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I keep my apartment and bicycle keys hooked to a thin wallet from abrAsus.
I’ve defined minimalism as (1) reducing our necessary items to a minimum, and (2) doing away with excess so we can focus on the things that are truly important to us.
You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. —TYLER DURDEN, FIGHT CLUB
Danshari, the art of de-cluttering, discarding, and parting with your possessions The “simple life” Working and thinking like a nomad
Variances or changes are necessary for people to recognize stimuli. This is why we often find ourselves unhappy after we’ve owned something for a while. Although we initially had a desire for it, our brain recognizes a lack of this variance once we get used to having it. The novelty of the new stimulus wears off, and the item becomes a part of our lives that we now take for granted. Without that variance, we eventually get sick and tired of it.
If a £500 ring really could bring us five times the joy of a £100 ring, money and possessions would ensure lasting happiness. But no matter how rich you become, no matter how many things you own, the joy from all your things won’t be much different from how you feel now.
And then we develop a desire to have something else—a different stimulus, something more expensive for greater impact. We want more stimuli and continue to acquire more and more.
Our possessions are supposed to be our tools. They were used for such purposes during the Stone Age. As time went by, our world became plentiful, and objects began to be used for another purpose: to enable us to affirm our own worth.
All these things eventually turn on us; we become slaves to our belongings, forced to spend time and energy caring for them. We lose ourselves in our possessions. Our tools become our masters.
We tend to prefer the path of least resistance. Discarding something requires effort, and leaving it as is would definitely be the easy choice. But if we keep putting off the work of minimizing, we’ll eventually end up surrounded by too much.
Once I decided to go minimalist, I scanned all my prints on ScanSnap, as well as the letters I’d received from people over the years, and made everything digital. It’s now easy to see them on my computer if the mood strikes, and with the dates and places included in the names of the folders, the materials make sense chronologically. And by backing everything up in cloud storage, I can access my precious albums wherever I may be in the world.
Let go of “someday.” Things we don’t need now will probably never be needed.
Holding on to things from the past is the same as clinging to an image of yourself in the past. If you’re the least bit interested in changing anything about yourself, I suggest you be brave and start letting things go. Leave only the items that you need moving forward from this very moment.
The simple method of touching objects and leaving only the things that spark joy can be very useful.
When your entire neighborhood is your floor plan, the possibilities will be endless.
Discard any possessions that you can’t discuss with passion.
The more you like your possessions, the more knowledgeable you’ll become on the brands and their backgrounds. There is a sense of wonder to things that we truly value.
A key way to gauge your passion for something you own is to ask yourself, “If I were to somehow lose this, would I want to buy it again at full price?”
Be social; be a borrower.
A friend of mine buys a lot of clothes but makes a point of saving all the tags in a bag. He wears his clothes for one season and then he sells them at auction, together with the tags he’s saved. With the tags, he can sell his goods at better prices, sometimes for more than he bought them for. He tells me that he considers his clothes “rented from the stores,” and when it comes time to “return” them, he sells them to someone else.
I think it’s much more beautiful to focus on your gratitude toward that person as you say a final goodbye to what they gave you. That strong sense of appreciation will remain etched inside us, even after the item is gone, and that’s what’s really important.
The American poet Allen Ginsberg once observed that if you pay twice as much attention to your rug, it’ll mean the same thing as owning two rugs. The number of possessions you have has no relevance to the level of satisfaction that you’ll get from them.
We feel greater satisfaction when we own and treasure one irreplaceable coffee cup than we do when we have two or three mugs that we aren’t particularly crazy about. Reducing the number of items that we own does not reduce our satisfaction.
2: Find your unique uniform. Steve Jobs always wore the same clothes: a black turtleneck by Issey Miyake, Levi’s 501s, and a pair of New Balance sneakers, which even served as his attire for public presentations. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg seems to be fond of a gray T-shirt. Einstein is said to have always worn the same type of jacket. These people took the time that others spend on choosing clothes and chasing trends and turned their attention instead to the things that mattered most to them.
Minimalism is freedom—the sooner you experience it, the better.
For a minimalist, the objective isn’t to reduce, it’s to eliminate distractions so they can focus on the things that are truly important. Minimalism is just the beginning. It’s a tool.
The film director Tom Shadyac said simply, “In other words, we’re no good as we are.”
Conversely, if we’re constantly thinking that we’re missing something in our lives, we’ll feel as if all those messages are directed straight at us. If we start to contemplate every one of those messages, we’ll never have enough time to do anything. Minimalism is built around the idea that there’s nothing that you’re lacking.
The qualities I look for in the things I buy are (1) the item has a minimalist type of shape, and is easy to clean; (2) its color isn’t too loud; (3) I’ll be able to use it for a long time; (4) it has a simple structure; (5) it’s lightweight and compact; and (6) it has multiple uses.
I’ll go into detail later but it’s amazing how cleaning time is reduced when you keep things minimal. You’ll have fewer things to leave lying around. Own fewer clothes and you’ll be doing less laundry, and you’ll also be wasting less time trying to decide what to wear.
Even pleasant people will turn negative if they’re too busy and don’t have the luxury of time on their hands.
that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
We can begin to be content with ourselves and feel plenty of happiness by simply going about our daily lives, appreciating the present moment.
The very act of living brings me joy.
It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. —TYLER DURDEN, FIGHT CLUB
because I’ve stopped taking part in that rat race of never-ending comparison and accumulation.
I help crowdfund projects that I think are interesting.
Gratitude becomes possible only when you don’t have many possessions. I’ve even become grateful for having a roof over my head that protects me from the wind and the rain.
Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky says that 50 percent of our happiness is genetically determined, 10 percent by life circumstances and situations, and the remaining 40 percent by our daily actions.
