By Leo Babauta

A lot of people right now are feeling like they just can’t keep up with everything — it’s just too much.

And it feels like the pace of everything we have to keep up with is accelerating. There’s more and more, and it’s coming at us faster and faster.

Technology is like fuel to the fire: more never-ending feeds, and quick replies to messages and emails means there’s too much to reply to.

What if we simply refused to try to keep up with it all?

What if we rejected the premise that we need to keep up? It’s an impossible game, and we don’t have to play it.

Here’s a new game: feel joy in letting yourself fall behind!

This game is about choosing what matters, and letting the rest fall off. It’s about recognizing that not everything is important, and not everything can be done or responded to.

This game is about choosing a slower information processing metabolism. Instead of trying to consume the firehose of information coming at us, we can take a bite at a time. And then give ourselves some room to digest it. Read and work through a book for a month, and really let it sink into your bones. Learn one tool or process more deeply, so that it can actually change you.

This game is about choosing a small part of the world to care about, instead of trying to keep up with the entire world.

This is about simplifying: choosing what you want to be close to.

And then letting yourself fall behind, gloriously, on everything else!

Allow the rest to pass you by, like watching a storm pass.

The practice that is central to this is letting go. When a new fad comes out, remind yourself that you don’t need to participate. When everyone else is hyping a new AI tool or cryptocurrency, remind yourself that you don’t need to get into it. When there’s a mass of great new articles coming out, tell yourself you don’t need to read them.

The game is about finding the Joy of Missing Out (JOMO). What a luxurious thing it is, to NOT participate! Let entire cultural phenomena pass you by, and gift yourself with the spaciousness that brings.