Those who know me well (and they are not many) get the picture over time that I am a bone-deep minimalist. Few things make me happier than discovering one more thing I can live happily without.

I may be one of the very very few who neither bought, nor received, a single present this Christmas; in saying that, I could not be happier.

The argument for this state is as follows (bear with me here): if I need something I will buy it. If I do not have it, it's because I do not need it, because if I did, I would buy it. Therefore, if I don't have something, don't buy it for me as a Xmas present because I don't need it... otherwise I would have bought it for myself.

It's rather a circular argument, but you get the picture. My friends tolerate me good-naturedly.

In these frenetic days of being overloaded with tasks to accomplish and bombarded with information from cell phones, email, internet and the media, concentrating on a single task from start to completion is surely a skill to be coveted.

Yet, many people I meet are proud of their ability to multitask. I often see them rushing round like crazy, yelling into the cell phone glued to their ear, and (I suspect) not getting very much done at the end of the day. They seem so sure that the quality of each single task is not being compromised as they juggle a number of them, that I am tempted to enquire if they would equally claim that multitasking is possible while making love.

I readily admit I cannot multitask, nor do I even try. It may be a gender thing (in my experience women tend to believe they multitask better than men), or age-related (when my father was my age he had already died once). Instead I single-task; focusing on one important task at one time until it is done.

I am not easily distracted, and find it simple to ignore emails, text messages and all else and focus my whole attention on a single task until it is completed. I work best that way and have noticed that the quality of my work improves when I do so; plus, I stay saner and avoid repeatedly having to regain the thread of my thought in the face of constant interruption.

I might refer to this as; Do a thing completely, drop it, and walk on (to the next task).

Living as long as I have has enabled me to learn a number of things. One of them is; differentiate between the essential and the non-essential. What are the things I really need to do in order to live the way I want and be the person I want to be... and what are those I can safely avoid? The state I seek is simplicity.

My wife is a prime example; one essential requirement of her life is that every day she must have a run, simply because a day without a run is not a day she thinks is worth living. To ensure that nothing occurs to cause her to miss that run, she schedules it for first thing each morning.

When I was no more than seven or eight years old, our class was visited by an art teacher from the nearby secondary. He walked in with a large block of sandstone and informed the class he was about to make a sculpture of a tiger. Apparently at random, he proceeded to chop large chips off the block with a hammer and chisel.

After some minutes, still with a shapeless sandstone lump in front of him, he looked up at the class and asked if any of us knew what he was doing. With the certainty of youth I piped up, "You're cutting off all the bits that don't look like a tiger."

He burst out laughing, but seemed pleased at my response.

Looking back over the intervening years I can see that I have done the same with my life: identifying the essential bits and chopping off the rest. Of course, it is forever a work in progress, but I'm getting there.

In eliminating the non-essential, I reveal the core values as well as the space in which to create the life I want to live. To do the same, it might be a good idea to write down the 4-5 things you just have to have in your life. Among them could be: time to spend with your family, time for running/fitness, travel and so on.

For example, I don't understand those who are always looking forward to the next holiday period. Why would you want a holiday from your life?

I believe, do what you love and the rewards will come. Of course those rewards might not always be financial, but for one thing you will not be in urgent need of a holiday to get away: your day-to-day life will become something to enjoy and not something to escape from.

Once you know what those 4-5 essential ingredients of your life are, see what habits you need to cultivate to make them happen.

My wife wants to run daily, so - no excuse - the alarm in our house rings early and she is out running while the rest of the country turns over in bed for five more sweet minutes of repose before their daily havoc begins. Running is such a vital part of her life that she never asks, should I run today? To her, that is as ludicrous a question as asking, should she breathe.

Since I know that many reading this have already brought running into their lives, perhaps they should now encourage those friends who wish they too could find the time to train. It could be they just need to be shown what they can eliminate to create the needed space.

At the same time, never stop looking around to see what else you can jettison unneeded from your own life.

A quote from Saint-Exupery puts it best; "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more that can be taken away."

Enjoy your running in 2009.

johnwalsh42195@yahoo.it