475 | Going Without

The Minimalists talk about going without the things that get in the way. Discussed in this episode: How do I let go of my phone distractions to be more productive? (1:46) What's one thing you'd like to go without this year? (21:21) What happened when The Minimalists were recently hacked? (30:50) Will The Minimalists return to social media after going without for a year? (37:03) Listener reflection: the less you want, the more satisfied you are. (50:07) 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 Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

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.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  You're listening to the Minimalist Podcast with Joshua Fields Milburn and TK Coleman, recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.

• 0:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, thank you, Alabama. Hello, everybody. Coming up on this free public minimal episode, a caller has a question about intentionally going without some of the things that distract her. And then we've got a question about the one thing that you'd like to go without this year, also the things that we've gone without in the past. We'll be talking about that. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment. It's a very special Right Here, Right Now segment. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 475. That's the full two-hour episode where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon. The link is down in the description. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck.

• 1:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or a comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Just give us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording right from your phone to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Carolyn.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  Hello, Minimalists. This is Carolyn from San Diego. I'm a Patreon subscriber. We met on your most recent tour when you guys were down south, and I just want to thank you for the positive impact you've had on my life. In the coming year, I'd really like to go without the mindless distractions that have infiltrated my days. The games on my phone, the YouTube videos.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  The distractions that are primarily connected to my phone. So I've never thought of myself as lazy or unmotivated. But in reflection, I realize that these distractions are compromising my ability to fulfill some goals. So I was hoping that you could shed some light, some thoughts, some strategies on how I could set these mindless distractions aside and be more productive. Thanks again, guys.

• 3:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know, I think what is pernicious about distractions is they ape the form of productivity. And we prize productivity over anything, right TK? Because productivity, if you're productive, you must be doing something meaningful. But you could be crapping a lot and be very productive. You're producing something. And I think the same thing is true with a lot of the distractions in our life. I love this distinction that she made, though. She said, "mindless distractions, mindless distractions." As opposed to distractions, which we seek out, intentional distractions. And maybe there is a distinction there. But let's talk to Carolyn directly. What if she wants to go without those phone distractions and be more productive? What would you say to her?

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Well, I like that word, "mindless," too, because that's the opposite of mindful. And the way out of mindlessness is mindfulness. And the first step towards mindfulness is radical self-honesty. Let's be honest with myself about those moments, those conditions, where I have proven to myself over and over and over again that I am not quite inclined to act in accordance with my self-interest. What are those moments for you? And instead of relying on willpower, instead of saying, "I'm just gonna close my eyes and click my heels. I'm just gonna try harder and be a better human being this time." You can lean into that and say, "Hey..." These are not the conditions in which I perform my best.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  So what are the conditions that support good performance? I'm going to pick those. You know, in the world of sports, they have this thing called home court advantage. And teams play really hard to get home court advantage because they all know that there are some conditions where they are simply more likely to perform better. And no one sits around going, oh, we don't care about that because if we're really a good team, we can win anywhere. No, they're honest with themselves. We're more likely to lose if we're not on our home court. And so how can you get the home court advantage in your own life with the way that you want to behave? What are those conditions under which you perform your best?

• 5:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're talking about context here. Context is key. I remember I was at the beach with my daughter, maybe, I don't know, a year, year and a half ago in the summer. And someone said there had been a shark sighting at that beach. And it was like a week before that, but then there were still rumblings of this shark sighting. And Ella asked me, she goes, what would you do if you're, if you, if you see a shark? I said, well, I would beat a shark in a fight. She's like, how is that possible? Well, I said, depends on the context. If I fought the shark here on the land where we are right now, it has no chance to beat me. But if I'm out there in its territory, then it has the sort of home court advantage here. Now I do want to talk to Carolyn about these distractions.

• 5:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I like what TK is saying because she's already gotten pretty honest. Like the things that we often prize as, oh yeah, YouTube's pretty valuable. And, and these games are valuable and they can be valuable. I get value from YouTube. I have one game on my phone. It's Tetris and I only use it when we have done a late night tour stop. And I learned this from our web developer, Jeff, about refocusing the mind when you are really amped up or excited after some sort of event. If you want to calm down, 10 minutes of Tetris will really help the mind settle down. It focuses the mind. But if I'm just scrolling mindlessly, I'm distracted mindlessly, well, then I'm not using.

• 6:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Using the tool the way that I want to use it. In fact, I'm using that tool to batter myself with it. It's like I have a hammer, but instead of using it to repair my house, I'm taking the hammer, just hitting myself in the head. And I think unfortunately, that's where we are, many of us are. Because we talked about this a couple of episodes ago, Mal, that I think in Australia, they are not allowing kids to have social media accounts under age 16. Because they've recognized like, wait a minute. This is not ideal for their development. Now, whether or not we implement that here writ large, I'm not recommending it, but I do recommend it for me and my household. My 11-year-old daughter doesn't have these accounts. Why?

• 7:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, because we know that it has the potential to be harmful to her. In fact, it has more potential to be harmful than it does to be helpful right now. Later in this episode, we're going to talk about our going a year without social media, which we did, and how we are going to go back, but in a way that is way more intentional after going without for a while and some of the lessons we've learned here. So the question I have for Carolyn is, what would happen if you went without your phone for a month? Now, some people might say, I could never do that. Well, yeah, if you say that, that's absolutely true. It's the Henry Ford quote, right? Whether you say you can or you can't, you are right. Back in 2011, I went two months without my phone to see if I could reprogram that twitch that I had been experiencing.

• 8:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I learned quite a bit. You learn that there are no payphones anymore, and that was even back in 2011. Today, it's even more pronounced. It's really difficult to find a working payphone. There are still some payphone boxes that are there, but none of them seem to work. But when I went without my phone, I also realized things about my habits. I learned something about boredom, or this thing that we call boredom. Once you get through the boredom, you sit in the boredom for a while, you realize it's not actual boredom. Boredom is the seeking of distraction or the missing those distractions. But sitting through it, you realize that boredom is just peace, personified in a way. And if I'm able to let go of the need for the distraction, I'm also able to sit here

• 8:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  within the peace. Now, of course, I didn't get rid of my phone forever. I have a phone now, but I brought it back in in a way that I used it much more intentionally. I don't have any social media apps on my phone, or the big one for me is I don't have email on my phone, which is really inconvenient sometimes. It's even uncomfortable. But I realized that what would happen is I would just go and check my email real quick. And then I would get this email that even if I didn't need to act on it immediately, it was now buried in the back of my brain. And I was thinking about it. I'm going to the movies with my family, but you know what? I can't watch the movie because I'm watching this distraction that's going on in my head. So the distraction isn't just there in my hand. The distraction is up here.

• 9:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What's going on in my mind? We're constantly distracted. We're in an age of distraction. But even if you go back 2,000 years to the Stoics, they would talk about putting those books down because they can be a distraction. Now, at first, I can say, that can seem like, well, wait a minute. You're saying that reading books is bad? No, I'm saying anything taken to its terminus can be harmful.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  That's right. And sometimes when we succumb to these distractions, it's because we're fighting an impossible battle. We're pitting pleasure against discipline. And usually when we pit pleasure against discipline, pleasure almost always wins. But if you pay attention to people who are really good at choosing the path of discipline, it's because they've made the pleasure on the other side of that discipline more vivid for them. It's not just discipline for discipline's sake, but it's purpose-driven discipline. It's intentional discipline. It's, I'm not doing something over and over again just to prove that I can do it, or just because it fits the definition of discipline. But I'm doing this uncomfortable, inconvenient, challenging thing.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Because there is a better version of me that it leads to, because there is a happier, healthier future that it leads to, because I have a vision of how I want my life to feel. And it's only when I act in accordance with this discipline that I begin to feel that way. But I have to practice reminding myself of that because in the moment when I'm tempted to act by impulse, it's easy for me to forget. And so if you find yourself being distracted, what that means is that there's something else you really want or think you need to be doing, the distraction feels more compelling. I would ask myself the following question. When I'm distracted, what exactly am I doing? I know that you say it's mindless, but there's something specific that you're doing because there are other things that you're not doing.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  So what are you looking at when you're scrolling? And what legitimate appetite is that satiating? What sorts of distractions are you drawn to? Because they speak to you something meaningful about what makes you come alive. And then you want to ask yourself, all right, what's the healthy version of that, that I'm using these distractions to meet? And how can I frame the healthy version of that in terms that are bigger than discipline, but that also involve pleasure and purpose?

• 11:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Do you have an example there? Because I love this distinction between pleasure and discipline. I want to talk about that. But do you have any examples that might be helpful for Carolyn?

• 11:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, so for me, I love reading. And reading not only feels good, but it strongly contributes to my overall fulfillment. On the other hand, there is something about scrolling on the phone that's just easier to do than reading. And reading is one of those things that I know I love theoretically, but it's really hard to get started. And then once I start, it's really hard to stop. It's sort of like getting in the shower and getting out of the shower. The hardest thing to do is get in. And then when you're in, the hardest thing to do is get out, right? It's just that inertia. And so when I'm there with my phone, it just feels like so, ah, you know, just so satisfying, right? But I know that I'm going to regret that. And so I have to remind myself, okay, look, this feels

• 12:41Speaker 04

  good in the moment. And this is more pleasant than starting the process of reading the book. I've got to remind myself here of something that this is actually less fulfilling than reading the book. The book is more fun. I just got to trick myself into starting that, right? And then, and then what I do is I create little buffers. I create little boundaries that make it harder for me or more painful for me to scroll. So those things that you find yourself getting addicted to when you scroll, delete them from your phone so that in order to do it, every single time you got to re-download it and sign in again. That creates just enough pain so that when you have to make a decision between a hard pleasure and a hyper pleasure,

• 13:21Speaker 04

  you're more likely to choose the hard pleasure because you've balanced it out by making the hyper pleasure a little harder to access.

• 13:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Sometimes I make this distinction between being satisfied and being fulfilled. And I know we use those words interchangeably, but what's helpful for me is I can eat a piece of cake and feel satisfied in the moment. But I don't feel fulfilled long-term. We wrote about this in our last book, Love People Use Things, and trying to better understand the difference between the two because a healthful meal, like if I have a nice piece of wild-caught salmon and I have an apple and I have some coconut yogurt. Those things do fill me up and they are satisfying, maybe not as pleasurable as the piece of cake, but they are more fulfilling long-term. And I also like this distinction you make between pleasure and discipline.

• 14:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If I were to amend that at all, I would talk about the distinction between comfort and discomfort because we can understand those things pretty easily. The comfortable things, they're easy to do. The uncomfortable things are more difficult to do, more challenging. In fact, I sometimes look at it as the difference between comfort and suffering. Sometimes we suffer. You think about going to the gym and, and putting in a lot of effort. There is a acute kind of suffering that leads to more fulfillment there. And the question is, is not, should I go without reading and then scroll? Or should I go without scrolling and then read? For you, the question is, which one am I going to go without?

• 14:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're talking about going without today. You're always going out without something. You're always going to be going. Without something in order to make the choice that you're making right now, you're ruling out 99.9999% of all of the other things you could be doing right now because you're stuck on this game or on YouTube. And the question I often ask when I'm buying something new, a new material possession is, is this the best use of my money? In other words, is this the best use of this resource? Well, another resource for you is your time and your attention. Is this the best use of my time and my attention? And so I think about it in terms of consuming versus creating, or you might even say more versus less.

• 15:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Consuming, when you're consuming something like you're, you are watching YouTube video after YouTube video after YouTube video. Nothing wrong with a YouTube video by itself, but when I'm constantly consuming, it becomes more, more, more. Give me more. Eventually, it's like eating that piece of cake and then the second piece of cake. There's the diminishing returns. I've eaten the whole cake and yeah, I've consumed a lot and I've experienced a lot of pleasure. But that very pleasure is actually going to lead to more suffering than if I were just to have that healthful meal that was in front of me. And the antidote to that, at least for me and in the vein of minimalism here, is less.

• 16:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The antidote is going without those things that are pleasurable in the moment, but lead to longer term suffering. Any last words on that?

• 16:25Speaker 04

  Sure, one more practical thing I'll give is it's one thing to know the truth theoretically. It's another thing to make the truth vivid to the imagination. When you look at the power of story and why they impact us so much, it's because they take things that we already know and they embellish them and place them in a context that makes those truths come alive in our hearts and sing in our hearts and they become very vivid and difficult to ignore. So the story of the boy who cried wolf doesn't really teach you anything that you don't know. But when you hear that story, you're reminded of an ancient truth and it becomes vivid because you have a picture for it. Is it any wonder that many people who are really good at working out, they watch a lot of sports or they watch

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Other people who work out or they're in spaces where they're constantly exposed to the benefits and value of fitness. The truth that they already know about living a healthy life is continuously made vivid to them by subjecting themselves over and over again to stimulation that makes it come alive. And so I would look for things that trigger my imagination. What are those imagination triggers for you? Sometimes it can be music. Sometimes it can be a poster. You know, people make fun of vision boards because that got really popular with the secret. But all that really was about was taking people's ideals and removing it from the realm of theory and abstraction and placing it in front of them so that they could look at it every day.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  Pictures, music, writing, being around people, being a part of a community, anything that you can do to to leverage your imagination triggers to keep these truths about who you want to be and how you want to live vivid will aid you greatly in the future.

• 18:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What you're also talking about here is what makes you come alive? It's always what makes you come alive in the present moment. It's not like what's going to make me come alive in the past.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Or what's going to make me come alive next Tuesday?

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You want to feel like you're alive right now. And I think one of the reasons that we pacify ourselves is because we're afraid of that boredom and this sort of mindless distraction apes the form of feeling alive. It's a little bit of pleasure. It's a little bit of dopamine and it's a proxy for feeling alive. Even though I know I don't absolutely feel alive in this moment when I'm just distracting myself. And so maybe the only worthwhile goal is to live in the present moment. Carolyn, I'd love to see you at our next Sunday Symposium. We're doing it a bit differently this year. In January, we're going to be up in Santa Barbara. So if you want to make the the drive all the way up to beautiful Santa Barbara, you're welcome to join us there. Or since you're down in San Diego, why don't you come out to Orange County?

• 18:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The home of TK Coleman and many other spiritual masters in my life. No, it's just the one, actually.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  The Wizard of Westchester.

• 19:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know what? I've really been enjoying doing these Sunday Symposiums. We just did one in Los Angeles. We'll be back in Los Angeles in March. You're welcome to come to all three if you want. The tickets are free over at SundaySymposium.com. Make sure you're on our email list so that you're the first to hear about this because every event sells out. In fact, this one, we had overflow. We had people up on the stage with us, sitting on rugs that Savvy D got for us. And we had people sitting on the stage with us. The whole crowd was there. And it's just the most magical experiences. Talk about living in the moment. We'd love to live in the moment with you. It's the last Sunday of each month. We're going to be in Santa Barbara, and then Orange County, and then Los Angeles. Sunday

• 19:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Symposium.com to grab your free tickets while they are still available. Oh, one more thing for Carolyn. If you want to go without your smartphone, there are other options there as well, right? The light phone, you can get an old dumb flip phone. You can still have a phone and access. The light phone to me, which is not something I use, but because I am not really pacified by my phone nearly as much as I was before my experiment. The thing that was interesting about the light phone is you still have access to a phone. You can send some basic text messages. You can get mapping directions as well. So you have GPS. You're not going to get lost. And you can even listen to podcasts on the light phone. Now, I think it's the third version. They are not a sponsor, but it's fascinating. If anyone has a light phone and has had an experience with it and you've enjoyed it,

• 20:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  let us know. Send us a voice recording to [email protected]. We'd love to hear about your experience. Malibu, before we get back to our callers, what time is it?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  You know what time it is. It's time for the lightning round where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week.

• 20:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed. Now, during the lightning round, we each attempt to answer your question with a short, shareable minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims every Monday for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists.e-mail. We'll never send you spam or junk or- Ads, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. What's the question of the week this week?

• 21:23Speaker 01

  What's one thing you'd like to go without in the new year?

• 21:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What is one thing you'd like to go without in the new year? And the nice thing about this question, it is evergreen because it doesn't have to be January 1st or February 1st or the middle of the year. You can start to go without the things that are in the way right now. When I first stumbled into minimalism was about going without the things that are in the way. I had to identify what was in the way in order to go without those things. Before we get to our pithy answers, I want to hear how some of our listeners answered this question. Alabama, what did some of our listeners have to say?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Wendy said, I would like to go without clinging to material items and the scarcity mindset that makes me hold on to stuff. I find the muscle of letting go is one I have to continually exercise.

• 22:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, your letting go muscle atrophies whenever you cling, which is paradoxical, right? You think of clinging to a weight and it builds your muscles up. But the muscle of letting go is starts to atrophy when you're holding on to those things that are that are getting in the way. What else you got for us?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Stephanie said, I'm going without buying new clothes, mostly because I have more than enough already, but also because I'd like to save money and to take my family on vacation next winter. My goal is to purchase only five new things for 2025. New things I wouldn't buy used like underwear. I enjoy thrifting, but I can hold off on new clothes.

• 22:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now TK, I hear you can get a pair of Ryan Nicodemus's underwear on eBay for a few hundred dollars.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  Dibs.

• 22:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, man.

• 22:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Hard pass.

• 22:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  They're autographed. It's just a streak, though.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Good deal.

• 22:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's what you get Nicodemus for not calling me back this morning. He did the most Nicodemus thing ever this morning. He sent me a text and I said, hey, man, you got a few minutes to chat? I know you're recording the day, but I said, yeah, not a problem. I give him a call, straight to voicemail.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What a power move, Nicodemus. Bravo.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was just like, I wanted to see if you were available.

• 23:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you drop everything for me. I did this experiment that Stephanie did here way back in 2011 as well. It was two weeks after we started theminimalists.com. And I was looking for something to write about and I said, oh, I'm a good minimalist now. And I'm gonna, I never did a new year's resolution until 2011. And I haven't done many since, maybe one or two. But I said, my new year's resolution this year is to purchase no new items. I'm not going to buy anything other than consumables. So I needed like toilet paper and detergent and, and I needed food to eat, cleaning supplies, a limited amount of cleaning supplies. But I wasn't going to purchase any new things, no new clothes, no new accessories, no new shoes. And it was way more difficult than I thought.

• 24:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But going without during that period of time reprogrammed me in the most miraculous way. Ultimately, I failed because that summer I spilled tea all over my laptop. And while I was running an online business and the only way I could really write was with a laptop, although I tried for a while, I'd go to Nicodemus's house and I would use, borrow his laptop to write up an essay, or I'd go to the library and use their computer there.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 24:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Try to log into our WordPress website. And, and I found that those inconveniences were helpful for me because they helped me understand what actually added value to my life. But the biggest thing that happened to me when I went without purchasing, I was going without buying new things, is I'd go to the store and before I would just look at something and say, oh, that's really nice. I think I'll, I'll grab it. And then I would start to take it off the shelf and I realized, oh yeah, I'm not buying anything this year. But then a few weeks ago by and I see the thing on the shelf, I say, oh, that's really, oh yeah, I can't buy anything. And then eventually, within a few months, that's three, four, five months into it, I realized I could appreciate the thing without needing to take it home with me. Now, we all have experiences of this.

• 25:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You go to a museum, you do not try to take the Picasso painting off the wall. Well, if you do, you'll get arrested, right?

• 25:19Speaker 04

  But you can, if your bail is like $5,000, you can't buy anything. So you gotta stay in jail.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

• 25:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm sorry. And so when, when you look at the painting, you can appreciate it. And the same thing is true, like my favorite automobile is a 1992 Range Rover Town and Country.

• 25:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It is a stunning piece of art, but I also know it is a stunning piece of crap. In terms of it leaks oil all the time, the repairs are insane. There's a guy in Ojai where I live who has one and it is, it's my Picasso painting. Every time I go past it, I'm just like, wow, that's amazing. But I also realized that the amount of suffering and pain and struggle and discomfort that I would have to go through in order to own that thing is just not worth it to me. And so I'm going without.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Amber and several other patrons mentioned this, they'd like to go without negative self-talk this year.

• 26:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, what does it mean to go without negative self-talk?

• 26:22Speaker 04

  Oh, man. Well, you replace it with affirmative talk, with healing talk. And the way you do that is not by suppressing the negative self-talk, but by listening to it and then translating it into a way that feels better and that is healthier, you know? So I never get anything right. Well, I can translate that to, I get some things right. I'm just unhappy about this particular thing, but I'll learn from it.

• 26:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so what I'm hearing there is if I'm dealing with a lot of resentment, maybe instead of holding on to the resentment or trying to push it out, I'm going to go without resentment. Maybe the way to go without resentment is to latch on to something like gratitude or forgiveness and focusing on that. And then all of a sudden you're automatically going without the resentment.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Catherine and several other patrons also said, I'm going to try to go without social media in the new year.

• 27:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That is awesome. We're going to talk about our year of going without social media during our right here, right now segment in a moment. But how about you listeners? What's one thing you'd like to go without during this new year or anytime? What's one thing you'd like to go without right now? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way, you can join for free, even if you don't subscribe to our private podcast. Okay, give me something pithy TK. What's one thing you'd like to go without in the new year?

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Exchange online conformity for offline clarity.

• 27:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now you have to tell me what that means. I really like that as a bumper sticker, as a billboard, but what do you mean by that?

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Well, in this time we've been off social media, there is such an astounding amount of clarity and connection with people in the offline world. And you find some interesting discrepancies between what is important online and what is important in your local communities. This past year, I've been to a ton of different churches in different states, Catholic conferences and so on, interacted with hundreds, if not thousands of Catholics. No one at any of these places has had a single conversation with me about Pope Francis. You get online, that might be the only thing that's talked about. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but you're not getting out of a good Pope Francis conversation if you interact with Catholics online, right?

• 28:35Speaker 04

  And so the same thing with politics, you know, the same thing with people saying that they're cutting everyone off who thinks differently than them. When you interact with your friends, you interact with your family, you find that they may still have the same emotions as people that are online, but they handle them differently, they process them differently, they engage differently. And I want to protect and preserve that offline clarity. I do not want, as we return to social media, to allow social media to be the driving force of what I think about, what I talk about and what I feel. I want it to be the other way around.

• 29:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Which brings me perfectly into my pithy answer here. Because when I think about going without, I think about going without the things that own me.

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 29:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And what you're talking about is being owned by other people's opinions or perspectives and those things dragging you in a particular direction. But I also think about going without the things that own me. Just a few days ago, I wrote this essay called Things Own You. I read it at our most recent Sunday Symposium. And it seems that a lot of people came up to me afterward and said they really enjoyed it. And it's available on theminimalists.com/things. If you want to read it, we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But I thought I'd read it for you so we could talk about it. This is called Things Own You. Did you get everything on your Christmas wish list this year? They say you should be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. But why is that a problem?

• 30:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, the paradox of obtaining a coveted thing is that you never desired the possession. You desired the desire. It is the feeling you yearned for, not the thing itself. The moment you possess a new possession, the tables turn and that possession begins to possess you. Every possession has the ability to dispossess. On a relatively short timeline, the objects of your desire degenerate into the objects of your discontent. After a few months, your Luna washable silk robe begins to tatter.

• 30:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Your Gucci Jordan bit loafers give you blisters. Your Moncler virgin wool rib beanie makes your scalp itch. Your Bottega Veneta mini wallace intricate leather shoulder bag grows heavy with regret. Your Dr. Dennis Gross DRX Spectralight FaceWare Pro LED light therapy device runs out of batteries. Your Smeg two slice toaster with six presets and defrost function and removable crumb tray burns your breakfast. Your Saint Laurent leather credit card case is a stark reminder of the debt you've accumulated this year.

• 31:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Uh oh, after getting everything you wanted, you no longer want what you wanted. And then, when the desire is gone, you realize it was entirely a one-way relationship. The things you wanted never wanted you in the first place. At last, you don't own your things if your things own you.

• 32:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so that's my pithy answer. You don't own your things if your things own you. And things can be meant literally, as in physical things, but if social media owns me, then I don't own my time, my attention, my energy, my resources are squandered by these mindless distractions. It's possible, however, to be mindful with our things, with our social media. And sometimes that takes going without for a period of time. I fast every day, but not 24 hours a day, right? Most of the day I'm not eating.

• 32:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Living requires going without food.

• 32:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Just like the music requires the space between the notes. And so if you're owned by your things, you're owned by the desire for those things. Nothing wrong with desire. In fact, that's the thing that we want. And the point of the essay is, once I get a thing, sometimes I'm like, ah, whatever. We've all seen this phenomenon. The hour after all the Christmas presents have been opened by children, they're strewn throughout the house and I'm not paying attention to most of them. They're playing with an old wooden spoon in a pot in the kitchen. You're like, why did I spend hundreds of dollars on these kids? They're ungrateful. No, no, they desired the desire. And once they got those things, they realized those things don't actually want them

• 33:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the way they thought they wanted the things. That's the end of page one, yo. We've got a whole switchboard of callers to talk to. But first, real quick, for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalists. Actually, I've got two things for you. I want to talk about our return to social media and how that's going to be different. But first, the minimalists were hacked.

• 33:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  My head still hurts from that.

• 33:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was so painful. Our second YouTube channel for the minimalist podcast, which I want to talk to you about in a moment as well. We had someone who was moderating comments a few years ago on that channel, not even commenting, but removing things. They were like removing spam. We had a big spam problem on the channel, so we hired someone to simply remove or delete spam. And so they were given certain admin privileges on our YouTube channel, youtube.com/theminimalistpodcast. It's our second channel. And what happened? Well, eventually that spam problem sort of took care of itself. We weren't using that person anymore, but we forgot to remove the permissions for that person.

• 34:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That person's account got hacked and thus we got hacked by these Bitcoin scammers, basically, who took down our whole channel, put up their own scam videos and tried to get people to scan some sort of QR code so that they could empty their Bitcoin wallets. And unfortunately, it was about a two-week nightmare trying to work with YouTube and other people I knew who had connections at YouTube in order to get that channel back. We did get it back. We got our videos back up there as well after working with them. And so everything is back to its sort of original state, but what a headache. And it was a reminder to me that we need to be really careful.

• 35:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so the public service announcement I have for everyone who's listening to this is don't click any links. In fact, this happened to me. I was on a PR call recently with someone I knew and they sent me a link in the chat, but I didn't know this person really well. It's not like they were a good friend of mine. They represented a company, but I didn't know this person. And they sent me a link in the chat and I said, oh, that's a weird looking link. I'm sure it's fine. I told the guy this. I'm sure it's fine. I just have a policy. I don't click on links from people who aren't my closest friends. And even then, I'm highly skeptical about it. If I get a link from TK Coleman or from Alabama or from Savvy D or from Nicodemus. Even from Jeff or Dave, I'm like, you know what? Let me think twice about this.

• 36:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because I don't want someone taking over my life and adding hours and days or weeks, or maybe even years of inconvenience, trying to waste all of my resources because I was careless in the moment. I was distracted, mindlessly. I just did the easy thing. I clicked the link, and then that led me down this other path. So if anything, I'm being more careful this year. I'm going without the immediate reaction, the immediate click. I'm pausing and waiting.

• 36:32Speaker 04

  And by the way, the need for that kind of intentionality is only going to increase as we are nearing the point where you get that phone call and it's my voice saying, hey, this is TK. Check out that link I just sent you. And I don't know anything about this conversation.

• 36:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. And we're gonna, we're gonna see more and more of that. And there will be intricate ways to authenticate things like this. But right now, it's almost as though I need TK to give me a password before we can even have a telephone conversation, or maybe even a FaceTime conversation in the not-too-distant future. The second thing I want to talk about real quick is the minimalists are returning to social media, sort of. Well, we're definitely returning to social media, but we are certainly using it differently. I've been talking to some friends of mine who I think use social media really well. My friend Jeff and Dave from Spire, the web developer and designer for the minimalists. Jeff runs a business with his partner, and it's called Maven, and they work exclusively

• 37:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  with realtors. And they go all over the country and film social media material for these realtors. It's completely different from how you would see it elsewhere, because they're not trying to become social media famous. They don't want millions of views. In fact, he says, if we get millions of views, we're not doing our job correctly, right? Because if you're a realtor in Phoenix, you don't care if someone in Saskatoon is watching your video unless they're interested in moving to Phoenix for some reason. But online, this metric is often a vanity metric. The views or the follower count or subscribers and all of those things. And I don't want to be driven by those things. And that's why we walked away toward the beginning of 2024. And we had Cal Newport on the show. We said, we're going to go without social media for the rest of the year.

• 38:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So personally, I went without social media for 12 months, the entire 12 months. And then the minimalist, I think it was roughly 10 months without social media, without posting on there. We'd go in to check DMs occasionally, but that was really it. We weren't posting anything. We weren't creating for social media. And when we walked away from that, it was understanding that if we go back, it's not just because we're interested in the metrics. We had our best year ever in 2023. That was not intentional. I wasn't trying to reach the most people. But my first thought at the beginning of 2024 was like, okay, how do we improve this by 10 to 20%? If we reached half a billion people in 2023, can it be 600 million in 2024? But then I stopped and asked myself, why?

• 39:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I didn't have a good answer to why. Why do I want to reach 100 million more people? Why would I want to reach 8 billion people? Maybe that's a type of clutter in and of itself. Maybe that is a type of distraction. So I reached out to my good friend, Matt Diavella. He directed both of our Netflix films and he took eight months off of YouTube. And he's got a very popular YouTube channel with millions and millions of viewers. And he decided he needed to walk away from it for a while. He got rid of his whole team. He had 10 employees. He's back on his own now. And I think it was pretty scary for him, but he learned some lessons about how he wants to use social media to make it enjoyable and playful and fun and exploratory and curious, not make it feel like a job.

• 39:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He realized he was having meetings about meetings and he was now having to create things just to keep certain people employed and making up work for employees to do. He's like, I don't want to, I don't want to do this this way. So he and I were going back and forth and eventually we started sending some emails back and forth together. I'm not going to read this whole thing. I'm just going to read the part that I, that I wrote. But I want to talk about a lesson that I learned from going without social media for me personally. Previously, I use social media to create and consume. I'd create something and we'd throw it up online. Or I'd consume. I'd just get into my feed and scroll and scroll and scroll. And I consume content. Oh, that word, content, right?

• 40:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But I'd forgotten something that I finally remembered this year when we were off social media. I'd forgotten how wonderful social media is for connection. And I think that's the main thing that I've missed this year is connecting with friends. Sort of having a window into their world. Or maybe the way I would put it is having an on-ramp to their world. I don't think social media is enough for connection. The way that an on-ramp isn't enough to get to your destination. It is an on-ramp to take you where you want to go. And when I was using social media at its best, I was using it as an on-ramp for connection with people that I care about.

• 41:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  In fact, I met TK Coleman because of social media, right? I met a lot of my closest friends and collaborators because of social media. Matthew Vella, I met because of Twitter back in 2011 or whatever it was, 2012. And so I think that removing myself from that helped me understand how to use it intentionally, more intentionally, not just to consume, which I'll do some consuming and I'll certainly use it for creating, but I'll use it for connection. And the other lesson I learned was quite surprising. I realized I had a really healthy relationship with social media before I left. And I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting that, oh, man, I must have been so addicted.

• 41:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I think there probably was a point, early 2010, 2011, when it was new and I wasn't really sure how to set up boundaries around that. And I had to, I had it on my phone, I had it everywhere else, and it was a distraction. But I realized recently, like, oh, I already had a really... Healthy relationship with social media. It's not a problem for me to go back on. I just need to keep those healthy boundaries. I'm not going to have social media on my phone. I'm not going to be in line at the grocery store and just scrolling because it's easy to do. It's compelling in the moment. And I want to, I want to create that barrier so that I'm not drawn into over consuming. Consuming isn't the problem. Consumerism, the idea, the ideology that more, more, more will complete me.

• 42:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And of course, we know that's not true, especially with social media. However, when the minimalist return to social media, this is why I wrote to, to Matt here. I'll just try to summarize it here. We're certainly going to use it differently as the minimalists. The main thing is I want to create specifically focusing on Instagram to start because that's the one that I think we have the ability to add the most value. I want to create some decluttering and purchasing videos that I think are an on-ramp to our world of minimalism. On this podcast, we obviously talk about the philosophy behind minimalism. We share some rules and boundaries and best practices that have worked really well for us, some observations and insights.

• 43:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But I think social media, if I use it well, if we use it well as the minimalists, it's filming things specifically for social media that bring people into our world. Let's talk about, I have over 50, maybe close to 100 now, different decluttering rules and purchasing rules that I use for myself. Not prescribing them to anyone else, but if you get value from something as simple as the decluttered duplicates rule, or you get something from the spontaneous combustion rule, or if you get something from the six questions to ask before buying, and then you want to share that with someone else who might get value from it. That's really important to me to use social media that way, to focus on adding value.

• 44:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's not about, look at me, look at me, look at me. The question is, am I adding value? And if not, then why would I want to post it? Now, the most difficult thing for me, TK, has been to acknowledge, and after talking to Matt about this, I talked to our friend Paul Saladino about it. I talked to several other people who I think use social media well. I'm gonna focus on being less polished on social media. And Jeff was explaining this to me, Jeff Saris, our web developer. He was talking about how people don't trust things when they, when they seem hyper polished on social media. It feels like an advertisement from a major corporation. And so I'm gonna sort of save the art, the really highly polished art for our documentary

• 44:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  films, or the highly polished art of this audio podcast. Big shout out to post-production Peter, who makes us sound gorgeous on this show. Well, Malabama makes herself sound gorgeous. She could, she could speak into a sock and it would sound good.

• 45:01Speaker 04

  God makes her sound gorgeous. By the way, the major corporations are trying really hard to emulate the unpolished look.

• 45:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 45:08Speaker 04

  And, and they still don't quite get it. You could tell that they just like, there's an it that they don't get. And the best that they can do is just sort of collaborate with people and be like, hey, just do what you do, but like, stick our label on it and don't say anything too funny.

• 45:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. Right. Don't, don't, don't say anything that will cancel us.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. That's a really great point. I was talking to Audio Josh at our last Sunday symposium. He works on our documentaries. He's one of the most talented audio people that I've ever met for live audio and, and recording audio during filming. And he was talking about sometimes he works with people who, they hold up the little lav mic up to their, their mouth, but it's not actually recording.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  They just do it for the optics?

• 45:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  They do it for the optics. So you see people on social media, it looks like they're holding this microphone, but he's, Josh is out of frame and he, he has a big boom mic over there. And then, and then he also has a lav mic taped to their chest as a backup.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Which is where it's supposed to be, to be clear.

• 46:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Exactly. You're supposed to clip it on or tape it on. And, and, and so for me, it's not about being aesthetically displeasing. I don't want that at all. I still want it to be high quality, but I'm not going to focus on being hyper polished. I want it to look good, but it doesn't need to look corporate because I want to earn people's trust as an on-ramp to our more artistic endeavors, like the podcast or like the films, or certainly like the writing, which is the thing that I want. To be the most intense expression, artistic expression that I put out there. So hopefully you're on our email list at theminimalists.com because that email that I, or the essay that I read earlier, I post, I publish stuff like that all the time over at theminimalists.com.

• 46:46Speaker 04

  By the way, Josh, that's what makes the Sunday Symposium so great. Because when someone is asking a question and they start crying in the middle, you can't polish that out.

• 46:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's right. I mean, i- in the moment, you can't edit the present moment. What a great metaphor there, right? Now, you can edit in a way by going without, right? In fact, we do that with Sunday Symposium. It's like fewer than 200 people at these venues. And we can cram them in there and we could certainly get into a much bigger space. We had a huge waitlist for this most recent event. But editing out and making it small gives us that ability to communicate in a way that if we had 1,000 people there, it'd still be an interesting, I think, compelling event. But I think we would lose something. So we go without the large crowd in order to focus on what's here in front of us. I talked about using Instagram. We'll publish to other platforms. You can follow us there. If you're not on social media, we're at The Minimalists,

• 47:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  by the way, on every platform. If you're not on social media, don't worry, we'll post some stuff on Patreon as well. So you can still follow us even if you're not following us on social media. Also on YouTube, we're gonna stay with this audio podcast after this year. I've really enjoyed the audio experience here. It doesn't mean we won't be doing video stuff on YouTube. In fact, we will. Some more video essays and things like the Fragment series that we did last year that's up on Patreon. We're gonna put that out on YouTube this year. And I'm gonna be working with some other filmmakers to create beautiful videos for YouTube, separate from this podcast, but as another on-ramp to what we are doing here with The Minimalists. So dust that pen off, TK.

• 48:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We've got some video essays that I'm really eager to work on with you in the not-too-distant future. You can follow us over there, youtube.com/theminimalist. And if you want to follow this podcast going forward on YouTube, youtube.com/theminimalistpodcast. I really like this audio. Only format for me, it removes the pressure of performing for camera, performing for social media on the podcast and allows us to have these insightful conversations that I feel like sometimes the cameras might get in the way. So instead we are going without. Now, finally, this is the last point I made to Diavella here. I'm going to ease back into it. I spent the last month putting together this really strict plan because you know

• 49:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  me, I'm rigid and structured and, and I'm planning it all out. And I've got on Mondays, we're going to do this and Tuesday, we're going to do this and Wednesday, we're going to do this. And then the stories here and this platform. And I was like, wait a minute, this feels like a job. What am I doing? This doesn't feel playful. I want to be able to enjoy it. And so I'm going without a strict plan here. So we have room to experiment and iterate and most importantly, to be playful. I want to make sure that we enjoy this type of creation. So I'm not going to force myself to sprint towards some imaginary finish line because strong moves slow. So I'm getting back in and for some reason I

• 49:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  ever feel like, oh, I'm not adding value with this platform. I'm not getting value from this at all. It's not adding value to my life. I'm always willing to set it right back down. And I think that is the key. Malabam, what else you got for us?

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.

• 50:12Speaker 05

  Hi, my name is Nikki, based in Tokyo, calling in to share a reflection on the formula for satisfaction mentioned in episode 457. Satisfaction equals halves divided by ones. The guests explained then that you can't change the halves without high cost, but you can't control the ones. And if you're the ones, the less to divide the halves with, leading to greater satisfaction. So wanting more than what I have results in my dissatisfaction. When it comes to satisfaction, it often depends on perceived halves rather than the absolute halves. When we don't recognize what we already have, well, they don't count in the equation.

• 50:55Speaker 05

  For years, I prayed many ones. Clear skin, pearly white teeth, voluminous hair, shapely legs, flat tummy, and the list goes on. Always being reminded I don't have these. I was dissatisfied with my body for most of my life. One day, during a body scan meditation, the teacher guided me in taking the different parts of the body. Now, let's think our body. Think your feet, think your legs, think your arms, think your lungs, think your heart, and so on. I repeated tongue in cheek. It felt silly, thinking each body part. I didn't realize it then, but now I appreciate the different parts of my body.

• 51:37Speaker 05

  Lets me walk, dance, sing, taste flavors, smell flowers, see beautiful sunsets, smile, laugh, cry, hug family friends, well, everything that give meaning to my life. As I recognize what I'm able to do, I feel satisfied with the body that I currently have. It's easy to overlook what we have, but consciously recognizing it brings more satisfaction in the present. Perhaps a good reminder is to imagine, what if we don't have them? What if we lose them? Or, as we often hear, count one's blessings.

• 52:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, Nikki, thank you so much for that satisfying and thoughtful comment. So, so good. If anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, you can send a voice recording to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three, but first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 52:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, that's the first thirty-nine percent of episode four hundred and seventy-five. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, now that my life is clutter-free, how can I help others live with less? What things, activities, commitments, and traditions do the minimalist think people should take a moment to consider putting aside this year? And we'll talk to Malabama about her experience of going without television and home internet and video games. For the last 10 months, plus we've got a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast. We're gonna talk about the Container Store filing for bankruptcy. Do we like it? Are we upset by it? You gotta tune in to find

• 53:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  out. When you subscribe on Patreon, you'll get a personal private feed so that our weekly maximal episodes play in your favorite podcast app. Plus you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to episode 001. That's a full decade of podcast episodes. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Malibu, Post Production Peter, Spire Jeff, Inspire Dave, Savvy D on the board over there, and the rest of our team. I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, it's gotta be this. Love people and use things because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  We'll see you next time.

• 54:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Peace.