustrating this for you is to tell you a story. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello Loves,

You are probably wondering where *8Things and The DO LESS Revolution are this week. The answer is “late,” that’s all just late.

You see my dear hubby is in the States which means I am single parenting, with migraines, in what can only be described as B.Y.O.A. rainfall (Bring Your Own Ark)—which of course, I must navigate on foot-or-bike because somewhere along the line somebody got the bright idea to move to Europe and live car-free. (Oh yeah that somebody would be me. Well, at least I have very VERY cute rainboots.)

So taking a page from my own DO LESS advice book, I’m narrowing my tasks for the week down to basic survival skills which include: feeding the children, clothing the children, and trying to keep myself from being bludgeoned to death by the children’s all-drama-all-the-time emotional states. (I wanted girls, right?) So *8Things and DO LESS are coming,  just not until the weekend. And when they do could y’all please leave me lots of comments because I’m kinda in THAT kind of headspace right now—oh yeah, the needies.

Before I go, I would like to introduce you to Tiffani Electra X, owner of the charming TartX and maker of art. I want to give Tiffani big props for introducing me to the concept of BWO, Blogging Without Obligation, in which we people who work-for-free cease to beat ourselves up when we don’t show up to the virtual page for a day or two. Tiffani’s theory is that if you don’t beat yourself up about when you blog (or don’t, as the case may be) you’ll blog longer, write better, and give the world more love.

Amen, sisterfriend.

Tiffani’s art at Tartx is fantastically off the beaten path and a good fit for anyone who regularly flings themselves down the rabbit hole. It’s romantic and goth at the same time—a little bit like an Alice in Wonderland tea party, if maybe you like your tea with the tiniest smidge of arsenic. I highly recommend you take a little foray over to her place while you wait around for me to come back from the Mad Hatters. (Do you think I could woo her over here? That would be lovely! I DO so love a good crush!)

Much love to you all.

Magpie Girl

There are things you want to be doing with your life. There are adventures to be had, projects you’d love to dive into, and people you want to have time for. You want room to breathe, to think, to play.

Yet, there it is. The stuff in your home, the paper piles in your home office, and the 101 things on your to-do list, all clamoring for your time and attention.”
–Lisa Baldwin, Clutter Coach and Professional Simplifier

In the gap between the day we signed our mortgage and the day we could move into our 1920’s craftsman, I would sit on the back porch with my soulful housemate Sharon, and wait for the day we could call The Densmore House home. “It’s good here, Rachelle.” she’d say “Someone has been prayerful in this space.”

Where we live has a feel, an energy…a zeitgeist. We long to live in peaceful, beautiful spaces. But often we find ourselves living in clutter, mess and mayhem. There’s the physical clutter—the mail, and the socks, and the stacks of paper. (How does all that paper procreate anyway?!) Physical clutter stops us in our tracks. It keeps us from starting creative projects—because who wants to work at that messy table? It keeps us from finishing tasks because we can’t find what we started on. It drains us of our inspiration, and tires us out with menial tasks.

Then there is the energetic clutter—the anxiety, the regret, and that mysterious slimy residue that hangs around when something particularly sad or nasty has gone down. Energetic clutter is more subtle than the physical kind. It resides on the edge of our awareness like something you can only see out of the corner of your eye. Yet energetic clutter can be just as distracting and draining as the stack of mail on your countertop.

Thankfully I have two stellar practitioners who can help you remove BOTH kinds of clutter from your life – and they are teaming up to offer an e-course! (Oh you are so lucky!) Read the rest of this entry »

Hello Loves,

There’s a lot going on over here, and even now I hear the sound of my hubby vacuuming —unbidden!— downstairs. While he does the IRL housekeeping I’ll do the virtual stuff. Here’s what’s going on today in Magpie Girl world.

Soulsisters!
Are you coming on the Soulsister’s ‘09 Retreat? Do you wish you were? Do you want to form your own tribe of soulsisters (or soulsiblings?) Follow our progress and learn our hopes here.

Fun & Helpful Twitter Play-a-Longs
Do you Tweet? So do I!  I’m starting some fun new trends on Twitter.

• #gigglepics: photos to cheer you up or soothe your soul via TwitPic.
• #dailywhimsy: cheeky little tweets about the playful things we do to embrace whimsy.
• #dreamboards: do you dreamboard? share your results using links to your blog, Flickr, or Twitpic.
• #soulsisters: for those of us attending the first retreat and dreaming or forming the next one.
• #doless:join The DO LESS Revolution and learn to do what Leo Babatua calls “the fine art of choosing the essentials,” and achieve what I call “concentrated living.” (Plus, just feel better!)
• #soultribes: follow the “How to Build Your Soultribe” series and share ideas and plans with others.
• #*8Things: to share your weekly *8Things and see what others come up with. (It’s fascinating)

Wreck this Journal
Over at Starshyne Productions, my soulsister Jamie Ridler offers The Next Chapter — virtual book clubs for the arty at heart. Right now she’s encouraging us to make a mess with Keri Smith’s   Wreck this Journal. Eden, Cate and I started wrecking ours two summers ago. But I’m working on finishing the demo now. Here’s my page for this week. The instructions were “cover this page with white things.” It’s doubling as this month’sdreamboard. My theme for the month is “be still. be now.”

Hope you all have a wonderful Saturday. Don’t do too much housekeeping…go outside and do something whimsical!

Love,

Magpie Girl

Listen to the podcast here:

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Hello Revolutionaries!

This week we are going to uncover our Guiding Values so next week we can apply them to choosing our  Essential Tasks. This will free us to be concentrated powerhouses who DO LESS and LIVE MORE! But before we do, let’s do a brief check-in so you can feel great about how far you’ve already come.

Last week our theme was Setting Limits. We took our Monster To-Do list down a notch by eliminating things that were haunting us, but not serving us. Now pretty please answer some or all of these questions in the comments. Or, if you blog answer them in a post and add the unique URL to our Mr. Linky. (I know. “Mr. Linky.” That sounds naughty doesn’t it? Tee Hee.) Feeling shy? Like pen-and-paper? That’s fine. Just scribble it on the back of that receipt there on your desk. That would work too. (Remember, Fast and Dirty is the way to get it done.) Ready? Here we go!

• Name one thing you crossed off your Monster To-Do list because it wasn’t important to you any longer.
• How many things did you have on your Monster To-Do list that actually didn’t need to be done in the next 30-60 days?
• When your Gremlins started to nag you about “not getting anything done,” which of your one-hour-or-less tasks did you complete?
  Which of your Most Important Task (M.I.Ts) got done last week? How’d that feel?
• Which M.I.T.s are still hanging out? Do they still get the special M.I.T. rank, or can you demote them?
• Name any Ah-Ha Moments you’ve had so far in the process.

There. Don’t you feel better? I knew you would. Onward!

 How Your Guiding Values Help You Choose the Essential

The next stage of the DO LESS Revolution is identifying your Guiding Values and using them to determine what’s essential. This sounds kind of onerous, and I can’t think of a way to make it sound cheeky, but really it isn’t bad at all. Maybe it will help to know that I turned mine into a multi-colored mobile. How tough can it be if it looks like something out of Dr. Seuss?

It’s relaxing to note that choosing the essential isn’t like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You don’t have to determine at random what is most important amongst all your tasks. Once you peek inside and see what values you already carry, you can use them to ferret out the imposter-tasks hiding out among the essentials. It’s like a decoder ring! Doesn’t that seem like fun? You get to be Dick Tracy! Read the rest of this entry »

In our on-going mission to DO LESS, we will be taking a look at our values, and using that list to make decisions about which and tasks and projects we take on. Even if you aren’t a DO LESS revolutionary, it can still be enlightening and guide-like to check in with your values pyramid every now and again.

If you need some help making your list, my life coach Jena Strong, is offering us a kindly deal on Values Assessment Sessions.  Magpie Girl readers will receive a reduce price of $75 for an hour-long session* — a super rate for some valuable soulguidance. Jena helped me find the right words to describe what I hold most dear. Those words, in turn, helped me stand in my own power and make choices for myself, knowing they were being birthed out of solid, meaningful values. In short, Jena taught me how to value my values! (Oh those professionals, they are ever-so-helpful.) Here are *8 Values that Guide My Life: 

1. Whimsy
2. Generosity
3. Attentiveness
4. Creativity
5. Truth
6. Beauty
7. Freedom, and above all things
8. Love

What are the values that guide your life?  Grab a button and play along or put your *8Things in the comments below. Don’t know? Call Jena and drop my name!  Thanks for being here!

*The Strong Coaching reduced rate offer good thru July 31, 2009.

Listen to the podcast here:

Why Less is Powerful

Six years ago I was diagnosed with an untreatable condition, status migrainosus (chronic daily migraine). Suddenly, most of my time was spent either managing my health, or being in pain. This left little space for anything else. As I listened to the waiting room conversations at the pain clinic, I knew I was in danger of allowing this disease to take over my world. I became determined to not be defined by my pain. But as I watched my ability to write, volunteer, and counsel disappear, I began to despair. For months I struggled to come to terms with a life that felt increasingly limited.

The reality is we are all limited. There are a finite number of hours in the day, and while most of us can ignore that, eventually it catches up to us. We overbook, over commit, and try to ‘do it all.’ Then we crash with exhaustion, ulcers, and little ease or enjoyment in our life. 

This limited time thing? It’s not going to change. So I started to ask myself, “What would it look like to turn this “limited time” thing into a Superpower?” Read the rest of this entry »