Streamlining Your Life: A 5-Point Plan for Uncomplicated Living [Paperback]

Stephanie Culp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1991

A 5-point plan offering quick and practical solutions to life's biggest problems.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Personal organization should be about the way you live your life, not just how you manage your time. This book can help you evaluate your lifestyle and guide you through the adjustments necessary to streamline your life so you can live the way you want to, not the way you have to. Stephanie Culp, a seasoned time-management consultant, teaches how to prioritize and plan our obligations, and adjusting our workload accordingly. If you find yourself scrambling for spare time for your family, your relaxation or yourself, you might take the time to read this book. -- From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by SH

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Curbing Perfectionism
Perfectionists suffer from the mistaken belief that everything in life needs to be perfect-from the color of the walls in their house, to the typeface on their stationery and the way each postage stamp is precisely affixed to all outgoing mail. Persnickety and compulsive, the perfect person can't possibly do anything simply and quickly. Projects-large and small, personal or professional-get put on hold, as the perfect person struggles to find the time to make every little thing just so. While perfectionists work to get everything just so, very little actually gets done, and life starts passing them by.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Writers Digest Books; 1st edition (September 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898794625
• ISBN-13: 978-0898794625
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,212,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book which can be life changing, August 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Streamlining Your Life: A 5-Point Plan for Uncomplicated Living (Paperback)

This book is not only packed with helpful insights on how to de-clutter and simplify your life, it can also remarkably instill the motivation and encouragement to actually put into practice the advice which the author gives. First of all, it's very easy to read and concise, cutting right to the chase (an especially important feature for those who have little time and patience in the first place!). Written in mostly outline format, Streamlining Your Life gives many dozens of specific examples of common, needless timewasters, and compelling reasons to eliminate them. For readers who may be somewhat compulsive, and set in their ways, Stephanie offers firm and serious encouragement to first recognize, and then dispense with unnecessary and wasteful tasks that are so easily done everyday without thinking. Several of the recommendations in this book may seem so obvious, they may hardly appear worth pointing out. But somehow, seeing this advice written down, and in such a no-nonsense fashion, it's like getting the permission some of us have been subconsciously waiting for to eliminate the time-wasting and money-wasting habits we have been bound to for much of our lives. One of the many helpful suggestions Stephanie gives is that whenever we are considering buying an item, we should always keep in mind that every item we bring into our home requires some amount of recurring action on it. Whether it be cleaning, maintaining, dusting, and/or repairing, and (less of the time) actually using. Even for things that we rarely will ever use, if it is in our possesion, it still will require storing, and at some point repacking, moving, and re-storing (or selling). This becomes a sobering realization, when we fess up to how pressed some of us really feel most of the time, and how little we can afford to have yet more time requirements heaped upon us. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It just may change your life for the better as it did mine.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a self-help book that is truely useful!, November 29, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (St. Paul, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Streamlining Your Life: A 5-Point Plan for Uncomplicated Living (Paperback)

Stephanie Culp's "Streamlining Your Life (A 5-point plan for uncomplicated living)" is one of the most useful self-help books ever written. Much of the advice for organizing your life (which covers everything from processing junk mail to reviewing relationships) is pure common sense presented in a straightforward, no-nonsense style that is entertaining as well as enlightening.

Once a person begins to follow the author's suggestions, they will wonder why they put up with their old ways of doing things for so long. This book is positively liberating!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When Life Seems Overwhelming..., December 23, 2005

By 

Virginia Allain "(retired librarian)" (Poinciana, FL) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Streamlining Your Life: A 5-Point Plan for Uncomplicated Living (Paperback)

If you are ready for a change, read Streamlining Your Life by Culp. It's not just timesaving tips and how to plan, it wants you to adjust your attitude. The chapter titled "Eliminate..." makes you think about the excesses in your life. We don't have to have everything, do everything, be everything to others.
Here are the five points that is the basis for her plan:
*Rethink what "having it all" really means
*Prioritize and plan goals and obligations
*Eliminate excess in your life
*Organize what's important to you
*Create systems that take care of themselves