538 | Out of Sight

The Minimalists talk about the difficulties of podcasting, how our love for minimalism has changed over the years, what we dislike about decluttering, how to let go incrementally, and more. Discussed in this episode: A wise kid asks: Do you love minimalism? (4:16) What do you love about minimalism? What do you hate about minimalism? (17:21) Right Here, Right Now: Weekly writing tips from the How to Write Better Newsletter (33:48) Listener Tip: How to let go incrementally. (35:10) Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected]. Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.

• 0:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, the minimalist Joshua Fields Milburn here. TK Coleman over there. We've got Savvy D and Professor Sean in the studio. Joining us remotely, of course, Tom Cat and Audio Ben, Spire Jeff and Dave. Shout out to y'all. TK, here's something to chew on. Out of sight doesn't mean out of mind. It means out of control. What does that mean to you?

• 1:06Speaker 02

  The things we often choose to look at have a way of haunting us from the shadows. And so just because you say, oh, I don't want to see this. I don't want to think about it. I'm going to suppress it or hide it or conceal it. You tend to feel stressed out or anxious about it in other ways, you know? It just kind of has a way of welling up in the subconscious and robbing you of sleep, peace and other ways. But if you choose to look at it, you may not get to feel good in the moment, but it's like receiving that unwanted news from the doctor by acknowledging it, by looking at it, even if that brings stress up front. You kind of know how to move for what you can do about it, what your options are and so on.

• 1:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think about Tony Robbins, one of his, my favorite quotes of his is, "Kill Godzilla when he's a baby. Don't wait till he's taking over the city."

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I think that can be said with illness and sometimes, well, I mean, we know that hoarding is a mental illness. It's on the obsessive compulsive spectrum and we often look at hoarders on our TV in See a stage five hoarder and it's easy to sort of sneer at them and say, oh, wow. Look, at least I don't, I don't have that kind of a problem. It's like, how do you think they got there? It didn't happen overnight. They didn't wake up one day and their house was just filled with excess stuff. And so I think out of sight, out of mind makes sense in some instances. Where, so if I'm being charitable to that framing is like, yeah, if I literally get it out of my life, then it's out of sight and out of mind. But quite often we hide our problems. If that's physical clutter,

• 2:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  we can hide it in cabinets and drawers or storage lockers and it's not out of sight, out of mind there, though. It's out of sight, but it's still in the back of my mind. It's still taking up space there. And I think even when clutter is hidden, it still weighs on us mentally. But there's other types of clutter beyond the, the physical clutter that weighs on us mentally, the commitments, the calendar clutter, right? The relationship clutter, needing more out of my relationships or more relationships in general. Trying to extract things from other people that can weigh on us. And so if we get something out of sight, it's not necessarily out of mind. Maybe it's,

• 3:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I tried to hide it because it's out of control. I'm afraid to confront this thing that's in front of me.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  I think you nailed it, mate.

• 3:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, coming up on this episode, we're talking about the difficulties of podcasting. This is so difficult, TK. Just talking into a microphone with you. Actually, let's talk about the joys of, of doing this together. Also, how our love for minimalism has changed over the years, what we dislike about decluttering, how to let go incrementally and much, much more. Let's start with our callers. If you'd like to join the program, give us a call. 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording right from your phone to [email protected]. Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber so we can prioritize your message. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free because sing along at home, y'all.

• 4:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Advertisements suck. Yes, they do. All right. Our first question today is from Constance.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Constance. I'm from Indianapolis. Here's my question. Is it hard being a podcaster? And do you love minimalism?

• 4:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Constance, shout out to you. You know what I love about this question, TK, is we have a wise kid here who is asking questions that I would have never asked when I was Constance' age. Do you, is podcasting difficult? Why would you ask that question, do you think?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Curiosity, you know, when you're young, you, you look at what people do and you take up an interest in it in a way that doesn't characterize the sort of autopilot way we go about life as adults. You say, what do you do? Is that fun? You know? Because fun is one of the most important things to you, you know, the joy you get to feel from the things you do.

• 5:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, as kids, fun is important in a way that we seem to lose as we get older and we have these priorities and these duties and these responsibilities. But who said you can't have fun while you do the duties and the responsibilities?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  There you go. We can find the fun. We can manufacture the fun. We can get really good at looking for the fun. We can bring the fun. Sometimes the fun is in the party and the things that are there, the things that people are doing. But sometimes the fun is in us and the disposition we choose to have when we go into a situation.

• 5:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We can witness it. It's right there and it's available right now.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 5:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Last week, we were talking during that difficult episode we did about my brother's passing. One of the things we were talking about was complaining and how like Jerome would have never complained about the rain. And then, of course, after the podcast, TK and I were walking down to the grocery store for lunch. We get our lunch and as soon as we finish eating, it starts pouring rain. Do you remember what you said to me at that moment?

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I said, it's Jerome.

• 6:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He's testing us right now, right?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's testing. He's like, okay, I hear y'all talking. Let's see if you can live it. And then there was a moment where we're walking, we're crossing a street and there's a guy on a motorcycle who stops at a light and he's perfectly aligned with us. And he looks at us and he just starts laughing because he sees us walking. We've, we've got a few blocks to go. And we're just completely drenched.

• 6:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  And I remember us saying, you know what? So if this is a test, let's go ahead and live it. What's one thing you're grateful for about this rain right now? And we start playing a gratitude game with each other and making it fun.

• 6:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I think you can do that with fun as well. And, and so is podcasting difficult? To do it well is certainly difficult. Now, we have more than a decade of experience going into this. So it's less difficult now. It seems more effortless, but it requires a tremendous amount of effort. I would say that about anything that's worth doing. You actually want a level of difficulty, right?

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, you need some degree of challenge. One of the reasons why many people find life after retirement to be a little sad, a little depressing, and they look for some kind of hobby or a new side job that they can get into is because even if they didn't love their job, even if there were too many stressful elements and they're glad to get away from it, it did provide some kind of structure that challenged them. It gave them obstacles to overcome, difficulties to navigate. And we actually need that. Michaela Chick sent me high, talks about this in Flow, the psychology of optimal performance. Martin Seligman also talks about this in his works on positive psychology. How lasting happiness requires the right balance between things we feel like we can control,

• 8:03Speaker 02

  but things that seem to challenge us so that they bring out the best in us. We can't be happy if we've already mastered what there is to be mastered. We can only be happy when we feel like there's something we gotta figure out, some area of life where we have to become more competent or skillful.

• 8:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that's why out of sight, out of mind, the thing we were talking about earlier is such a problem because it apes the form of control. But you're really hiding the things and, and you're not, you're not really controlling it. You're simply hiding the problem to deal with later. But then, of course, Godzilla turns into a monster and it's taking over the city or it's taking over your basement or your attic or your spare bedroom or your third walk-in closet that's just full of stuff. And so decluttering is difficult, but it's worthwhile. Podcasting for us is difficult, but it is worthwhile. I remember when Nick Ademas and I first started this podcast back in 2015. We were five years into the minimalist at that point.

• 9:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And we were in this storage closet at the University of Montana. They cleared it out for us and we had these desks in there and we were recording it. But those early episodes, we might have published one out of four. And then there were sometimes it was like one out of six. It was, we weren't publishing episodes. We just go back and redo it. I didn't like the way that sounded, so let's go do the same episode again. Didn't like that, let's try it again. These were practice rounds for us in a way. And many, many times now, if I do a live event, it's a type of practice. There's a safety net of some, so I can get up and talk for an hour at this point. But it's, it's still difficult.

• 9:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I know that I'm not going to end my life, even if I do something catastrophic. Have you ever given a talk and just blanked out at some point in your life, TK?

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, I mean, I did that in the TED Talk. You, you saw it. You saw my eyes when I lost.

• 9:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh yeah, that's true. Yes. I remember November 2013, Ryan Nicodemus and I were in New York City. We had our publicist at the time, Sarah. She had got all of these outlets to join us for this book launch event we were doing for our book, Everything That Remains. It was coming out in a few months. And so we had the New York Times there and we had, you know, a bunch of these different outlets who, who were there, The Village Voice, which was still around at the time. And all of these different organs that were there to review our book and our event and our message. And they really hadn't had a whole lot about the minimalist before.

• 10:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So this is maybe their first exposure, in-depth exposure to the minimalist, outside of reading a bio or a blog post. And so we're there and we're at this bookstore and it is packed. I mean, in fact, there are moments of it in the first documentary, Minimalism. And there's this moment where I look at Ryan and he just blanks. He's giving this long talk and it's super heartfelt. And the talk is like 20 pages long and he hasn't memorized, but for some reason, he goes from page four to page 11 and skips out this whole meat of the talk. And It's like, oh, I could see the look on his face.

• 11:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And he's dying inside. And he's so nervous, even though we had practiced, practiced this a hundred hours, probably. And he gets, and all of a sudden, you could just see like, uh oh, how am I going to recover from this? That's difficult. Doing an hour long talk or 40 minute talk in front of a large audience of people? That's usually the number one fear above death for your average person. Public speaking is, is scary. But you also know you're not going to die.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so, yes, a lot of these things are difficult, but I also know that it's going to be fine. Even if there's a catastrophic failure, I'm going to be fine on the other side of this podcast episode. But I do beat myself up from time to time because like, oh, I didn't like my performance there. The irony of that is I often go back and listen, I'm like, wow, that was a great episode. I remember one in particular, I think it was last year, but the episode was called restraint. Let's put a link to it in the show notes, Savvy D. And I remember after our performance on that one, I was just like, I wasn't feeling that. I went back and listened to it and it is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 12:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So your feelings in the moment may not really map on to reality. Why do we think that is?

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Well, our feelings are a reflection of, you know, our own self-assessment, what we think about our work. But work is about value creation as far as other people are concerned. If you're a stand-up comedian and people are buying a ticket to come see your stand-up show, it's because they have things on their mind and they have things going on in their lives that they would like to get a break from and they would like to laugh. And it's possible that you can succeed in giving them that, even if you aren't having an internal experience that says, I'm on. I remember asking one of my friends who's an actress, name's Ben, and I said to him, I was just so curious. I go, Ben, when you're on stage and you're playing a sad scene and, and maybe you're, you know, your character has to cry, do you really feel sad?

• 13:21Speaker 02

  He says, that's not what's important. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. The important thing is that the audience believes that I feel sad. And I think that's the important thing. Who's the customer that you're serving? Who's the person you're trying to create value from, for? And, and what's their feedback? And if you're nailing it on, on that, then you just accept that those feelings, man, that they're, they're like the, like the weather. Sometimes you get the rain, sometimes you get the sun and you just weather it.

• 13:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So in summary, if podcasting was just super easy, I don't think we would keep doing it because you want that level of challenge. And so in order to grow, right? You want to be a little bit uncomfortable and that's the space from which you grow. I think we've hit a real stride over the last year or so, couple of years even. And we've continued to grow. I go back and look, listen to episodes from 10 years ago, back in the Patreon archives, you can find them there. And some of them are really valuable. Some of our most popular episodes ever are just sitting there in the Patreon archives. And that's why I go back and I'm like, oh, we're so much better than that now. But it required those steps to get

• 14:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  to where we are. Which brings me to the second part of Constance's question. Do you love minimalism? What's your answer to that, TK? Do you love minimalism?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  I love how minimalism makes me feel. I love how it challenges me to think. And so if I'm, if I'm just giving the answer to the 12 year old, I will say, yeah, I do. I really do love it. Yeah.

• 14:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Yeah. And so if I were to give us a short, you know, what's fascinating is raising, raising a daughter from when she was really little and I could start explaining some basic concepts, it really helped me better explain minimalism through every stage. Because the way I explained it to a three year old was different from when she was five, or when she was seven, or now she's 12 years old. And so it's different how I talk to her about these things, but it's helped me grow in a strange way. Because I'm like, oh, I can't just throw pithy maxims at her that, that sound erudite. That doesn't impress her at all. So stop trying to be impressive. Stop trying to serve your ego

• 15:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and help her understand what is minimalism? And why do we do it? And so to answer,

• 15:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Constance head on is to love is to let go. And so in a way, yes, minimalism helps me love. Right. We just did the episode about drone last week and there's a lot of letting go there. And tears are a way to let go, but to love is, is to let go because the opposite of that is what? To cling. Can you love something if you're clinging to it in perpetuity? I don't think so. You have to be willing to let it go and able to let it go in order to, to love it and minimalism helps out. And so maybe in a way, minimalism is an amplifier of love for me. Constance, if you haven't checked it out already, have your mom download our new audiobook.

• 16:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's called Very, Very Simple. And I think it's like the best doorway or entryway into minimalism and decluttering because TK and I talk about some tools. It's these 12 tools for a simpler life in that audiobook. And so we, it's a book that I wrote. It's a short 90 minute sort of thing. And then TK and I did this podcast between each of these rules or tools or boundaries that we set up around our things. But then I think it also begins to apply outside of our possessions as well. So if you want a deeper understanding of why we love minimalism, I would check out Very, Very Simple. You can download it for free over at very, very simple.com.

• 17:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The audiobook or the ebook there, or you can also find it over on Audible or on Kindle. If you want to read it on those platforms. TK, before we get back to our callers, let's investigate the question of the week. So playing off of Candace's or Constance's question there. Our question of the week is this, what do you love about minimalism? What do you hate about minimalism? Now let's check in with our Patreon community chat, see what they had to say. Alana said, I love how the idea of minimalism starts with physical items, but naturally extends to intentionality in all aspects of our lives, allowing us to eliminate excess in every sense of the word.

• 17:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But I hate the monetizing of the alleged concept. And in doing so, corporations seem to get it completely wrong and muddle the message for others. TK, this is my biggest gripe too. The sort of corporatized minimalism. I recently saw a T-shirt over here at the Beverly Center, which is like one of the largest. It's an eight-story mall and it's walking distance from our studio. Oh, the irony, right? I was walking through there. It was last year. I was with, um, Savvy, were you with us? Jordan was with us and maybe Kristin Ziegler was with us as well. Yeah, we were walking through there and one of the fast fashion stores had this shirt with the word

• 18:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  minimalism embossed in like some sort of rhinestones or fake gems or something. And I was just like, oh, is this what it's come to? I- i- is this like what they call late-stage capitalism? Everything that is virtuous eventually gets turned into a, a commodity that kind of misses the point. And I'm not against selling things, obviously, but it seems to me that there's like this 2D version of what this thing called minimalism is. And so why do you think this type of corporate minimalism bothers Alana and me?

• 19:16Speaker 02

  I think it has a way of, of making something that, that feels so pure and beautiful and, and representative of, of everything that you love. It has a way of making it feel cheap.

• 19:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Ooh.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  And it's, it's, it's interesting because if you look at, if you look at sacred sites, sites that acquire a reputation over time for being a place of pilgrimage or for being a good place for meditation or for just being a place where you can go and, and cultivate a sense of interior peace. One of the things you'll notice about sacred sites is people who have something to sell really love the sacred sites as much as the people who have something to seek because they know that people are going to go there. And so they're gonna try to figure out, well, what can we sell to the people that are going there? Because the sellers like traffic. They like wherever people are.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  And so it doesn't really matter to them if the people are there because they want to meditate, or they are there because they want to find themselves. That doesn't matter. People are people when you're selling something, and so you just want to find the people. And that can sometimes feel a little disrespectful, a little inconsiderate, a little insensitive, in the same way, but not as dramatic as walking out of a wedding, or walking out of a funeral and having a vendor, a vendor standing there, being like, hey, I can sell you some T-shirts with that person's name on it. Or, you know, hey, you know, it's just like, ooh, you know, it's like, there's a time and a place for the hustle.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  And, and, and it's in those spaces, we're most likely to feel perhaps this ain't the time in the space.

• 21:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and I think at, at its worst, it represents this false ideology that you can buy simplicity. It can be acquired, the same way we can buy happiness. Like, no, we can buy pleasure. I get that. We could buy things that we enjoy. And for the most part, I don't have a problem with that unless we become addicted to those things. And that's a different conversation. But it presupposes that like buying the shirt makes me the minimalist. If I wear a shirt that says minimalism, now all of a sudden I embody the superpowers of letting go. And I think that's just not true. And I think you're, you're right. There's something about the mismatch of the commodity versus the sacredness

• 21:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  of, of the thing that you admire. To take it away from minimalism for a moment. I remember Nick Ademus and I were driving through South Dakota, and we were on tour, a book tour, and we were like, oh, we have to go see Mount Rushmore, right? And, and because like, I'd never been there. When am I going to be back in South Dakota? And we're driving through there. And I gotta say that there are like entire towns predicated on selling you little plastic memorabilia that commemorates Mount Rushmore. And I'm not necessarily even against selling the, I don't know, the, the object that represents the thing.

• 22:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But it kind of ruined the experience in the sense that like, the experience itself was still fine and remarkable even. But I can only imagine if we had just been driving through South Dakota. And all of a sudden, you look up and the side of a mountain has these four faces in it. I, it was awe inspiring, you just seeing the amount of effort, talk about difficulty. How many people died making that even and that is carved with dynamite? How, how did they do that? And then you have this little Stan who's like, well, here's a plastic keychain with George Washington. You're like, that's, that's not the same thing at all.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. By the way, there, there's also an element of co-opting as well. And, and I think this is one of the things that people react to. So it's kind of like, you know, you're just focused on sales and you're running your corporation. And then you hear like, oh, uh, minimalism, what's that? Nevermind, no time, put it on a T-shirt, sell it for $25, somebody's gonna buy it, right?

• 23:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's right.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  And, and we, we kind of have a, we don't have a problem with a psychologist writing a book about psychology and selling it. We don't have a problem with a former basketball player writing a book about basketball and selling it. But when it feels like someone who isn't even involved in a movement or doesn't even care about the principles, doesn't even create any value in that field, they're just looking for a way to monetize it, to, to, to profit off of the trend. I think that's something that, you know, uh, sparks a little resistance as well.

• 23:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, I think you can see that it's most blatant in a lot of sort of religious contexts, right? You have someone who, who fakes being religious in order to divorce people from the money in their bank account. And that is some of the most pernicious ways of doing it. But as you said, there are so many other ways that this happens where it's, oh, that's a trend. Let's see how we can hop on the wave. Frank says, I love the abundance mindset around minimalism, but hate the weight of identifying with it. I never identify openly as a minimalist, but I do share that I aim to live a more minimalist lifestyle. TK, what are our descriptors? So why do they often, these words we use to describe like minimalist, why do they

• 24:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  often calcify into an identity for us?

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Well, labels when rightly understood are incredibly useful, right? If you go to the grocery store and you want to buy a can of chili, you don't want to buy a can of chicken noodle by mistake. When you go into a bookstore or a clothing store, we appreciate labels telling us that the dresses are over here and the shoes are over there. Or, you know, that the books on, on history are over here and the books on sci-fi are over there. But one of the downsides of labels is that when we apply them to people, we tend to associate everything that comes to mind when we invoke that label to that person, and then we cease to treat them as individuals. I've talked to a lot of people who have beliefs that you might consider to be weird, you in general here.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Some of these people are religious and it's their religious beliefs. Some of these people are simply people who believe things like, you know, aliens exist and so on. And they say, "I would never talk about this in public because although I believe X, I don't want to have to die for X. I don't want to have to be an evangelist for X. I just want to be the person that I am, who happens to think that such and such a thing is true, but the moment I wear that label, I will be looked at as a hero by a community or a spokesperson for a community, or somebody that bears a responsibility to a community." And so I think for a lot of people, they just don't want that. They just want the benefits of being able to live in this way and make their lives better. And when it comes to minimalism, I'm all for that.

• 26:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, me too. And what you're talking about is the benefits of living counterculturally in a way, right? But it's the virtues of living counterculturally, right? Because there are plenty of ways to be countercultural that are not virtuous at all. In fact, they're the opposite. You know, if you can, if you just engage in random acts of violence on the street, that's countercultural, but it's certainly not something any of us aspire to live like. And so I'm with you on the, the labels piece. They're great descriptors. I do want to know that it's chicken noodle soup or tomato soup. And minimalist is a great descriptor as well, but- Frank, I'm like you. I don't go around calling myself a minimalist, right?

• 26:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If it works as a label in a conversation, that's great. I ran into Pete Holmes this week. We were at The Farmer and the Cook. Kelly Jean was performing there. She does our sound baths at some of our live events.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love Kelly Jean.

• 27:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  She's great. And Pete Holmes stopped me afterward. He goes, hey, I saw your movie. He's like, you're the minimalist guy. And I was like, yeah, yeah. But like, that's helpful as a descriptor. But as soon as I'm like, why, yes, I am. That is who I am as a person. Well, what happens if that label gets stripped away from me? Or someone doesn't know what minimalist means? Am I a lesser version of myself? No, it's a, it's a fine description. I don't have, I don't run away from that. And by the way, if it's a cumbersome or clumsy description for you, Frank, there are other descriptions that can work well, as long as they don't calcify into identity, right? So you could call yourself an intentionalist. If that was a better conversation starter, because no one knows what the hell that means. I'm an intentionalist. I'm an essentialist. Oh, wow.

• 27:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm an enough-ist. Wow. You know, one thing, Nicodemus, he and I were just back at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, giving a talk out there. And he talked about how some of these, if minimalism is too austere for you, pick your ism. Is it enough-ism, intentionalism, deliberatism, selectivelyism? Or living within your means-ism? And some people understand that in a different way. It's like when Dan Harris started meditating. And he, people asked him why he did it. He said, oh, it makes me 10% happier. And it wasn't a perfectly accurate description, but he was going to the why behind it. And it helped people understand like, oh, this is not some woo-woo nonsense.

• 28:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You don't have to be super esoteric. You don't even have to find value in Ram Dass and Eckhart Tolle. You can, but also you can just meditate and maybe it'll make you a little bit calmer, happier, more at peace.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Can you imagine if you and Bex, when you, when you all did that podcast, Hotter Love? If before you did it, you said, oh, wait. This doesn't have anything to do with minimalism. Let's not do it. I'm the minimalist guy. I can't be seen talking about love. Who am I to talk about love? You know, and sometimes we get stuck there, you know, you may have have something that you truly believe in, that you want to say, and you say, oh, well, I can't be heard saying that. I have an ism to uphold. And now the ism becomes more than an organic, authentic expression of what you truly believe and feel. It becomes a sort of prison.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  And in the same way that we have audience capture becoming beholden to an audience, it becomes a label capture. You become beholden to a label and then it loses the point.

• 29:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I'm not the type of person who would talk about love or that would buy this thing. And I've run into that a few times where it begins to harden into an identity for me. It's like, well, I can't own that as a minimalist. Well, why? If it adds value to my life, I absolutely could. There are some things I'm more cautious about now because of minimalism. I couldn't see myself, I think Lexus makes great cars, right? I couldn't see myself buying a Lexus, but it has less to do with the image it would project. It has much more to do with, I don't think that's the best use of that money for me. And I think that's the key. If it was the best use of that money for me, then that's a totally different conversation. But that's always the question I'm asking. Is it the best use of my resources?

• 30:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Money is certainly one of those resources. How about you listeners? What do you love about minimalism? What do you hate about minimalism? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. All right, I've got my minimal maxim ready. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes over at theminimalists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever over at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox every Monday. If you sign up for our free email newsletter, it's called the simple newsletter. And you can find that over at theminimalists.com. We'll never send you spam or junk or ads, but we'll start your week off with a dose of simplicity. Okay, give me something pithy TK. What do you love about minimalism? What do you hate about minimalism?

• 31:03Speaker 02

  I love the art of simplicity. I hate the sport of comparison. Another way I could say that is I love minimalism, but I don't hate people who hate minimalism or who feel no need for minimalism. I love minimalism, but I don't love the art of trying to measure people and size them up to see who's a true minimalist and who's not. I think minimalism is about leveraging the art of simplicity for the sake of figuring out how you can make your life better. And then how you can be a positive impact on the people around you. It's not about becoming a police officer and evaluating other people's integrity by how good or bad of a minimalist you think you are or by defining as opponent or enemy,

• 31:46Speaker 02

  people that just aren't into this or even people who despise it.

• 31:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Which actually ties perfectly into my pithy answer. My minimal maxim is our culture defaults to the mathematics of consumption. And that's kind of what you're talking about here. Now, I will say to me, when I first stumbled into minimalism in late 2009, November 2009, it was from a tweet from this guy named Colin Wright, whom I love, have become friends with. I started a business with him 13 years ago as well. And I think he's a phenomenal human being. But the thing that was most interesting to me is he owned 52 items or 51 items, whatever it was at the time, about 50 items. Everything he owned fit into his backpack. And he took a picture of everything he owned. Everything I have in the world fits into my backpack.

• 32:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, that worked well for him because he was a parapetetic writer. So he traveled to new country every four months. And he couldn't have a coffee table because it didn't fit into the overhead bin on an airplane. It wouldn't get on the Greyhound bus with him. And so practically, that made sense. But the counting of the items was really interesting from a, oh, this is possible. It was more of a lens that showed me a life, but it was not the ultimate end goal. And if the end goal is 51 items, well, then I saw someone else who had 43 items. And then there was Nina Yau. I think she owned 15 items at one time. And I was like, oh, she won the game of minimalism. Until you see the guy naked, running down the street streaking, who owns nothing.

• 33:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And you're like, ultimate minimalist. We're totally missing the point when we're just trying to measure what is success. Whether that is money, or square footage, or how few items you own, or how many items you do own. That is the mathematics of consumption. I think that puts us in a world of trouble if we're not careful.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's almost the end of page one, TK. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. Also, you gotta check out these Talkaboutables I have for you on page three. But first, real quick, for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalists. So I've been doing this new newsletter. It's for my How to Write Better class and students, but you're welcome to sign up for it for free. Every week, I've just been sent out one pithy writing tip. And actually, this week, I sent out two, but it made a whole lot of sense. And so I will send out just one pithy writing tip you can read in less than two minutes. So if you're interested in improving your writing, whether that's your emails, or you finally want to publish a book, or you want to work on a book you've been thinking about for a long time, whatever it might be.

• 34:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I started this free newsletter over at howtowritebetter.org. I think we have about 70,000 people on that email newsletter. And every week, every Friday, roughly every Friday, I just send out a, just a writing insight that I've had. It could be based on a conversation I've had, something I'm struggling with in my own writing, or something I've overcome recently. Maybe there's a sentence I've been working on. I want to show more here and tell less. What does that look like? Here's a first draft sentence versus a final draft sentence. And so I've been doing that over at howtowritebetter.org. You can sign up for the email newsletter over there. If you do, I'll also send you my free ebook. It's called 15 Ways to Write Better. Howtowritebetter.org. We'll put a link to that in the show notes.

• 35:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Much more coming up, but first, here's a minimalist tip from one of our listeners.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  Hi Minimalists, this is Tyler from Manhattan, Kansas. Last year, I created a simple system to turn my minimalist values into intentional goals, and I wanted to share it in case it helps others who feel stuck after decluttering and are wondering what to do next. A few years ago, I wanted to improve my health, especially my alcohol consumption. I didn't think I had a problem, but I was drinking most days. I had tried to decrease my drinking in the past, but it never really stuck. So I created a very small goal: no alcohol, one day per week, for one month. I realized cutting just one day a week would reduce my drinking by roughly 14%. In the following months, I continued increasing the days that I wasn't drinking to two times

• 35:57Speaker 04

  a week, then three times, and so on and so forth. Eventually, I was taking weeks or even months at a time without a single drink. That's when I realized the real power wasn't the goal, it was the intentional structure. So I built a system around the five core values from your book: health, relationships, passions, growth, and contribution. Each month, I choose small goals that align with those values, and I limit myself to just two or three items so I don't burn out on them. The values give me direction, and the small goals help me make steady progress without overwhelming myself, whether that's building healthier habits like flossing and stretching, or pursuing growth through trying new hobbies. Now, instead of wondering what to do with the space after decluttering, I follow my

• 36:41Speaker 04

  curiosity while staying aligned with what matters most. Thanks for everything you do, your work really helped shape this system.

• 36:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Tyler, thank you so much for that thoughtful comment, and it's one of my favorites that we've received, and I thought it was just super thoughtful, and congratulations on letting go incrementally. TK, when it comes to minimizing or letting go, when do you think it makes the most sense to let go incrementally versus, I don't know, being an extremist? When does it make sense to be an incrementalist? When does it make sense to be an extremist?

• 37:15Speaker 02

  You know, it makes me think about in sports, this tension that exists between what we can call the way of assertion and the way of Acquiescence, the way of assertion assertion is when you say, I need to take over the game. I need to make things happen and I need to in basketball, we say, go get me a bucket, right? And and the way of acquiescence is when you say, I need to let the game come to me. My my job isn't to make it happen, but to read the rhythm of the game and to align with that flow. And and and sometimes one, you know, sometimes you need to be assertive and make it happen. Sometimes you need to acquiesce and sort of surrender to the flow. And and you can't always know in the realm of theory. You can't always just know ahead of time and follow it like a formula.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  What you got to do is you got to ask yourself, which one of these gives me the feeling of momentum? And you can know that pretty early on. So when it comes to the incremental approach and you say, I'm just gonna do this once a week, or I'm gonna stop doing this once a week. Do you actually perform in a way that you can build on? Or does it become mostly an occasion for relapse or excuse making? You can feel that after a week or two. You know, if you're actually nailing it and not doing it for that day, and you can feel that momentum. And and the the, what do you call it, the the more extremist approach? Sometimes you take that approach when you know you have what it takes to step it up and eliminate it from your life. And leaving that door cracked open or giving yourself permission to cheat

• 38:44Speaker 02

  is gonna cause you to go all or nothing the other way. Some people are all or nothing personalities, man. They gotta stop eating that stuff or stop doing that stuff. Or they're just gonna go off the rails. But some of us, we need to build our momentum one step at a time.

• 38:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  When I first stumbled into minimalism, I started small. I started incrementally. I asked myself a simple question. What would happen if you removed one material possession from your life each day for a month? Just one, what would happen? But of course, as you get that momentum, because I I came home after all, I dealt with my mom's stuff. And I realized I had all this stuff. And the average American house has hundreds of thousands of items in it. And I was one of those people. And it was so overwhelming that I felt like if I were to take the extreme route, I just would have never done it. I needed to start somewhere. I didn't have any momentum at all. And so one quickly turned into way more than 30 items in the first 30 days because I got that momentum. And in fact, that's where the 30 day minimalism game came from was like, oh yeah, you can build

• 39:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  on this momentum. So first day, let's do one thing. And the second day, let's do two things, and then three things, so forth and so on. And you also make it fun by turning it into a game because decluttering is kind of boring, even the and it's difficult. It's like the worst of two worlds. It's difficult and boring. Who wants to do that? Well, let's make it fun by injecting a little bit of friendly competition into it. It could be competition with yourself. It could be friendly competition with others. And then after eight months, I had got rid of about 90% of my material possessions. It started off incremental, but as I got to the end of that cycle, I looked back and said, man, I wish I would have done this. I wish I could have been an extremist early on. And I think you're right. There are certain people have a disposition for it. When

• 40:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Nicodemus saw what I had done, he's like, that's great for you. But like, I don't want to spend almost a year letting go. I need results now, you know, very like type A driven American male. And he was like, I'm gonna do the packing party, right? So we came up with the idea of the packing party and he and he boxed up everything as if he were moving. And he got rid of 80% of stuff in the course of 21 days. And that was remarkable. And I looked back and said, I wish I would have done that, but I don't know that I could have done that. And so the key was whether it's incremental or extremist, for me, it's I go extreme whenever I can, whenever it makes sense. But if it doesn't make sense, I need to get started. Starting incrementally at least moves me in the right direction.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  I like that. I like to say, go extreme until it stops you from going. And when it stops you from going, go small enough to get the energy flowing.

• 41:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Spot on. Look at you, rhyming today. Let's get this guy beat savvy.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Come on, man. Hashtag bars.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Hashtag bars like Kendrick Lamar.

• 41:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, for anyone else has a lesser tip or some bars for us, you can send a voice memo to [email protected]. We'd love to hear your insights and feature them, feature your voice on a future episode of the show. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick panticulation break. We'll be right back.

• 41:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that is the first 33% of episode 538. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, "John is downsizing after a heartbreak. What's the best way for him to part with some meaningful things from the past that he no longer uses?" And after losing her job and her mother, Corinne now sees everything as a potential asset. What does, when does survival mode turn into clutter? And how can she determine what to let go of? Plus, we have a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you

• 42:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to our very first episode. And that is our minimal episode for today. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Audio Ben, Spire Jeff and Dave, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here today with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Peace.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.