Leaving things undone

I read this wonderful quote recently, by a writer from the previous century named Lin Yutang:

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.

1) Everything in my life seems to be sending me little signals right now to pare back. I’ve read three or four similar encouragements in the last week, in places that seemed random until the frequency of the coincidence forced me to accept that it wasn’t actually coincidence.

The through-line is that all these little universal pokes have been encouraging me in various ways to remove nonessential elements from my life. I’m taking that instruction onboard in a macro sense at the moment — removing bigger routines from my life that aren’t moving in a unified direction with where I want to be headed. Podcast of five years: gone! #TodaysWork end-of-day summary posts to social networks: gone!

There will be more elimination rounds, I sense, but this is already a great start. I’ve objectively freed up about 6 hours a week — like getting most of an extra workday for free. And, subjectively, I’m doing fewer things that feel like drags on my energy. I’m in a moment where I’m feeling like I need to to align things so that everything is moving in the same direction. I’m focusing.

2) I haven’t started working on music again yet since returning from tour — we just got back, and we’ve been decompressing and catching up on business stuff. But I’m inspired in equal measure to take this thought process micro.

And to that end, I’m pondering: what might the idea of “nonessentials” look like for me in my mix work? In my production work? Am I stuck in routines that are no longer serving me? Am I loading the same processing chains in the same places because they’re still the best option, or because at this point my hands do it from muscle memory? Do I have recurring go-to production moves that need retiring? Do I need to significantly pare back my installed plugins? It all bears examining in an intentional way.

What nonessentials might you be able to eliminate in your life? And what energy might that unlock for you?

Refocusing — jamie