Ah, my trusted friend, indifference, is here to tell you a little bit about itself. It wants you to know that it’s not rude; it simply likes to exist without strong feelings and remains neutral wherever possible.
It’s the kind of friend that lowers stress, blood pressure, and expectations. It’s also the kind of friend that frees up your mental space so you can pay more attention to the things you really care about.
Let’s get to know a little more about the wonders of indifference, and why caring less about a lot of things can help you protect what you love deep down.
7 reasons caring less actually helps you care more (about the things that really matter):
1. You stop wasting your energy on things that are only surface-level important.
Can it wait? Will it matter in a week? Is the house going to burn down if you take your energy out of it?
If you answered yes, no, and no, then congratulations: dump it.
Surface-level important basically means that if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that the problem isn’t actually a problem at all. These sorts of problems could probably be blown away by the wind, and as such, you don’t need to worry about them or take care of them yourself.
If we pause to pay these little things attention, all we’re really doing is diverting it away from what we should be focusing on.
So ask yourself what you really care about, and anything else should really take a backseat, shouldn’t it?
2. You have more time and attention available for anything or anyone in your life who deserves those things.
If you have 100% battery life when you wake up, and you have got one hundred things that are taking up your care and concern, you’re only going to be able to give each of those things 1% (…and my teacher said I’d be bad at math…).
Have you ever considered evaluating those one hundred things? Whittling them down to 80? 50? Even 20? If you did, you could give more time and attention to each one, and you wouldn’t be spreading yourself so thinly. Maybe you’d even have 10% left for yourself.
We don’t prioritize enough, in my opinion. We just seem to juggle life. We’re celebrated for multitasking, and condemned if we decide to focus on only one or two things that are most important.
Let’s stop that. Humans were not actually designed to multitask. It is not efficient. I’m here for anyone who cuts their list down, passes tasks over to tomorrow if they can, and focuses on what really matters today.
If it means you’re better at tackling the things that are of greatest importance to you, that’s the result you want.
3. You can begin to be more efficient at knowing the difference between what’s important and what’s merely demanding your attention.
When you make a conscious decision to care less about most things, it can be quite eye-opening how many so-called “important” things you’ve been piling on your plate. The result is that you get quite brutal about questioning which things actually deserve space on your mental, emotional, and physical ‘to-do’ list.
The Eisenhower Matrix is one such way people do this. It’s a really cool tool that basically aims to help you figure out your list of tasks based on how urgent and important they are.
Although it was designed with productivity in mind, it works surprisingly well for the things we carry around in our heads too. After all, most of our “cares” are really just responsibilities, worries, problems, and obligations demanding our attention and all jostling for a spot at the front of the queue.
Essentially, it divides the things you have on your plate into four quadrants.
- Urgent and important (do) – You’ve got to do it. And pronto. Or there will be consequences.
- Not urgent and important (schedule) – You’ve got to do it because it contributes to some goal or responsibility you have, but it’s not urgent at the moment (although it has the potential to become urgent if left for too long, so definitely set a date for it).
- Urgent and not important (delegate if you can)– It’s got a deadline, but the consequences aren’t dire if it’s not done or it’s done differently, so maybe someone else can do it?
- Not urgent and not important (ditch) – Just don’t bother.
Using this tool will change your life. Learning to determine what’s a real, urgent “care” versus what’s just an attention-grabbing distraction is one of the single most important things you can do to put your limited energy where it most belongs.
4. You become better at leaving what doesn’t matter for someone else to resolve or pick up.
Now, I don’t want to be responsible for your unpaid bills or the fire at your workplace because you left all the grills on for someone else to switch off. However, I do want you to drop all the unnecessary things you’ve been taking on just so that other people don’t have to deal with them.
This ties in nicely to the third quadrant of the Eisenhower matrix we talked about. If something isn’t urgent, isn’t actually that important, and can be done sufficiently by someone else, do you really need to do it?
Notice the word sufficiently here. Not everything needs to be done to a ridiculously high standard.
This isn’t about abandoning everything or becoming slovenly; it’s about knowing that all answers to all problems don’t lie at your feet, and that for many things in life good enough really is good enough.
Be better at setting down what you can, in favor of picking up what you need to, or what is more important on that list of priorities.
You never know; in doing so, those people may finally realize that they have to get up and do some work for once. It won’t hurt them – or you – to remember that.
5. You admit that taking on too much only results in more stress.
Burnout is real, and so is stress. And research shows that in this modern hustle culture, it’s becoming an increasing problem.
This is a huge warning sign that shouldn’t be ignored or downplayed. The majority of us are taking on more than we can handle, whether personally or professionally, and it’s leaving us with little room to care about what’s really important.
If you want to be better at the things you care most about, I suggest looking at what’s creeping into your life unnecessarily that could otherwise be tossed aside.
Stress sends messages to your body that you won’t be able to ignore forever. You can only push through your exhaustion for so long before you face the consequences. Some of which may be irreversible.
Take on less, care about less, and be more present in what actually needs and serves you.
6. You realize that if everything matters, nothing truly gets your best attention.
I know how tricky it is to accept that not everything matters. You promised yourself you could take it all on, but your capacity, like anyone’s, doesn’t stretch that far. And nor should it.
You can’t give everything all of your attention, as much as you’d like to. What’s the point in filling your cup to the top out of obligation? What is it you are hoping to achieve?
Recently, this was me, and in the end I just had to tell myself, “Put this and that and this down. You don’t need to deal with them.”
Annoyingly, I like to feel as though I’ve got the bandwidth, but there’s no weakness in surrendering dead weight. Doing so at least gives you half a chance to give your all to other things that are far more worth it.
7. You discover that in tackling less, your mind is quieter and clearer.
Hey, who’d have thought that having less to deal with would make your mind quieter and clearer? It’s calm! You can hear the cogs turning again!
Joking aside, in this busy, fast-paced world, a quieter mind is a currency that no other currency can match.
It’s amazing what some space can do, and how much better you feel for just being able to think straight. If you’ve got less on your plate, you’ve got less to clear.
This is the only time I don’t like a lot on my plate, by the way. Show me a roast dinner, and I want it piled up and smothered in thick gravy. Show me unnecessary life stresses, however, and I want a tiny portion, thank you very much.
I hope you do, too.
Final thoughts…
It’s okay to put that big, heavy bag of worries, cares, responsibilities and chores down. You don’t need to carry everything that’s inside. If you’re trying to get home with it, have a look inside and see if you can let a few things go – things that you don’t really care about.
If you can do that, you’ll get home without breaking your back, and you’ll still have everything that you do need. That’s got to be a good thing, right?
