How to Simplify Your Life

A lot of these are great, but there's one thing I think is really critical that isn't listed.

If you are a tech person, you probably spend hours a day dealing with tech. Mental health is, logically, going to be highly affected by what happens in that time.

We don't normally think of tech as something emotional, but removing a lot of custom software and tinkered with projects, and committing to being very very careful about new projects(Especially hardware), has removed so much stress from my life.

It's especially true with hardware. I don't want simpler objects in my life, like paper notepads or film cameras, I want less physical volume of objects, and especially less volume of objects I have to deal with. So I weight convenience(along with cost) very highly.

I put a lot of time into finding, and eliminating custom parts of various workflows that required occasional maintenance, looking for bog standard ways of doing things, and figuring out what long term projects were even worth having on my mental "Occasionally research for half hour" list.

I shelved lots of personal projects, even some I really wanted to do, on a "Lets wait till the perfect framework for this comes along" list.

I got rid of a lot of random parts and pieces that were taking up space. I stopped designing PCBs with discrete parts for personal projects.

I even made a few exceptions to my mostly open source setup, and moved my notes to Obsidian(Maybe the most life changing software I've seen in years).

For a lot of people personal tech use is the easy low hanging fruit to instantly add time, space, and money.

Decustomizing your digital life is almost a decadent luxury on the level of having a personal valet, if your starting point is "Spending an hour a day improving various scripts and configurations".

I wish I knew not to buy that reel of 0805s and that bag of 555 timers in the first place!

Here's one that will change your life. The easiest way to simplify your life is to get rid of stuff. Stuff just clutters your life and mind. Rent if you can or re-buy if you barely use something. It might a bit more expensive but you save all the mind stress of dealing with it. Minimize the stuff you have.

Stop watching commercials that get you to buy stuff you don't need. Believe me you don't need another (put name of stuff here).