Zen Habits offers 10 steps to a life of Simplicity. Then we weigh in with a few of our own Zenny Tips.

 You wake up every morning and wonder how you’re going to tackle the surmountable task of Getting Through The Day. Your brain is so cluttered with preparation for the Daily Grind (tell Hubby to pick up the kids - you’ve got a meeting with the VP, grab wine for the neighbor’s party you’re stopping at tomorrow, make sure hubby picked up kids, order groceries online, have them delivered on Friday, make sure Danny ACTUALLY went to school this time, etc etc etc) you need a checklist just to get from the Bed to the Kitchen Stage of your routine. You get to work and realize the note you wrote yourself yesterday is now lost in Ground Zero of your war-torn desk. The painters knocked over the largest of your three family photos, leaving a cracked picture and shards under your dusty out/in/pending/? piles of “papers.”

Sound familiar at all? To a greater or lesser extent, this description not only describes our morning routine, but also extrapolates to our entire lives. We get so much on our plate that we have no time for the little things, many of which greatly influence the quality of our lives.

(Source)

Lucky for us, there’s a little Zen to help us out. Zen Habits has 10 things you can do to simplify your life. Check them out, and pick your favorite to do today. Our favorites are:

3. Purge a drawer
7. Clear your desk
8. Clear out your email inbox

We read this list (and accompanying advice) and were so inspired we came up with a few of our own. Read at your own risk.

1. Install an Idea Parking Lot - If you’re like me, you probably come up with random, potentially good ideas throughout the day. Usually they don’t pertain the task at hand, but you don’t want to forget them? What do you do? Park them. In the Lot. Have a designated piece of paper, section of your whiteboard, or a voice recorder and jot down the essence of the idea. Then get back to the task at hand. Have a designated time to distribute the ideas to their proper projects. Every Monday, clear out last weeks ideas, I have 4 categories - Delete, Act on it Now, Pending (requires something else first), Forward to someone else. After 15 minutes my Parking Lot only has pending items.

How Zen of me.

2. The Lunch Iron Curtain - I love this one. Establish with your boss, coworkers, and water boy that your Lunch Hour is just that. From 12pm - 1pm every day you are unavailable for comment. Use that time to do Zenny things, like eating in peace. Think about something else for a while, call your mom, or just close your eyes and taste your food. This will do wonders. Give yourself something to look forward to - establish at least 2 Iron Curtain days.

3. Web Browser Tyranny - Focus solely on your task at hand, be it email, design, or whatever. Close all browser windows not pertaining to this. Check out Tab Mixer Plus if you want to save browsing sessions.

4. Blue Light Special in the Fridge - Go to your fridge. Cringe. Now that that’s out of the way, pull out any sort of leftover food item. Anything you won’t eat in the next 48 hours should be pawned off to your friend Hungry Adam, composted, or thrown away (sigh).j

5. The “Library” Break-up - So where is your stack of “I’m going to read these soon” books? Pick out The One you NEED TO READ NOW OR THE KARMA POLICE ARE COMING and give all the others away. Lend them, maybe your friend who actually reads will inspire you through her book review. Make reading pleasurable, and then you’ll actually do it.j

6. Unsubscribe from mailing lists and newsletters if you haven’t read the last 2 editions. That one’s easy.

We’ll our additions short; a long list wouldn’t be very simple of us. So now you have some ideas to start cutting away the fat and clutter of your daily life. Don’t try to slay the Giant in one swipe, pick one or two and incorporate them in to your routine. Once they become habit, pick one or two more. Continue this process until you feel yourself getting some serious Zen on.