As a visual person, I often turn to Pinterest when I’m conjuring up a plan for an upcoming vacation, a project at home or even business ideas. So when I first began Operation: Simplify, I did the same. “Simplifying my life”, and here’s what I got:

Oh the irony…. Pages and pages of boards in which people pinned ideas for de-cluttering, organizing their belongings, finances, decisions, etc.

There are articles like this one by Paul Stamatio that made me want to take on this task to simplify my online life. And even Gretchen Rubin begins The Happiness Project with eliminating unnecessary clutter in your house. But I think it was this article in the New York Times last spring, which really resonated with me and helped me appreciate that having less, can make you feel more. So after thinking about this for a while, I turned off my computer, grabbed my notebook and pencil and found a cozy spot outside to get creative the old fashioned way. Here’s what I came up with.

Online

1. Email: Clean up your inbox with Unroll.me. This service helps you regain control of your subscription emails by rolling them into a single daily digest.
2. Bookmark Bar: I add all of my most visited sites to my bookmark bar using only the favicon as a guide. This saves me time and decision energy by not sifting through a long bookmark folder or typing each address into Google search.
3. Online Privacy: Every six months I go through what I call a “personal reputation search” in which I will request personal data to be deleted from the public record databases. This is quite a task so consider paying $129 to have DeleteMe take care of it for you. Or follow their guide to opting-out of these sites yourself. I’ve also installed DoNotTrackMe Chrome app to block spammers and identity thieves from tracking my internet browsing.
4. Blogs and Social: It took me a while to organize all of my favorite blogs but now I have the perfect formula. I use Feedly for RSS and Buffer to post to my social networks. The Awesome Plan is only $10/month and everything I could ask for in managing my social media accounts.
5. FOCUS: As an entrepreneur, sometimes it is very tricky to manage your time wisely but one way to simplify your focus time is to eliminate distractions. If you use a Mac, consider downloading the application, SelfControl as a way to block sites that could tempt you into losing focus.

House

1. Eliminate Clutter: Buy organizers for your junk drawers, get rid of old magazines and papers laying around. When you can say sayonara to useless clutter, you immediately begin to feel lighter.
2. Beauty Products: On a quest to use non-toxic, all natural beauty products, I trashed all of my old makeup and began investing in beauty supplies that will keep me healthy and vibrant for years to come. This is something that will take a little time and money but it’ll be well worth it in the long run. Here are some great natural beauty tips from my friends at Considering You.  
3. Clothing:  Although selling your clothes can take even more time than it’s worth, there are a few apps that could help you get the job done without much hassle. Try posting pictures of your clothes to Threadflip or PoshMark to allow people to shop your closet. If you want to choose a quicker route, donate.
4. Cleaning: Something I did a couple years ago was hiring a cleaner. She charges $100 with tip to clean everything from the bathroom to my balcony and totally worth it.
5. Life & Business Documents: Go paperless. Who needs folders of bills from your first car? Get real. Scan or trash all of them.

Time

1. Eliminate decisions: The reason President Obama only has blue and gray suits is so that he doesn’t have to suffer decision fatigue when deciding what to wear in the morning. Fewer options you have to make a decision on, the better.
2. Schedules: I plan my workout schedule on Sundays and include physical activity every single day of the week. This holds me accountable and reminds me that fitness is part of my life just like working and eating. I also plan a basic dinner schedule for the week. Thus, eliminating decisions and costs associated with dining out. It’s not a strict schedule but rather a suggestion or guide so that I don’t have to make decisions. Another great part of my daily routine is to make sure juice replaces one of my meals. This cuts out bad eating habits and helps with decision fatigue.
3. Amazon: I order everything on Amazon: dog food, notebooks, paper towels, everything. This eliminates a trip to the black hole that is Target.
4. Groceries: The things that I can’t buy on Amazon, I get at my local market. I create one grocery shopping list and alter it each week to only the important items that I need.
5. Transit: If you live a big city with great public transit, consider getting rid of your car all together. This could save boat loads of money that you would spend on insurance and car payments, as well as time that you could be doing work or reading on the bus rather than waiting in traffic during your commute. Columbus just got CoGo bike share which is a great alternative to driving.

Now that I have extra time…

Since Operation: Simplify, I’ve had a lot more time to myself not worrying about the things I need to de-clutter or organize. I now have time to focus on meaningful things.

• Learning a new language with Duolingo
• Treehouse lessons to keep coding in my life
• Working smarter on NextChapter
• Practicing Yoga & Meditation
• Cooking healthy meals at home
• Reading and listening to audio books

Did you take some time this summer to simplify? What was your experience like? I’d love to hear any tips or hacks in the comments.

As a SaaS business owner, I understand that focusing on customer service and reducing churn can have dramatic effects on lifetime value of a customer and return on investment.

There are several companies that I admire for their dedication to customer experience and MailChimp is one of them. Here are a few ways that MailChimp has turned me into a chimp fan.

1.) Trust. This beautifully constructed piece of software that they allow me to use for free always works. I trust MailChimp to be everything that I need it to be and it’s always more.

2.) Personality. It’s the little details that make me smile. After I send my campaign, the chimp gives me a high five – how rad!

3.) Creativity. The company culture embraces creativity and it shines through their products. Check out the coloring book they made Love What You Do and this awesome 2012 Annual Review.

4.) Customer Happiness. After I tweeted about the chimp giving me a high five, MailChimp mailed me a high five surprise: an awesome shirt, a chimp sticker and felt stuffed animal. And just like that, they earned me as a lifelong customer.

In a given day, I read around 10 articles about business, entrepreneurship and how to survive the startup life. It took a while to find the perfect blogs to follow because I started to notice that most writers were more focused on quantity of posts over quality, filling them with fluff, thus the content was stale and repetitive.

After following (and unfollowing) many blogs, I’ve come up with a strong collection of inspiration and advice. The blogs in this list share valuable information that seems to always resonate with me. And I feel a great deal of satisfaction when I can later apply that helpful piece of knowledge to my business journey.

Building a startup is exciting and amazing but we all know too well, the feeling of complete chaos and loss of control. Some days I wake up and feel like my world is flipped upside down. I look at the calendar and can’t even believe that we are already halfway into the year. I think I notice the time more now that I no longer get a direct deposit from an employer. Sometimes I wonder, ‘how many more wake-ups until I have to give up?’ Unfortunately, that’s the cold, hard, truth when it comes to bootstrapping a startup.

The other reality I’ve faced recently is something every entrepreneur talks about: the extreme highs and lows of being a startup founder. I never quite understood it until these past couple months. When I receive an email about a new signup, it’s all confetti and balloons in my mind until the following day when a Google alert comes through about a competitor announcing a new feature and all I can do is sit on my bedroom floor researching the news and press releases on my iPhone. A week later, I get featured in a popular publication and have thousands of views on the website in one day, and minutes after that, an invoice from my attorney reminds me that I’ve spent more in legal fees than I’ve made all year.

It’s a risk… a challenge… and it takes a certain kind of appreciation to keep moving at full speed even when it’s foggy and you can’t tell from here whether the road has a sharp curve, a giant hill or a dead end.

Uncertainty.

Oddly enough, uncertainty has become rather comforting.

Over the past couple months, I’ve had to learn a lot and learn quickly. One thing I’ve been focusing on this year is truly making an effort to reduce my stress and stabilize my emotions through this time of uncertainty.

I’ve also come to realize that current events make me very nervous, worrisome and effect my productivity in a big way. During the election last year, I could barely sleep, wondering what the polls would show on election day and what that meant for our country. During the Sandy Hook, Aurora and Boston tragedies, I found myself spending time as a sleuth on nights and weekends digging as deep as possible to find answers. I’m not sure if this is just how my generation deals with crisises or if it’s because of my legal researching nature or perhaps just my strong curiosity in this time of personal growth.

After recognizing my lack of productivity and increase in anxiety during a troubling time, I realized I have to find another way to cope with stress and anxiety.

Here are a few of the techniques I find to be most helpful when stress takes over.

1) Meditate

It seems hard to start meditating at first if you never have but there are a few simple ways to get started.

Kevin Rose, Partner at Google Venture, suggests trying a 100 breath meditation, 30 day challenge. The gist of  this challenge is to eliminate all distractions and follow your breath to a count of 100. It stabilizes your heart rate and keeps you concentrating on breathing to escape all thoughts.

Joe Gascoigne, CEO of Buffer, describes how developing a daily habit of meditation has given him a profound effect on his life and his ability to succeed as a CEO. In his post he gives insight on the best reasons to meditate and tips on best practices.

2) Yoga

I’ve just started practicing yoga these past couple months and have simply fallen in love with it. Of course there are many different types of yoga, yoga studios in every city and several videos and articles about yoga but I just find that doing a little 15-20 minute yoga session first thing in the morning or in the evening before bed is a great way to get started.

This is my favorite morning yoga video and great for beginners: morning yoga – 15 minutes to wake up for a beautiful day

3) Journal

Something I try to do every day is write in a journal. It’s hard to keep up but if you can, you’ll be much more in control of your emotions. If you are unsure what to write or how to break into writing, here’s a good tip:

Try to focus on one of these topics and write everything you can about it.

• all of the things for which you are grateful
• all of the places you wish to explore and why
• the times in which you were most happy
• the people that you feel most yourself around and why
• the little things that make you smile
• something good about yourself, your business, your life

As you move through your day, focus on what you have written. It’ll help bring sanity to a stressful time.

4) Reflect

Marc and Angel have an amazing blog. When I am in need of inspiration or small stories to help me reflect on life, I take a look at some of their most popular posts. 60 Quotes That Will Change The Way You Think and 30 Things To Start Doing For Yourself are two of my favorite.

Zenhabits is also a great blog to find articles about finding zen in your life. Browsing through the archives, I always find articles that resonate with me.

If you make these a habit or routine, your life will get used to having those few little moments with yourself and you’ll be much more at peace. For even more inspiration to find zen in your life and business, take a minute to read this beautifully written post by Danielle Morrill.