Eliminating the Non-Essential

To Make Room for What Matters.

A pictoral representation of my life BEFORE I eliminated pretty much everything.

Good morning Powells,

I LOVE snooker. I used to watch it on a black and white telly with my nan. Last night, the lean mean potting machine Wu Yize (China) out potted Shaun ‘the magician’ Murphy (England) to win the World Championship at The Crucible in Sheffield.

Wu won half a million quid. Shaun a measly 200 grand.

I suspect they both ended up being ranked in the Top 10 snooker players in the WORLD because they spend most of their time focused on… snooker.

I, on the other hand, spend most of my time doing everything other than drawing and making things. I persistently do things that don’t matter and only make a millimetre of progress in a thousand directions*. Then I consistently moan I don’t have enough time for the things that matter most to me.

This behaviour cannot be allowed to continue. So, since my last post I’ve been eliminating non-essential things from my life with reckless abandon:

• I’ve deleted all unnecessary apps. Instead of having 6 exercise apps that I definitely never use, I now have one that I probably won’t use. Estimated time saved: none because I never used them anyway.

• I’ve unsubscribed from all the emails I don’t remember signing up for and I’ve created a TBR folder for all the emails I think I’ll read but absolutely won’t. Estimated time saved: 6.2 hours a day.

• I’ve deleted Vinted. I do not need any more ill-fitting cottage-core hand-wash-only white blouses that ‘only cost a fiver’. Estimated time saved: 12 hours a day.

• I made a radical decision to delete my over-complicated budgeting app. I no longer need to track, record and reconcile the £2.49 protein bar I bought at a train station, and allocate it to a category (does that go in travel or food and drink?!). Estimated time saved: 4 hours a day.

• I’ve streamlined my financial spreadsheet so it has 4 columns, not 400: what came in, what went out, what I saved and what I have left (that column is currently in the minus). Estimated time saved: 3 days a month.

• I’ve bought a small suitcase for overnight stays and filled 3 spare wash-bags with miniature versions of all the things I need for an overnight stay. Now I don’t need to pack every time I go on a school visit. Estimated time saved: 4 days a week because packing hurts my brain.

So far (because this is just the beginning) eliminating the non-essential has saved me over 22 hours a day.

With these re-gained hours I intend to: rekindle my daily sketchbook practice which has been severely neglected in recent weeks; actually read The Bookseller—rather than using it to usher woodlice from my dining room; read the Substack publications I pay for each month and the 12 library books I’ve been renewing since November; finally put products in my shop. Weed the garden once a week. Finish decorating the attic after it lying dormant and half decorated for almost 12 months.

That all feels essential… doesn’t it?!

At the time of writing (ie. today, right now this second) I’ve already managed to do an hour of sketch booking and write to you.

I am off to a good start.

Powell x

*Bastardised from Greg McKeown’s Book Essentialism, which I highly recommend.