Maximum Gratitude, Minimal Stuff

We pile on "to-dos," but don't consider "stop doings."  We buy "new and improved" possessions, but don't remove old ones.  We create incentives for the good habits we want to cultivate, but don't get rid of obstacles to our new behaviors.  Every day, we neglect a basic way to make things better.  We fail to subtract. Why is this ?    It's true that subtraction can be hard to pull off, because there are biological, cultural, and economic forces that push us toward more.  But we have a choice.  We can learn to do better, and reap all the benefits of less stress, less busywork, and fewer things to divert us from what we really care about . Exploring less Wow.  Editing can really make a message pithy.  "We don't subtract.  Why?  Biological, cultural, and economic forces push us toward more.  But we have a choice.  We can do better, and reap all the benefits of less."  115 words pared down to 29.  I'm ...

Everyone's life is made up of repetitive events that seem unremarkable.   Driving to work, starting a load of laundry, sorting the mail, making dinner, brushing teeth.  These types of moments make the majority of life, but they're so routine that we don't think about them, and we don't bother to remember them or relate their details to anyone else.  They're too boring for that. Unfortunately, by letting all of these daily events remain mundane, we miss the vast majority of our time here on earth.  Instead, we give our attention to a few more-exciting events of the past, or to imagined future occasions.  We learn the habit of ignoring where we are and what we're doing in favor of thinking about what we need to do at work while we're in the shower, thinking about the weekend while we're at work, and thinking about what will happen next week when it's still Saturday afternoon. It might be September, but we're thinking about Halloween, or our Christm...

Happy Labor Day to my readers in the United States, and to all who labor to earn a living or to make life better for someone else!  I have certainly benefitted from the labors of many others during the course of my life. Inspired by the book Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey by A. J. Jacobs,* which goes into fascinating detail about the many people who have a role in making his morning coffee possible, I decided to write a post thanking a minimum of 100 people who have helped me, and continue to help me, as a minimalist, writer, and blogger.  Some of this help is or has been direct; some is tangential, but still essential. * As an Amazon Associate, I may earn a small commission at no extra charge to you if you purchase through my links. Once I started the list, I realized that there are more contributors than I originally thought.  Of course, many teachers have helped me, but so has Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and an Italian man named Pierluigi Zappacosta (see below). T...

Decluttering an entire home takes time and effort.   That can make it hard to get started, because you think "I don't really have time right now" or "I don't have the energy to declutter."  I get it.  Especially if you have a lot of clutter, you may be so daunted by the task that you avoid it.  That's okay, because I'm going to help you trick yourself into decluttering a lot more with a lot less time and effort than you might think possible. If I told you to declutter 150 items over the next week, could you do it?  You might think it's impossible, but what if I asked you to get rid of just three things right now?  Does that seem more doable? I bet you can easily remove three things from your home, so why not remove three things from 50 different places?  It's a way to trick yourself into doing a lot more than you think you can. This really works, and it's going to give you a lot of confidence in your ability to make choices and get thing...

Dolly Parton, the wealthiest woman in the history of country music, died this past week at the age of 80.  The accolades have been many, and from everywhere – from Democrats and Republicans, from Black and White, from religious conservatives and LGBTQ allies, and from people who are steeped in country music and people who never listen to it.  Because you don't have to be a country music fan to like and respect Dolly. She was born in a tiny cabin in the mountains of Tennessee, and grew up wearing clothes fashioned from whatever bits of fabric her mother could find.  It's a little like the way my mom, born more than a decade earlier, grew up – actually living in a barn for the first two years of her life, starting first grade in a one-room schoolhouse down the road, wearing dresses made from flour sacks.  Both ladies made a lot more of their lives than where they started from. More than meets the eye A lot of people underestimated Dolly Parton.  She had that accen...

Think back 20 years (or 40 or more if you can!), and I'm sure you'll agree that life is more crowded and difficult now than it used to be. And it's not just adults who feel it.  Our kids and grandkids are part of the most-stressed generation ever.  There are plenty of reasons – social media, super-busy schedules, lack of down time and play time, and the pressure to excel are some of them. Another is the pressing need to decide what you want to be when you grow up.  Now, oldsters have always asked this question of the young, but today it seems you have to decide much sooner.  Many of my husband's 6th grade students (aged 11-12) were in a constant tizzy about grades and test scores because they wanted to be sure to qualify for AP courses in high school – the lack of which could hamper their ability to get into a "good" college.  (I won't even talk about the serious stress attendant on the cost of such a college today.) Increasing choices I think people of ...