K.I.S.S.

Keep it simple, sweetie.

That’s my mantra for today. It’s Day Four post renovations. Work is still mildly busy but with plenty of downtime and home is still mildly in control. My goal today? Relentless incrementalism – in its “nice” form.

For those who don’t know me, I learned the concept of relentless incrementalism from a former colleague. It’s how she pursued fundraising. Me? I applied it to life more broadly. Obviously, as a CEO, you can’t engage in incrementalism, you just have to be relentless. But, as we were going through this massive whole-house renovation, relentless incrementalism became a family mantra. It was a lot like running a long race. Just. Keep. Moving. The finish line only gets closer if you keep moving towards it.

Today, nice relentless incrementalism is about maintaining the even strain. We don’t have to grow, improve, fix or modify. Nope. We just gotta do the regulars: clean up a bit, go to the grocery, make dinner, do a load of laundry, hold meetings, make progress on work projects. Slow, steady, incremental. So, what’s different? The pressure is off. No one around here is losing a birthday if everything on the list doesn’t get done everyday.

And to be in that place still feels fantastic.

Honestly, the first thing I’m noticing is that it’s a mental game. It’s a whole lot easier to get up in the morning when the day ahead doesn’t need to be chaotic. I still get a significant amount of work done when the pressure is off. Then, the evenings feel more calm and my soul is slowly learning to rest.

Like it does, all of that got me thinking: how do we preserve what we have without losing our mind? Is there a true pathway out there for simple peace that is able to be calibrated to each person’s personal tolerance and as their tolerance waxes and wanes, it moves with them? The answer has to be yes. We just pushed ourselves so hard for so long that we haven’t experienced it in years. Perhaps the even bigger, but more personal question for me is how do I help this little family realize this peace and how do I keep us there? As the one who works very part-time around here, that has always been my self-appointed goal. The answer? KISS.

There are things around here that need to be done: all of the recently stripped linen sheets (in favor of flannel) need to be washed, lined dry and put away for the season; the final leaf pickup and mulching session needs to happen; daily tasks need to be done; and we both have to work. Yet, using both KISS and nice relentless incrementalism, this is all super manageable stuff. More importantly, though, I’m going to set some boundaries around home and work life that should make all of the difference. Key goal #1: work ends by 4 p.m. each day. As people who don’t eat until 7:00-7:30 p.m. each night, ending work gives me plenty of time to make that transition from work to home. I can pick up the house, start dinner and generally wind down the chaos so that when my hubby joins me somewhere between 5 and 7 p.m., the evening if fully ours.

Next hard guardrail: no projects. I’m super serious here but this is going to be the hard one. While I’m fine with no projects, my husband isn’t. Every Saturday morning, he has a list of things that has to get done. Work is his mantra. Helping him to kick back, take a day off and relax is my next goal in life. That only happens if we keep our promise of no new projects. Repairs are fine; new projects are not.

Finally, this one is personal: I deleted the games on my phone. There was this silly Tetris style game and a yarn game that were becoming obsessions. In fact, the phone was becoming an addiction. Very slowly, I’m going to try and break the addiction. The phone doesn’t need to travel with me around the house or go for a walk with me or go out to dinner with me. The more I stop living in a virtual world, the more I engage in the real world. More than that? The hours simply multiply. While today does not portend to be busy in any way – I’ll work for about 4-5 hours on two different clients – I would have soaked up hours in wasted internet time. Instead? I’m taking those hours back, de-stimulating myself at the same time and delivering this family to a peaceful environ.

In truth, we all tend to complicate our lives. We make what’s easy difficult and we tend to author our own disasters. Yet, realizing that we had the power all along – just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz – the impact is powerful.

Baby steps. Nice incrementalism. KISS. It’s time to take a breath, enjoy this journey called living and take care of the souls I’m blessed to have in my life.