09-09-10

The Rule of 3s

I’m really excited about this post.  The Rule of 3s is one of those life chang­ing philoso­phies for me.  I’ve been mulling over it for over 30 days which is sig­nif­i­cant as you’ll come to find out.

I’ve been try­ing to fig­ure out a gen­eral rule of thumb to live my life out by.  Through trial and error I’ve come to find out that my life areas work best in groups of 3.

His­tory

There are cer­tain num­bers in the Bible that are con­sid­ered spe­cial. They are: 3, 7, and 40. The num­ber 3 denotes “divine per­fec­tion.” Exam­ples of the num­ber 3 are: Christ was buried and rose in 3 days; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and there’s a lot more.

How it’s applied.

How ironic is it that 3 denotes per­fec­tion and we’re look­ing for the per­fect bal­ance in our lives.  So, this is how it all comes together.

1. I use “3” to define tasks in my life. For exam­ple, I’m an EMT, stu­dent, and intern in my church. My hob­bies con­sist of swim­ming, blog­ging, and wake­board­ing. I keep my to-​​do list to 3 things.

2. Mak­ing deci­sions. 3 days, 30 days, or 3 months. Depend­ing on what kind of deci­sion needs to be made will deter­mine how long to wait but it’s pretty self explana­tory. When asked to take on a new respon­si­bil­ity, wait 3 days. When decid­ing to pur­chase some­thing, wait 30 days. When mak­ing a big/​life chang­ing deci­sion (ie get­ting in a rela­tion­ship, mov­ing out, etc), wait 3 months.

3. Excep­tions. Some deci­sions have to be made split sec­ond, but those are few and far between (like 1 in 100). I’m not say­ing don’t do any­thing more than 3 things.  I can vol­un­teer at the soup kitchen or go run­ning with a friend, but it’s not part of my reg­u­lar routine.

My expe­ri­ence.

July and August were absolutely mis­er­able months for me. I had over­com­mit­ted to numer­ous things and made some rash deci­sions.  There was noth­ing I could do about it once it was set in motion but wait for it to be over.  Now it’s Sep­tem­ber and my life has resumed to it’s nor­mal pace.  All because I’ve incor­po­rated the rule of 3.

Keep­ing things sim­ple and stay­ing focused on only a few things makes a huge dif­fer­ence. Try it for your­self and see how far you can group your life into 3s.

Andrew is a 20-​​something Chris­t­ian who adopted a sim­plis­tic lifestyle after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege and real­iz­ing the van­ity of rush­ing around and all the mate­ri­al­ism of our soci­ety. He wants to squeeze the most out of life and live each day extra­or­di­nar­ily through sim­ple means. Andrew is the author and edi­tor of Live [Sim­ply] Free, and con­tin­ues on the jour­ney of declut­ter­ing and sim­pli­fy­ing his life. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @Andrew_Randazzo.
Andrew Randazzo
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