Minimalism vs. Simplicity

A few weeks ago, I read the free preview of the book "The Art of Being Minimalist" by Everett Bogue and liked it enough that I felt it worth it to pay the $17 to buy the full version - which meant I got the second half of the book not included in the preview.

The big idea of the book that got it started was when Everett thought that since people can typically only keep track of 150 or so people in their social circle, they probably can only keep track of about 150 possessions. The book goes into reason you want to live a minimalist life and how to do that with your possessions, time, attention, and a little about how to make money in minimalist ways.

The book had a lot of good info and ideas - such as if you have so much stuff you have to pay for extra storage, you need to get rid of some of it. You should also minimize your interruptions as much as possible (either don't read Twitter or only read it in scheduled batches). Some of the ideas I read there are no way I could do. For example, he suggests getting rid of your car and moving to a bicycle-friendly city and reducing your possessions to the point that everything you own can fit in a backpack. I have a feeling my wife and daughter would NOT be happy with those changes.

After long thought about it, I decided that being minimalist is not for me. I want to be a person who lives a life based on simplicity. Here's the difference, I think. Minimalism means trimming everything out of your life that isn't necessary. Live a minimal life. That is too drastic for me, and I'd imagine too drastic for most people.

Simplicity means getting rid of anything in your life that is over-complicating it. Examples: movies you don't watch, music you don't listen to, stuff that you don't use and just spend time cleaning, dusting, storing and organizing every month. If you aren't getting any use or pleasure out of an object, get rid of it!

There are multiple books out there that at their core are about simplicity: Peter Walsh's book "It's All Too Much", FlyLady's work, and even David Allen mentions it briefly toward the beginning of his best-known book "Getting Things Done."

Put down the computer once a week!

It's turning out one of the hardest goals I have set for myself is once a week, don't do anything on the computer outside of work.

As soon as I decided on one day I was going to make that my "no computer" day, I started thinking of all kinds of things I wanted to do: email friends, check Facebook, do some programming and on and on.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with this info. It seems as soon as I decide I want to cut back or remove something from my life, something in my decides it *needs* whatever that thing was. And I end up coming up with excuses why I need that thing.

Looking back at when I actually succeeded at doing this, I feel the solution is to replace whatever I'm trying to remove with something else. The biggest success I've had with this was back in college when I tried to stop playing video games for 30 days.

I decided to spend the time really digging into learning Unix-based operating systems (namely FreeBSD and Linux) better. I actually found myself telling a friend that I was going to go back to my apartment and "play FreeBSD."

August 2010 Goals

Within the last two weeks, I've hit a couple huge goals I had set for myself. One hundred and twenty days in a row (120!) of working out every day and of doing some kind of programming every day outside of work.

Once hitting this, I have decided to take a new course in my goals. Instead of working out every day, I have heard it is best to give your body one day of rest every week. So I have decided to have the goal of working out at least 5 times a week - one day of rest and one day of just in case something comes up. I am kicking up the intensity with the Couch To 5k program with the help of the C2 5k iPhone app on my iPod Touch.

As for the doing programming every day, I have decided to alter that a little, as sometimes it takes a while to learn something well enough to write any code that is worth it. So my idea is to at least 5 days a week make some kind of progress on a side project or business. Be it programming, blogging, learning how to be a better programmer, or anything similar.

I have also decided that I'm going to read one good book on spiritual growth this month. Being a Christian that area of my life has been sadly neglected.

Last of all, I have decided that I live like there is no life without computers and I want to get away from that a little bit. Every night I have been doing email, Facebook, Twitter, computer games, or some combination of all of them or similar activities. Once a week, I will take a night and not touch a computer outside of work - with the exception of if my wife wants to watch a movie or TV show via streaming video. Obviously that night is not tonight.

Taskpaper for the iPhone

- buy Taskpaper for my iPod Touch @done(2010-02-23)

Would have done it sooner but I just received the email announcement.

I've got DERI on my calendar

At the beginning of this year, I have some goals I want to accomplish. I've not been very good about making things happen in previous years. I read about an idea I decided to try. Decide what you can do each day in order to make your goals happen and do a little each day. I've also found that if I have too many goals, I tend not to do any of them. If I keep to a few, it becomes much more doable. Five major goals seems to be about my limit.

Here's my big ones:

1. Improve my spiritual life. For now, doing devotions every day will make this happen.

2. Improve my health and get down to a healthy weight. I am making sure I do a little exercise every day to make this happen.

3. Become more successful. I am reading a book about success a little every day.

4. Develop an additional source of income. I am doing a little every day to build up other income sources.

So on every day on my calendar I write at the beginning of the week: D E R I

short for Devotions, Exercise, Reading, and Income and place a checkmark next to each one as I do it. I have not managed to do every one of these every day since I started, but I have been doing them on average 5 days a week, which is a HUGE improvement over previous years.

I ask anyone who reads this try this idea with their own goals and let me know what happens.

Achieve your dreams by underachieving

Yesterday I was reading and ran into a new twist on goal setting and achieving anything you want out of life: UNDERACHIEVE!

You heard that right, live your dreams and make huge goals happen by underachieving. Let me explain with an example. Let's say one of your goals is to be healthy & energetic (who doesn't want that???) The average person would go about it like this - especially at New Year's Resolution time:

Goal: become healthy and energetic.
How to achieve it: eat only bran flakes and wheat grass in the morning, an apple for lunch, and a salad and 4 ounces of chicken or fish for supper and work out 2 hours a day for 6 days a week.

What happens with this? Your second wheat grass and bran flake breakfast or the first night your friends want to go out to see a movie with you after work, you missed your goal, your plan is shot, and it is back to life as usual.

Here's the underachiever way:

Goal: become healthy and energetic
How to achieve it: work out 10 minutes 3 times a week. Eat 1 serving of vegetables a day.

Chances are much, much better you can hit those goals, feel good about yourself and most likely hit some bigger and better goals (I worked out 10 minutes! Why not go nuts and shoot for 20??)

Instead of setting big crazy goals and try to go from not doing anything to move toward your goals to doing everything you possibly can, set little goals and take it one baby step at a time. Be consistent, move toward achieving your goals, and it can happen!

This idea came from a slightly unexpected source: Robert Kiyosaki's book Cashflow Quadrant. This little gem of advice was crammed in there with financial advice along with how and why you'd want to be a business owner or investor. He gives credit to Raymond Aaron talk called "Goals: Crossing the Goal Line" for the idea.

My current planner setup Feb 2008

I've been asked about my planner setup, so here goes. I found myself messing around with the calendar part of my planner too much and decided to replace a 1 inch Circa Junior size notebook with a 3/4 inch notebook and a "large" 5x8" Moleskine weekly + notes calendar.

I'm still using the Dayrunner binder I purchased off ebay for $15 early in 2007. The front pocket is handy for storing a flash drive and a fountain pen that I like but doesn't quite fit in the pen loop.



I switched out the Levenger discs with clear & blue Rollabind rings. The front pocket works great for business cards, papers folded in half, and Post-It Durable Tabs to divide major sections.



I still have the tabs set up in a way fairly similar to what David Allen recommends with a couple minor changes. Of course the big one is my calendar is a different notebook from the rest of my planner. This allowed the front section of my notebook to become notes instead of a calendar. I also don't have a regular tab for my address book. I have a pocket divider after the "Someday" tab and then I have my address book after that. One tab I did add: Goals. I have some things I want to do that are too big for me to consider projects but break down into different projects. One example would be "Be Healthy" which breaks down into get down to a healthy weight, exercise often enough, etc.



Here's the big change in my planning system. This is a standard large 5x8" Moleskine Weekly + Notes calendar. Calendar on the left for stuff that has to happen at a certain time. Stuff that needs to be done on the top right page, and a lined Super Sticky post-it with my Goals for the month on the bottom right.



I just use regular Rollabind refill pages for notes with a Levenger pagefinder to mark my current spot.



I keep two writing instruments in my pen loops. Unfortunately the pen loops are small so I had a very limited selection to work with. I ended up with a Hero pen from isellpens.com and a mechanical pencil - a Pentel P205.




I'm still using the Circa-magine notebook cover as my cover.




And finally, in the back of the binder I keep an extra index card or two for quick notes.