What are your most important things? We talk a lot about getting rid of “stuff” on the show, and in our lives that’s what we’ve tried to do. We’ve gotten rid of just about 3000 things this year alone and have a couple hundred people who’ve joined in on it by accepting the Edit & Forget It Challenge.  While we have opted out of following the mass consumerism that most in our society hold dear, there are still some things we ourselves hold dear. We created a scenario: “What 5 things would you grab if your house was on fire?” and then put ourselves to the test to figure out what possessions, out of our entire home, are the most important to us.

As we went through this exercise it really challenged us and realized that by spending some time thinking about your most important things…those top 5 things that you would grab out of your burning home, it greases your mental gears to:

Identify the your most important things. Things that mean the most to you and why.

Contemplate whether you’re giving those things the attention they deserve day to day.

Identify ways to keep those things safe now and ready to carry out if necessary.

Condition yourself to more easily part with things that didn’t make the list.

Get you thinking about being prepared in case of an emergency.

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Your House Is On Fire, You Can Save 5 Things…What Are They?

The first time Dan thought about this was over 10 years ago when a colleague of his lost all her possessions when her apartment caught fire. She was devastated when she got the news and came home to find everything gone.

He’s been saying for a while now that we need to sit down and talk about what we’d do in an emergency. What would we take with us if we had the opportunity? What are our most important things?

In the military we use lots of different techniques to teach lessons….like Attention to Detail…a skill that could be transferred and applied to other things. We also talk about planning. To use our own corollary to Dwight Eisenhower’s quote: “Plans are worthless, planning is priceless.” It’s in going through the exercise thoughtfully that will give you the most value. The Plan isn’t as important as the ability to narrow down what’s important to you and why. That is priceless, and something we should do on a continual basis.

Sure, the exercise was all about discerning those 5 things that are really important to us, but the real benefit of the exercise comes from following the natural course of things and asking some follow on questions like:

Conducting the Exercise:

Our Top 5 things in reverse order…just in case you’re interested:

(Note: for a detailed explanation of why we picked these items, feel free to listen in on the podcast)

Our own observations:

So, are you ready to conduct this exercise and figure out what your most important things are? Would you be able to grab them and leave safely in an emergency? After making your list are you better prepared to let go of things that didn’t make your list? We’d love to hear what works for you.  You can leave comments below.

Dan’s Thing: Some of Apple’s iOS7 update for iPhone…especially the Audible App. The new iOS lets you still control many functions of the audio player in the Audible App even after the screen has locked and that when using the multitask function. Also, the ability to simply swipe upwards from the bottom of the screen to reveal the player’s controls is pretty cool!

Vanessa’s Thing: Bose Soundlink Mini: It’s only 7″w x 2″h x 2″d, is portable, versatile, bluetooth enabled, lasts for hours on its battery, and has beautiful sound.  It’s not cheap but was a cheaper substitute for what we were going to have installed in our teardrop camper.

You can download a PDF of our show prep, too.

SLT 003: Digital Back-Up

SLT 016: Making Decisions Like a Fighter Pilot (OODA Loop)

SLT 017/018: Evernote Simplified Part 1 and Part 2

SLT: 027 Organizing Important Documents

Bose Soundlink Mini

Photo Courtesy of Kevin Gebhardt