Did you know that a 2011 study by K. Douglas reported in the New Scientist revealed that we make up to 10,000 trivial decisions every day. Wow, that takes a lot of brain power, so it is hardly surprising that we become fatigued and overwhelmed. So what can we do to simplify our lives so that we need to make fewer decisions.
During a programme that I am following called the 90 Day Year I have recently come across the concept of the The Prada Protocol. This is a concept and way of thinking that has the power to free you from a lot of the distraction and overwhelm in our days, weeks and life.
If you’ve ever struggled with feeling overwhelmed with all of the decisions you’re confronted with daily, even if they’re the small ones like, ‘what to wear’, ‘what to eat’ or ‘where to find something’. Then embracing the concept and thinking inside of the Prada Protocol will be a difference maker for you.
There are literally hundreds of ways to think about applying the principles to your life and business. There are areas of my own life I’ve even forgotten that I’ve applied this principle, because I’ve deliberately applied it for so long. (Which is an example of the power of it. No longer do I worry, think, stress over the trivial parts of life. I’m free to focus my attention and energy on things that truly matter.)
Below is a list of curated ideas I’ve captured to turn the light bulb on in your head for how to apply this principle across multiple areas of your life.
- What To Wear: How many hours a week do you waste time deciding what to wear?. I bet if you’re a woman it’s a lot, and then often you feel you made the wrong choice. I know I have often experienced this. Trying on loads of different clothes combinations and then finally make the wrong choice. When I was working in London it was easy. I had a handful of suits that I wore everyday. Not too many decisions to make each morning. And when I’m leading workshops with the horses I pretty much have a standard uniform that I wear – jeans, boots, fleece and usually a gillet. Having a “uniform” makes deciding what to wear easy and saves you time, energy and money.Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, summed up the value in wearing the same “uniform” every day when he said “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community,”
- Knowing What Clothes to Buy: In the past I used to waste loads of money buying clothes I never wore. However, a few years ago I had my colours professionally done. I now know the palette of colours that suit me so I stop wasting time looking at clothes that don’t fall in this spectrum. Best of all it means that I know that every item of clothing I buy will co-ordinate with the other pieces I already have. Plus it also means I’m buying clothes that suit my style.
- What To Eat: now I must confess to being a real amateur in this area of automating my life. My friend Zoe is meticulous at planning and preparing all her meals for the following week the weekend prior. The result is that she always knows what her and her husband are eating and she doesn’t waste money on buying food that then is not used and goes off. I’m not sure I could be that disciplined but I do know that in the past I have had organic veg delivered weekly, and have also experimented with having meals delivered. Both of which ensured I always ate healthy, nutritious food. Maybe that is something I should start again.
- Managing Your Finances: Setting up simple systems to help manage your finances can be a God send. Each month I have a number of transfers set up that direct money from my business account to both my personal bank account but also my savings and business expenses account. For my business expenses I track all the activity in Xero and Crunch Boards, whereas for my personal money I use Money Dashboard. It means I can quickly and easily see where I am spending my money. Plus because all the payments are automated it means that I don’t overlook paying something. Just one more thing I don’t have to think about.
- Outsourcing Various Aspects of Your Life and Business: I have talked in many other posts about the importance of team and focusing on your strengths. Outsourcing allows you to get additional support in your business and life, enabling you to focus on your brilliance. It also avoids the stress of you wasting time trying to complete a task that simply you don’t have the optimal skill set to do. The great thing is that technology enables lots of activities in your business to be automated – such as customer follow up – but also you can outsource low value activities in your business and life such as email and cleaning your house. Just imagine how much simplier and easier your life would be if you knew the house got cleaned weekly; or you knew your email was being handled daily.
So my thought for this week is how can you simplify your life. What activities can you automate, delegate or ditch, so that you no longer need to make decisions about them, and so create the space for you to focus on the really important things that matter to you.
If you’d like to start living a more simple life and start acting like real high performers do, then please share with me in the facebook group what insights you had from this post. And importantly start implementing them into your life.
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
