Joshua Becker's Blog, page 89

How Space Influences What We Buy

Break one cookie into two pieces for a 3-year old, and you’ll be surprised how they react. It’s magical for them, as they see one treat transform into two. More is always more for them—their pleasure has been doubled!

Children around this age are unable to understand conservation. As kids get older, they begin to develop the capacity to understand that taller glasses of water don’t necessarily mean more volume than wider cups. And you can’t cheap out and multiply how many cookies they’re getting by breaking them up, either.

It’s an interesting study in human psychology.

As adults, we can smile at these tricks of the mind. We have learned to reason and critically evaluate much of the world around us. And we’re certainly too smart to fall for these sorts of mind games, aren’t we?

Not so fast.

Despite our experiences and understanding of the world, we still remain fallible to manipulations of perception—but this time, on grander scales.

For example, research has found that we tend to fill our plates no matter how large they are. The bigger the plate, the more the food we add to it. When plates are larger, we tend to underestimate the amount of food present. This, of course, can lead to overeating and weight gain.

When space is available we look to fill it.

This phenomenon is also obvious in our ever-expanding houses. Today’s residences are 61% larger than only 40 years ago. Despite a significant recession in 2008, median home sizes continue to steadily increase.

Many have grabbed the largest home their pre-approved loan will allow and subsequently filled them to the brim with stuff. As a result, the average household now has 300,000 items.

Never before have humans burdened themselves with so much space and so much stuff.

If we are ever going to break this growing trend, we need to get intentional. We ought to think hard about the amount of square footage we decide to own. And we ought to work hard to overcome the tendency to fill all our empty spaces with more and more physical possessions.

Here are three lessons to prevent you from continuing to amass more:

1. Re-examine your values.

If you were to say, “I want to downsize my house” or “I should declutter the garage,” those would be great goals. But they’re not values. Instead, values transcend time and objectives. Values, often times, form the basis for minimalism in our life. But more than that, they inform our specific practice of it.

What do you believe? What’s important to you? What guides your purpose in life or your philosophy of minimalism? And how do you want to be remembered? These are the powerful questions we must face and ask ourselves as minimalists. Who am I, what’s important to me, and does my life’s energy reflect that?

2. Start smaller.

When I embraced minimalism, I tirelessly decluttered our 2,200 square foot home in Vermont. Like most families in America, we had spent years filling every room, every closet, and every empty space. There were countless nooks to sift through, and it took months to pare down our belongings. But eventually, the space felt more open and more empty. We began to envision a life lived in a smaller home.

When we moved to Arizona, we chose a 1,600 square foot home. In so doing, we now save far more money, time, and energy than ever before. We took a risk and never looked back. But we didn’t start with the move first, we started much smaller—decluttering drawers and closets and rooms. Eventually, as we did, we began to discover we needed far less space than we imagined. And when we moved into a smaller home, we felt much less temptation to fill it with things we didn’t need.

3. Recognize fallibility.

Even the best of us get caught up in the drive to amass more space and more stuff. Just look out at the world and you’re apt to see flashy cars and McMansions almost everywhere. It’s human to be fallible, to make mistakes, or get caught up in this rat race of collection. Despite our values, we sometimes purchase and fill when we ought to lean on what’s most important to us.

When this happens, it is important not to punish or demean ourselves, but to return to step one: examine your values. What have you learned about yourself and how can you return to these values? Remember, you cannot change the past, but you can always learn from it.

We will always struggle to accurately judge the amount of stuff we carry throughout our lifespan. Whether it’s a broken cookie or an ever-expanding home full of stuff, our perspectives can be manipulated by the world around us. Society influences us and space affects us.

However, by revisiting our values, starting with small steps, recognizing fallibility, and learning from our past mistakes, we can overcome and counteract many of these tendencies. We should know better by now anyway.

Four Lessons on Money I Learned After Making $1 Million

Please note: This is a guest post from Jeff Goins of Goins Writer.

“I had a million dollars and I spent it all.”

A few years ago, I made a million dollars.

I’m not saying that to brag, I’m just stating it as fact. I never imagined making a million dollars in my life, but I did. And honestly, I expected this accomplishment to make me feel… something. Significant perhaps?

Instead, I was left underwhelmed. Not empty, not fulfilled. Just indifferent. What, I wondered, was behind this feeling?

Around this time, I began to work on my new project which would eventually become Real Artists Don’t Starve, a book about creativity and business and why art and money can go together. So, here I was: writing a book on why money wasn’t a bad thing but not sure I believed my message anymore.

So, I did what I always do when I have questions. I asked my friends for feedback. One person, the preacher who officiated my wedding, wrote and said, “That’s great that you’re not overwhelmed by your own success. But I’m not sure underwhelmed is what I would be feeling if I were you. I think I would feel grateful.”

Oh, yes. Gratitude. That.

What happened over the next couple of years was a series of steps that led me to stop growing my business, focus on the things that really mattered to me, and put money in its proper place.

Money can’t fulfill us

I grew up lower middle class. My parents often fought about money and we were trained to not answer the phone during dinner because that’s when the bill collectors would call. I was afraid of debt and never wanted much money. I just didn’t want to need anything from anyone.

This ambition drove me towards success and before I knew it, I had launched a business helping other writers called Tribe Writers and was making ten times my previous income as a nonprofit marketing director.

Making money became easier for me. And I enjoyed the process. So I did more of it. I set higher goals and achieved them. I reached for more and obtained it. It didn’t feel greedy, more like a game that I wanted to keep winning.

Yes, it was nice to pay off debt and get nicer stuff, but I noticed after a certain point, the more money I made, the less happy it made me. It wasn’t that it made me miserable or anything like that. It just ceased to impact my life.

The research on this is interesting: once you get past a certain income level, more money doesn’t really affect your happiness at all. And after a certain point, it can make your life more difficult and more complicated.

What I learned was just because I was good at something didn’t mean I had to keep doing it. So I decided to stop trying to beat least year’s number.

Money is a better means than master

When he was at the height of his success, Walt Disney received a letter from a critic who implied that Mr. Disney was in the business of making movies just for the money. He replied, “We don’t make films to make money. We make money to make more films.”

For Disney, it wasn’t about the money, but he understood that it cost money—a lot of money—to make the kind of art he cared about making. He had to pay his artists, he had to pay for the film, he had to pay for the actors. It all cost something.

Of course, we understand this. For most of us, money is necessary. We have to buy groceries and pay the mortgage. Certainly, we can minimize our expenses, but money is part of life. What I learned in my very underwhelming year of making a million dollars is that—at least for me—the acquisition of wealth is not enough to drive me. There has to be some bigger picture, some greater vision that I’m trying to obtain.

My friend Stu taught me this when I was feeling disillusioned about my business. Stu is a very successful digital entrepreneur who runs a charity that builds schools in Kenya, and he told me, “Jeff, I stopped making money for myself a long time ago. What drives me today is generating income to build more schools. That’s why I do it.”

After I heard this, I immediately started giving 10% of the gross sales of my business to a fund that gets dibursed to various charities and nonprofits, including organizations like The Hope Effect.

It turns out, though, that money makes a better means than master. What I mean by that is if you’re doing your work to gain more, this is a pursuit that will leave you feeling empty, bored, and disenchanted.

Money is a bad metric for meaning

When I was writing my book Real Artists Don’t Starve, I was able to interview the fourth man who walked on the moon: Alan Bean. At roughly fifty years old, Alan left his career as an astronaut to become a full-time artist.

Everyone thought Alan was crazy. Who walks away from a job at NASA, after all? But he did it, and he ended up doing very well as an artist. As a matter of fact, if you go to Alan’s website right now, you can find his artwork on sale for anywhere from $50,000 to over $400,000.

In my interview with Alan, I made the mistake of saying art must have been Alan’s passion for him to leave his job as an astronaut for it. That’s when he corrected me, saying, “I didn’t leave my job as an astronaut because I had this creative urge. I left because I felt it was my duty to do these paintings to celebrate this great event I was blessed to be part of.”

Alan makes a lot of money off his art. But, like Walt Disney, he doesn’t make art to make money. He makes money to make more art. As a writer, I’ve accepted the fact that I have to make money off my writing if I want to spend most of my time doing it. But honestly, I don’t do it for the royalty checks. I do it, because I have to. It’s my duty.

A final warning

In the book Shoe Dog, Phil Knight wrote about his somewhat sudden success at Nike: “When it came rolling in, the money affected us all. Not much, and not for long, because none of us was ever driven by money. But that’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human being is not to let it.”

This is true. Money affects us all, even when we don’t want it to. I realized this when I started making more money than I ever had. At first, it was fun. And then, it almost became a burden. I started to fear losing things I did not even possess just a few years before.

Finally, I took Phil’s advice and chose to not let money define my days. Like Alan Bean, I went to work because it was my calling, not because I was driven to increase. And at the encouragement of my friend Stu, I started using these resources to play my part in projects that were bigger than me.

And that actually did make me happy.

—

Jeff Goins is a writer who lives in Nashville. His new book Real Artists Don’t Starve teaches creatives how to make a living off their creativity without selling out. Learn more about it at dontstarve.com. You can also visit him at goinswriter.com.

Inspiring Simplicity. Weekend Reads.

Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from it. It requires a conscious decision because it is a countercultural lifestyle that stands against the culture of overconsumption that surrounds us.

The world we live in is not friendly to the pursuit of minimalism. Its tendencies and relentless advertising campaigns call us to acquire more, better, faster, and newer. The journey of finding simplicity requires consistent inspiration.

For that reason, I hope you will make an effort this weekend to find a quiet moment with a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy some of these hand-picked articles to encourage more simplicity in your life.

Baby Boomers are Downsizing — and the kids won’t take the family heirlooms | Boston Globe by  Beth Teitell. In some cases, downsizing seniors understand why their children don’t want the heirlooms they’re trying to pass down, but that doesn’t always make it easier.

The Quote That Finally Changed My Mind on Minimalism | Apartment Therapy by Taryn Williford. There’s more to minimalism than just purging yourself of stuff.

Why Kids Benefit From Fewer Toys | Think About Now by Emily Wade. Good reasons why it is best to keep toys minimal and simple.

An Overlooked Secret to Effectiveness (and Happiness) | Seth Godin by Seth Godin. More might be better for awhile, but sooner or later, it can’t always be better. Diminishing returns are the law, not an exception.

Simplify Magazine —> Issue 001 Happiness.

 

All The Things I Want to Say About Money But Never Do

Recently, I was with a friend who was complaining to me she couldn’t afford to replace her cell phone. We were in her newly purchased Toyota Highlander at the time.

On a separate occasion, an acquaintance of mine was lamenting that he didn’t know where he was going to find the money to buy new soccer cleats for his son this summer. We were enjoying dinner at a nice restaurant.

Similarly, another friend recently told me he was unable to financially donate to The Hope Effect when I asked. He assured me he wanted to help and really wished he could. But they had just put a pool in the backyard and were using every spare dime to pay it off.

Still again, I sat chatting with a friend complaining of the overtime hours he had been putting in at work. They are trying to finally get out from under debt they have been carrying for years. Meanwhile, his Facebook feed brags of the season tickets he had just purchased for his favorite Major League Baseball team.

Each time, I bit my tongue. I wanted to share what was on my mind. But I didn’t.

I was probably wrong in my decision not to speak up. I should have been bold and courageous and stated exactly what I was thinking. “Life is too short to not be honest with people,” somebody once told me. But I didn’t. I chose instead to keep my thoughts to myself.

Maybe I’ll say it here—that one thing about money I always want to say but never do.

I won’t write it here because I think any of those people are reading, but because I know others are. And many of us need to be reminded of this important reality:

You would have more money for the things you want if you stopped foolishly wasting it on other things.

In each case above, the person wanted money, but had already spent it elsewhere. My friend could afford to replace her cell phone if she hadn’t purchased such an expensive car. My other friend could have made significant inroads on their family debt if they hadn’t bought season tickets for the summer. And most of us would have more room for generosity and supporting causes we believe in if consumerism wasn’t so prevalent in us.

When we haphazardly spend money on foolish things, we have less remaining for more important pursuits. (tweet that)

This principle also extends beyond purchasing power.

Through a number of odd circumstances, I happened to spend some significant time talking with the friend of a friend recently. The topic of conversation was stress and anxiety. More specifically, the topic was her anxiety which she attributed to their financial circumstances: a burdensome mortgage, a monthly car payment, and not enough financial margin to feel comfortable.

The reason for the stress and anxiety, seemed to me, was not about the unacquisition of sufficient funds. The reason for the stress and the anxiety was the foolish places where their money was going—too big a house, too fancy a car, and too many unintentional purchases in the past.

They had sacrificed peace and calm for square footage and expensive wheels.

With so many circumstances of life outside our control, doesn’t it make sense we’d work hard to control the ones we can? This reality is especially true when it comes to our financial resources.

Our financial situations certainly vary from person to person. And I fully understand that some people struggle financially because of no fault of their own. But I believe the principle stated above extends to a higher percentage of us than you might think.

The greatest mistake we can make is the assumption that our financial lives are entirely outside of our control. They are not. We decide every day where our money is going to be spent.

Intentionally choosing to spend money on the things we truly want is not always easy. It requires a clear designation of the financial reality we wish was true (our desires) and a clear understanding of the reason it is not (our foolish spending habits).

Depending on your financial goals, the application may look something like this:

I want to get out of debt, I will spend less on eating out.
I want more money for travel, I must spend less on my housing.
I want more financial peace, I need to remove my monthly car payment.
I want more margin for generosity, I must spend less on fashion or furniture or technology.
I want more ___________ so I need to buy less ______________.

What causes us to lose sight of this simple truth? I’m not sure. But none of us are immune from it. Which is probably one of the reasons it is so difficult to articulate when we see it playing out in another person’s life.

Introducing Simplify Magazine

Today I am excited to announce the launch of a new magazine: Simplify.

It is a special project I have been working on with three of the world’s top bloggers focused on intentional living: Brian Gardner of No Sidebar, Tsh Oxenreider of The Art of Simple, and Rebecca Cooper of Simple as That.

Together, we set out to create something that would be helpful, valuable, and beautifully reader-focused. We created Simplify.

Simplify Magazine is a quarterly, digital publication designed to help families focus on the things that matter most.

Each issue focuses on one topic central to the modern family. To explore each topic, we recruit experts in the field to contribute in-depth, long-form articles covering each topic from a variety of angles.

For example, our first issue is focused on Happiness. Contributors include:

—Robert J. Waldinger, American psychiatrist and Professor at Harvard Medical School who directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the world’s longest-running study on adult well-being.

—Gretchen Rubin. Author of the New York Times bestsellers Better Than Before, Happier at Home, and The Happiness Project. She has sold more than two million copies worldwide in over thirty languages.

—Helen Russell. British journalist, author, and speaker. Her worldwide best-selling book, The Year of Living Danishly, chronicles her story uncovering the secrets of the world’s happiest country.

—Denaye Barahona. Clinical social worker with a specialty in Child and Family Practice, a Ph.D. in Child Development, and a Post-Grad Certificate in Behavior Analysis of Children. She has spent her career working with parents who deal with challenging behavior in children.

—Other contributors to our Happiness issue include: Joshua Becker, Erin Loechner, & Brian Gardner.

Upcoming issues of Simplify Magazine focus on:

Issue 002.   Health and Wellness (September 01)
Issue 003.   Stress and Overwhelm (December 01)
Issue 004.   Declutter and Owning Less (March 01, 2018)
Issue 005.   Technology (June 01, 2018)

Simplify is a subscription-based publication that does not accept paid advertisements. Rather than ad-supported, it is reader-focused. We designed it to be an intentionally simple, enjoyable reading experience.

To sample the new magazine, we are offering the first issue for free—with no obligation. Check it out, see if you like it. If you do, subscribe to receive future issues delivered directly to your inbox.

Read the magazine as you prefer: 1) Download the .pdf, or 2) Read articles directly on the Simplify website. The choice is yours.

After the free issue, an annual subscription to the magazine costs $20 (that’s 4 issues). Or you can order individual issues for $6 directly through the website.

—

A VERY SPECIAL OFFER: To celebrate the magazine’s launch, we are offering a Lifetime Charter Subscription to subscribers in the first 30 days. If you subscribe to Simplify Magazine before June 30, you will receive a lifetime subscription for only $20.

For the same price as an annual membership, you will receive forever access to every future issue of the magazine! Consider it our gift to you for being an early supporter of our work.

Check out Simplify Magazine now.

Minimalism Means Adventure

Note: This is a guest post from Robin Shliakhau of Simplify and Pursue.

“Life is either a great adventure or nothing.” —Helen Keller

Many people discover minimalism at a breaking point in life. The house is too cluttered, the schedule is too chaotic, their health is failing, their weight hit a number they didn’t think it would ever reach, or their finances are in shambles.

These breaking points are often the result of a life lived in excess. Too much spending, too much eating, too sedentary lifestyle, too many commitments, too much stuff. The breaking point also seems to come from an aimless drifting through life—waking up one day with things we don’t want, deep in debt, or spending time on activities that do not bring us joy.

Minimalism is about “less” and “more.” But it is more than that. A life with less clutter, less distraction, and less aimlessness brings about more clarity, focus, and time to enjoy more adventure.

Once the clutter is cleared, debt is paid off, health is put back in priority, and greater intentionality has been chosen, lives open up for new pursuits. And what we find on the other side of this reorienting and minimizing is opportunity to choose the things that truly matter to us.

“Adventure” can be any number of pursuits that will inevitably vary from person to person. But it is almost always birthed when our natural talents and passions have room to flourish.

This is why minimalism means adventure. By simplifying our lives and reducing excess, minimalism provides room for our natural talents and passions to thrive.

Consider some of these common “adventures” that minimalism opens the door to:

Business

I love listening to how entrepreneurs began their businesses. Sometimes they’re tired of giving 40 hours a week to someone else’s dream. For some, it’s a side hustle that truly brings them joy or they want to make something with their hands and bring beauty and quality goods for consumers. For others, it’s offering a service. Regardless of their motivation, minimalism makes way for small businesses to thrive.

Travel

Rarely do you meet someone who doesn’t have some travel aspirations. Minimalism often frees up resources and time to make those cultural dreams comes true. Single or married, kids or no kids, travel becomes more possible being a minimalist. Some even combine the desire to travel and the new lifestyle of living with less to travel more full time.

Continuing Education

Maybe you didn’t graduate or you did, but always wanted to apply for that PhD program. Or maybe there are skills for your job that you’d love to develop further. Learning is a lifelong endeavor, minimalism may just allow you to take that leap and enhance the knowledge you already have.

Learning New Skills

Whether it’s learning a language or graphic design or taking a photography class, there are countless new things for us to learn. When we’ve narrowed down what truly matters, our attention and time can be directed at furthering our knowledge and understanding of the world.

New Interests

Say goodbye to countless hours spent in front of the TV. Minimalism can open up the time and freedom to pursue more enjoyable and fulfilling ways of relaxing. Sometimes it takes getting rid of 99% of our hobby stuff to unearth what it is we love to do.

Old Hobbies

As mentioned, sometimes when we purge our hobby materials we discover what we did and didn’t enjoy. There could be an old hobby—in my case hiking—that may be returned to a place of importance. This time around you’ll go in knowing you only need what is essential and not amass all the things associated with it. Your new or renewed interests could be anything from running, playing an instrument, knitting, painting, hiking, writing, etc.

Seek Experiences

Once we take the time to purge our home, we become more careful about what we bring in. Accumulating stuff is no longer the subconscious goal in life, but something we guard against. Seek new experiences like attending concerts or plays, visiting historical or natural locations. Experiences are memories that last a lifetime without cluttering up our home.

Health

Minimalism has a way of putting areas of life back in priority. Health can be one of those. Pursuing better health can be a very enjoyable adventure. Recently, I combined my need to workout regularly with my love of nature and have been trail running. Finding something you love to do will benefit you not only physically, but mentally as well. Activities like running, yoga,  or swimming can also open up new relationships and community.

Healthier eating and cooking are important for health as well. Tastes change with age and with the globalization of markets, we can find incredibly healthy foods and ways of preparing them in enjoyable and satisfying ways that was not possible years ago.

Relationships

When we greatly minimize our stuff, more time opens up. Putting that time into deeper relationships with our spouse, children, or friends is not something we ever regret. Spending time with those we cherish leads to deeper, more intimate and fulfilling connections and some of the most rewarding moments of our lives.

Volunteer

While minimalism often starts from a need to purge the excess, this leads to a deeper and broader look at not only our lives, but the world. Richard Foster says, “By culturing lives of simplicity, we multiply our opportunities to make an impact for good on the world around us.” Some minimalists choose to give back both financially and through service by volunteering and even starting or working for non-profit organizations.

Several years ago, I hit the breaking point I mentioned earlier. For us, our home and schedule was overwhelming. After an initial purge of possessions and taking a deeper look at our schedules, mindset, and beliefs, we continued to simplify our lives in a variety of ways.

Since then, our journey has included many adventures including some of the aspects mentioned above that I believe would not have taken place had we not had the significant change of lifestyle that was brought on by minimalism. We’ve traveled to other countries as a family, started side businesses, gone on volunteer trips, and have the time for interests that bring joy and relaxation to our lives.

Sometimes we need to shift our focus from what we’re cutting out of our lives or what we’re saying no to and look to what we’re making space for. Oprah Winfrey once said, “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”

Make space today to live the life of your dreams.

***

Robin Shliakhau blogs at Simplify and Pursue where she helps others simplify their life and home in order to pursue relationships, dreams, and goals. You can also find her on Facebook.

Inspiring Simplicity. Weekend Reads.

Never underestimate the importance of removing stuff you don’t need.

Encouragement provides us with motivation to persevere. It invites us to dream dreams of significance for our lives. And it begs us to work diligently with optimism and promise.

Overcoming the pull of consumerism is a difficult challenge regardless of our stage in life. Simplicity requires encouragement. To that end, I hope you will find motivation in these articles below.

Each post was intentionality chosen to inspire simplicity in your life. For maximum effect, find a quiet moment this weekend and enjoy them with a fresh cup of coffee or tea.

Eighteen Summers: It’s All We Get | Simple As That by Rebecca Cooper. I know what I must do. I must make every single summer count. All eighteen of them, because it’s not a lot.

No couch, one car: How these Minnesotans are living with less | Star Tribune by Allie Shah. The minimalist revolution has led some Minnesotans to shed possessions and embrace a no-frills life.

12 Things Minimalists Wish You’d Stop Spending Money On | Reader’s Digest by Marissa Laliberte. Owning more stuff than you can use doesn’t just waste money, it fosters procrastination and increases feelings of anxiety. Break the cycle with these tips.

Shopping Online Is Easy, 5 Ways To Make It Harder & Save Instead | Forbes by Joshua Becker. Online retailers are juiced up, 24/7 machines — on-demand and always ready. Previous areas of resistance have been meticulously obliterated.

How To Live A Minimalistic Life With Kids | The Alternative Daily by Susan Patterson. After raising my children with a spirit of minimalism, I feel like I am in a good position to share some of my tips. Here is what I have learned.

5 Signs You Need a Technology Detox

When I grew up, idle time was spent reading, playing baseball with my neighbors, or tracking mud into the house. My parents consciously and constantly encouraged me to “be outside” and not “sit there” in front of the TV.

However, with the advent of smartphones and ever-present Internet access, I adapted. I purchased phones and computers, started websites and embraced social media. This ability to change is good. We continue making livings and feel connected with our current culture by participating.

But adaptation sometimes has unintended consequences.

As I type these words, my phone is silenced and turned over. Despite trying to avoid notifications and create a distraction-free zone, I am pulled towards it. It is, after all, sitting right next to me.

Its power remains—even if I don’t respond to the device. My brain shouts that there are unexpected joys and pleasant moments possible if I would only embrace the device and press the screen alive.

What news, messages, loves, and likes might I be missing?

Of course, opening my smartphone now would prevent me from writing these words. I might swim in the infinite Internet of news, posts, articles, and comments—losing track of time or intention.

I’ve done it before. Far too many times.

Setting my sights on an individual, meaningful news article, clicking a link within the content, and then searching through other stories the company personally recommends for me. The “suggested articles” never end.

Before I know it, 20 to 30 minutes is gone. Never to be regained again.

Companies have become incentivized to keep your attention for longer and longer periods of time. Google, Twitter, and Facebook employ teams of psychologists and human-computer interaction experts to find ways to modify behavior and hook you. Thirty minutes of your time—of billions of people’s—makes the marketers happy.

Tristan Harris, formerly a Design Ethicist at Google, talks about this as a consequence of the “attention economy.” And if companies have their way, we’ll be watching even more cat videos, sharing “shocking” stories, and commenting to “outrage.” Our personalities are invested in these processes now.

Taking a break, minimizing distractions, and embracing simplicity is difficult in today’s world. Most of us aren’t ready to ditch our smartphones or social media, the isolation isn’t worth the departure. Nor is avoiding technology entirely the answer.

Many of us seem to be struggling to moderate and balance technology use.

Here are Five Signs You Need a Technology Detox

1. You spend more time than intended.

Technology can be like quicksand, sticky and challenging to escape. Haven’t we have all gotten hooked after one article and stayed for another article, comment, or share? If you clicked on this article through Facebook, you might have accounted about 5-10 minutes of time. But what if you continued scrolling down your Facebook news feed afterwards? Before you know it, you’ve spent 15-20 minutes mindlessly scrolling. By setting intentional blocks of your schedule for checking, you might gain an awareness for your use and find ways to contain it.

2. You feel guilt/dissatisfaction afterwards.

When I eat a bag of chips, I immediately feel the salt on my tongue. Eventually, the saltiness dulls and oils remain. The residue remains on my fingertips. But when I overeat on these empty calories, I feel dissatisfied. Technology use has a similar reward-regret curve. Each site and article provides a little nugget of instant gratification. Too many, and I’m inclined to regret this use of time. Reflection is the best medicine for examining how you move forward in the world. If you’re filled with negative emotions, it might be time to ask, was that “time well spent?”

3. You are motivated by a fear of missing out.

My event invitations, messages, and updates from friends and friendly make it crystal clear: I don’t have a fear of missing out, as I’m always missing out on something. I’ve grown to embrace this truism. It’s freeing. There’s always more we can participate in, but time is limited and being more busy is not the answer. Minimalism is attractive to so many because, at its heart, it is about intentionally finding ways to embrace that which gives us meaning, while removing the distractions that keep us from it. We don’t have unlimited space or time or energy. And the sooner we own this reality, the sooner we’ll focus on what matters.

4. You experience urges to check.

Researchers have found interruptions lead to major delays in the completion of projects. On average, study participants took about 23 minutes to get back on task after a distraction. Potentially, that “important” email could mean 23 minutes from what’s meaningful. From phantom vibrations to wondering whether the screen just flashed on, the motivation to check our phones is one of the strongest adaptations. Proactive preventions from checking might help. For instance, you might choose to turn your phone off when socializing with loved ones or putting it on a do-not-disturb mode.

5. You never have enough time in your day.

Recently, I installed a little application (Moment) on my smartphone to track use. What I found still haunts me. I picked up my phone about 40 times, and spent nearly two hours working on emails, checking media, and text messaging. While some of that was purposeful work, distractions clearly continue to get me. At the end of days, it’s not uncommon to feel incredibly busy. This busyness and stress is real, but if you were to reduce smartphone usage, might it help you feel more calm and available for what matters?

Despite conscious efforts to minimize material goods, information and technology can weasel its way in, pushing out what matters. Taking intentional efforts to reduce your technology use might free up far more time than you realize for the things that matters most.

And isn’t that really the goal of all this? To live a life that matters.

Five Better Ways to Measure Your Life

Note: This is a guest post from Lisa Avellan of Simple and Soul. 

This world is obsessed with measuring up. Research shows we are exposed to thousands of advertising messages every day—and hidden inside each of those ads is a mistruth: “You don’t measure up until you buy our product.”

Ad agencies are good. Real good. They know how to sneak into our psyches and change the story we tell ourselves. Before long our brains begin to believe their lie—that our lives can be measured by what we buy, wear, drive, and live in. And while their bottom line bursts at the seams, the consumer is broke—financially and otherwise.

Measuring up is breaking us up.

This NY Times article from 2008—written during the Great Recession—shows how powerful a slogan like, “Live Richly” can be. It even contributed to the housing bubble that negatively impacted so many lives.

“It’s very difficult for one advertiser to come to you and change your perspective,” said Sendhil Mullainathan, an economist at Harvard who has studied persuasion in financial advertising. “But as it becomes socially acceptable for everyone to accumulate debt, everyone does.”

Everyone does it, so that makes it okay. As a culture, we begin to measure our lives by the things we can buy, because others are buying it too.

The simple life is not immune to these advertisements. And we aren’t immune to the struggle of measuring our life by standards that contradict the way of simplicity. The nature of today’s world, being in constant reach of advertising through screens and print, demands our intentionality of focus on the true measures of life.

Designing a simple life invites us to measure our lives differently. We realize as we pare down that we don’t have to keep up. We don’t have to buy, borrow, upgrade, or upsize to secure our place in the world.

I need reminders often that my worth isn’t found by the world’s measuring stick. I get to define my own success, and live a meaningful and abundant life.

You do too. Try these new measurements for size, and simplify.

5 Better Ways to Measure Your Life

1. Gratitude.

With a measure of gratitude, you gain the world. When you are grateful for what you already have, you don’t need more. Gratitude is always enough.

This perspective is a shield to the thousands of messages of ‘not enough’ we hear every day. Gratitude turns what we have into enough. We don’t need to have those shoes, that device, or and that new car.

2. Generosity.

“To measure the man, measure his heart.” Malcolm Forbes once said.

A great gift of simple living is the freedom to give. The infinite freedoms available when we design a life of less allows for infinite ways to be generous. Whether it’s with our time, money, talents, hospitality, donations, or airline miles—when the measuring stick of things ends, generosity keeps growing.

3. Contentment

Advertisers bank on the public’s perpetual discontent. In fact, they create much of our discontent through their stealth word play and product development. It’s evident in the lines outside Apple stores days before the next iPhone is released, which has just enough new capabilities to make the previous model obsolete in the eyes of the consumer.

Contentment is not the satisfaction of want; it’s the pursuit of having enough. And it invites an unmistakable freedom into our lives.

4. Availability

Bob Goff is known for his fun and whimsical personality. He famously put his personal cell phone number in the back of a NYT bestselling book, and he expects and answers calls. He makes himself available.

He also says he plans his calendar nine months and one day in advance, no further, in case he is to be become a grandfather.  His purpose is to be available.

Busyness is no way to measure a life. Busy is a thief. It’s a phantom measure of worth and success and it will never get as much done as availability will. Remain available. Learn to say no, and measure your life by the things you get to say yes to.

5. Purpose

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” Ralph Waldo Emerson is quoted as once saying.

If we pay too close attention to how the world measures life we will never understand the difference that our life, our one life, can make. Simplicity of home, time, and character magnifies the very things we were designed for—it points us to the significance of who we are.

We are purposed for much more than our net worth and closet size. Simplify and live well.

The Great Recession of 2008 changed us. More and more people are looking for a new way, a simple way to live. As advertisers revamp their messages toward this post-recession culture, we can redefine the measure by which we live. It helps to remember the best things in life can’t be pitched in thirty second ads.

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Lisa Avellan blogs at Simple and Soul where she inspires and equips others to live with intention. You can also find her on Facebook.

Inspiring Simplicity. Weekend Reads.

Fill your life with stories to tell, not stuff to show.

The simplicity/minimalism movement is a beautiful community. And I enjoy any opportunity to promote writing that encourages people to live more by owning less.

So fix yourself a nice warm cup of coffee or tea. Find a quiet moment this weekend. And enjoy some encouraging words to inspire more simplicity in your life today.

10 Rules to Help You Live with Less Stuff | Be More with Less by Courtney Carver. When you let go of what doesn’t matter you can give more of yourself to what does.

How Billionaires Stole My Mind | Raptitude by David Cain. From the designer’s end, nothing is accidental about your morning phone habit.

Here’s How I (Painlessly!) Purged 80 Percent of My Closet | Apartment Therapy by Marlen Komar. “This is the story of how I stopped punishing myself with crap clothes, and slowly but surely did away with the majority of my wardrobe.”

I Planned My Wedding in 5 Days. You Could, Too. | The New York Times by Emily Hardman. With each social expectation for weddings, I asked myself: “Does this achieve the goal of making the people at my wedding feel loved and appreciated for the role they play in my life? Will it help strengthen my marriage and the promises we made to each other?” If the answer was no, I didn’t waste any more time.