476 | A Waste of Now

The Minimalists talk about the benefits and downsides of wasting time. Discussed in this episode: When is it selfish to say no to the people I love? (1:54) What are you most likely to waste your time on right now? (20:10) Listener tip: When you're done clearing out your home, you have to do the same to the rest of your life. (36:51) 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'll 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, Malibu, hello, everybody. Coming up on this free public minimal episode, a caller has a question about the best way to say no to people she loves. And then we've got a question about the benefits and downsides of wasting time. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment and a beautiful listener tip for you. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 476. That's the full two-hour episode where we answer three times as many questions over on Patreon. The link is in the description. Now, when you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to episode 001. That is a full decade of podcast archives. By the way, big thanks to our patrons.

• 1:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free because, sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or comment for our show, we would love to hear from you. 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 Kristen.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  Hi Josh and TK, it's Kristin Ziegler with Minima. I have a question about boundaries and generosity that was inspired by your recent episode about holiday anxiety. It was a question TK asked Josh towards the end. So I consider myself to be a fairly generous person, but I'm not necessarily generous in the way that others expect me to be. And so sometimes that friction can cause some internal struggle or guilt. For example, this past weekend, a family member asked me at the last minute if I could go pick something up for them.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  And I could have, however, it would have seriously disrupted my day. I'm someone who needs a lot of white space, a lot of rest, a lot of me time. So that similar to what Josh has said, when I say yes to something, I'm really there. I don't like to do things that I don't want to do, but I will do difficult things. And I don't want to do things and then resent the person later. But sometimes this leaves me feeling or questioning, am I selfish? Am I generous enough? And if a family or loved one were in a serious crisis state or truly needed something for

• 3:19Speaker 03

  me, like no questions asked, I'll drop everything and prioritize that need. But this particular errand was not that. And I just had all of this like back and forth, inner dialogue for like an entire day about it. So I would love to hear you all talk about, you know, the boundaries versus generosity versus selfishness. And is selfishness even bad if it's not hurting anyone else? Thanks for your time.

• 3:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There's a whole lot to touch on here. First thing I want to note, Kristin, that slight echo in your home, which your home is really beautiful. She's going to be on our podcast in about five or six weeks at this point. We have this five-part clutter series that's coming up in two weeks. We're going to reveal some secrets about living room clutter and garage clutter. Actually, we're just going to talk to you about some of these problem areas in our homes: basement clutter and living room clutter and bedroom clutter and cabinet clutter. And Kristin's going to join us for one of those episodes. She runs an organizing business called Minima. And this question about boundaries and anxiety and selfishness and generosity, there's so much here.

• 4:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But the first thing that I want to point out is a slight echo in your home, and that is the sound of simplicity. You've gotten rid of the excess around you, and now what you're doing is obviously you're looking inward and you're saying, "Oh, you know what? There's a little bit of doubt here. There's a little bit of grief here. Am I being generous enough? Are my boundaries appropriate? And if not, is that what's causing my anxiety?" So TK, I'd like to start here. "When is it selfish to say no to the people I love?"

• 5:05Speaker 04

  All right, we have to start with a distinction between selfishness and self-interestedness. Self-interestedness is the state of considering oneself, factoring in one's own pursuit of pleasure and one's own desire to avoid pain in every decision that you make. I would contend that it is impossible for us to not be self-interested. In everything that you do, you must factor in, "How much time is it going to take? How is it going to affect me? Is this feasible and sustainable for me? How does this feel for me?" Nothing is wrong with self-interestedness. You ought to always consider how the decisions you make to help others affect you.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  Selfishness, I would define as the consideration or pursuit of one's own self-interestedness at the expense of others. It's when you do things like violate another person's individual rights, or step on another person's back, or you mistreat them, you fail to preserve their dignity in some kind of way because you're exalting your rights and your needs above the value of another person, and you're being inconsiderate.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  And so, how do we know when we are being selfish versus when we are not? There's no easy formula, but there are some guidelines that we can think about to help us in these moments where we either feel internally guilty or externally pressured. One guideline is to ask yourself, what are you saying yes to? It's not enough to know what you're saying no to, because no is always a means to an end, even if you haven't thought specifically about what yes you're protecting with that no. No is just a way of saying, I cannot or will not do this thing you're asking of me because I prefer to be available to something else. It may be rest, it may be thinking about what you want to do with the rest of your day, it may be a birthday party, it may be a job.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  And when you don't know what you're saying yes to, it's much easier for you to be manipulated because you tend to say no with less conviction, less certainty, and with only a sense of what the other person is thinking about you. But it's when you say yes, I am saying yes to this, that you can speak with conviction. It's one of the reasons why most people who struggle with saying no do not experience that struggle when the reason they have to say no is because of their job. Because it's a yes that they feel so confident in, and they're so sure that other people have to accept it, that even the person that's completely scared of saying no has no problem saying, sorry, I gotta go to work. And you gotta get to that place where you have that same confidence with the other things that you do.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  And if you don't have that confidence, well, why is that? So what are you saying yes to is my first guideline. I'll pause here.

• 7:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, I think the what are you saying yes to is important because even the work thing, the culturally accepted norms that, okay, everyone's fine with that. Now imagine if I'm walking past a swimming pool and I see, I look over, TK's in there and he's drowning in the swimming pool. Say, I would help you, man, but I gotta go to work. We know in that context, that doesn't work because there is something that is truly more important than me being on time for work.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  And you would do that, by the way, even if your boss said to you, you're fired the next time you're late.

• 8:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Without a doubt, yeah. And I'd feel good about being fired there, right? And then I'd be living in your 400 square foot apartment with you because I don't have a job anymore.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  And I would say, thanks for not being me, or I'd be dead.

• 8:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think about Anthony DeMello and what he talks about. He says, saying no is a way of being precise with your love. Another thing he often says, I've heard him say this a few times. It is a joy to say no to someone. It is a joy to tell someone no, because he knows what he's saying yes to. And sometimes you're saying yes to a specific thing. No, I have a track meet at that time, or no, I have to be at work, or no, I already have a hike planned with some friends of mine, or no, I gotta go to my daughter's soccer game. And those are all acceptable, but sometimes what you're saying yes to is your own piece. And that's harder to explain to someone. Originally, I wanted to title this episode, Don't Explain Yourself.

• 9:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're gonna do a separate episode about why you don't have to explain yourself in these situations. It's really freeing, though, to realize that I can simply say no. I don't have to explain myself. I think about Osho and what he talks about, anytime you explain yourself, you're explaining the love away. Your explanation gets in the way of love, because if someone loves you, they simply take no for an answer. Now, if you feel compelled to explain yourself, that's fine, but you don't have to explain yourself. We go to the generosity part of this. Generosity can be a sneaky thing. I think about our friend Dave Ramsey. He says, no one regrets being more generous.

• 9:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No one's ever regretted being generous yesterday. But it depends on what you mean by being generous, right? If being generous is self-harming, because you're afraid of looking selfish, then that's actually not a type of generosity. That is almost a type of martyrdom, martyrdom, in a way.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's exactly right. And what happens is, you end up resenting people later on in a way that might negate or cancel out the so-called positive effects of your act of generosity, right? Because that generosity had so many unwritten rules and expectations attached to it that you weren't forthcoming about. And so this leads me into a second guideline, which is, what are the conditions?

• 10:48Speaker 04

  That define your yes. So when you say no to someone, what would it take you to say yes? I think this is important because even though on the surface, it often appears to be the case, oh, nothing could make me say yes to that. There are very few things like that. Usually these are like deeply seated moral issues, matters of principle. But for the most part, there's a yes built in there somewhere. So if I have to go to work and you're like, hey, wanna come play video games with me? I could say, well, there's nothing that would make me do that. But if you were like, sure, how much does your job pay you? I'll give you a year's salary in one check right now. If you come play video games with me, I'm out. Sign me up. Right, I'm out, right? I'm so in, let's go. I'm so in. Now, it may seem unrealistic to expect that that's what's going to happen,

• 11:32Speaker 04

  but that's not what I'm preaching. I don't think you should expect that that's what's going to happen. But I think it is a helpful exercise to always know, what are the conditions that would allow me to say yes to what you're offering? Because there is always some kind of cost in the things that you do for others. And when you think about what the conditions are that would motivate you to say yes, it allows you to invite other people to take some ownership in the things they ask of you. And oftentimes, we stress ourselves out unnecessarily by saying yes to other people without giving them any opportunity to take ownership in what they say they want from us. It's the old phrase, help me, help you. Yes, I can do it, but I need to use your car.

• 12:15Speaker 04

  Yes, I can do it, but I need you to understand I won't be able to be there for it. It'll have to be 4:30. Yes, I can do it, but I need you to pay for gas. Yes, I can do it, but not today. It'll have to wait until Saturday. Yes, I can do it, but if I'm gonna give my time to that, then I need you to commit to doing this because that's what it's taking me away from. And now it gives people the opportunity to see the trade offs that are involved. And they might be more empathetic, but more importantly, it allows them to. Make a more honest request because sometimes when we ask things of people, we don't know what the costs are to them. We just know what the benefits are to us. And it's always easy to look at another person's life and say, it's probably easy for them to give me what I want. But when you invite other people to participate in those costs,

• 12:57Speaker 04

  it helps them to be more honest and it helps you to be more convicted in how you feel about it.

• 13:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Being generous isn't always easy, but it doesn't ever feel like an obligation. As soon as it feels like an obligation to me,

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  it removes that blessing from the thing. It doesn't feel like I'm giving a gift anymore. It feels like I'm showing up because I have to be there. I have to do this. This is what I'm supposed to do. You should be more generous.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I remember about a decade ago, we were working on this charity project with the minimalists. And, and I was talking to a family member about it. And, you know, what are you, what are you working on lately? Oh, we're doing this really great philanthropic thing. We're building some wells here. And they're like, well, yeah, that's what you should be doing. And it just took all of the air out of the room. I was like, what do you mean that's what I should be doing? I get to do it. I don't have to do it. Right? I'm being generous because it's something I want to do. And is it in line with my own self-interest in some way? Sure, I get some good feeling out of it. It's not completely altruistic. But also, as soon as I feel like, oh yeah, this is what I, I guess I should be doing this.

• 14:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It really makes it feel like it's not generous anymore. It feels like an obligation. I'm thinking about back to that swimming pool that I see you in and you're drowning, right? Well, what if I can't swim? Am I generous if I jump in there with you? And then I try to save you even though I can't swim? No, I'm going to make the problem worse. And I think that maps on to Kristen's question really well because you may not have enough to give here. You may not be able to swim in every area in which you want to help someone, right? And that makes you, well, it makes you look generous, but you might be harming yourself by being generous. Anytime that's happening, it actually harms you because you're going to feel like you want to be less generous. In the future.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. Hey, I'm gonna say two more things more succinctly here. Just a couple of quick, a couple more quick guidelines. Number one, take the time and do the work to develop a code of ethics. I think this is a kind of ancient art form. I think most people inherit some basic views about right and wrong, but we often determine what we feel guilty about and not guilty about based on social approval and how other people react to us. Philosophical questions like the age old trolley problem, or even questions like hypotheticals. What would you do if you saw a drowning man, but you knew you would lose your job to save him? These are valuable questions, not because these hypotheticals are likely to occur, but they force you to think about your underlying moral principles.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  And all too often, we do our thinking in the heat of the moment about what we're gonna feel guilty about, and that makes us subject to manipulation and misdirected guilt. We need to do the work of asking ourselves, what are those moments in life, categorically speaking, principally speaking, where it is actually a good thing for me to sacrifice myself and suffer for the well-being of another person? And when we encounter situations where someone is saying, hey, I need you to do this for me, we should have done some thinking in that moment about, is this the kind of moment where I believe it is a morally good thing for me to lay my life on the line to help the other person? The last thing is, whatever it is you use to determine your code of ethics, it cannot be the disapproval of other people.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  No matter what you choose to do in life, there is someone somewhere with a different code of ethics who will think you are evil and try to make you feel guilty for that.

• 16:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. And talk about a waste of now. If we're constantly trying to appease others to show how generous we are, so they think we're generous, they feel that I am generous. And Kristin even said this, you know, I generally think of myself as a generous person, but then maybe someone else doesn't think I'm generous, and therefore, I don't feel as generous as a result. And it makes it much more difficult to say no. But if you're saying yes out of this sense of of sort of pious or self-righteous obligation, that is in and of itself a waste of now. Getting back to the drowning TK analogy, I can't save a drowning person if I myself cannot swim.

• 17:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so what are these areas in which you can't swim, Kristin? Maybe you're an extreme introvert like me. And then going to networking events each night and volunteering at them may not be the best thing for you, may not be the best way to be generous. Whatever way that is in front of you right now is one way to be generous with others, but it is not the only way. In fact, if it is a way to be generous, but you're unable to swim in those waters, you might be doing the opposite of being generous. You might be trying to look generous, but harming yourself in the process. Speaking of being generous, we have a dozen free resources over on the minimalist website.

• 17:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You can download them for free, just head on over to theminimalists.com, click resources there at the top, everything from our 30-day minimalism game calendar, which you can print out and then play the 30-day minimalism game with your friends and family and coworkers, or maybe it's our free rulebook, it's 16 rules for living with less, or TK's free ebook, Emotional Clutter, you can download that at theminimalists.com. Also, this weekend in Santa Barbara, today, we're releasing the last 30 tickets. We set aside a few tickets for our next Sunday Symposium. We do these live events in Southern California once a month, the final Sunday of each month. And Kristin's gonna be in town next month, maybe we can get her to join us in Orange

• 18:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  County when we're doing our first Orange County Sunday Symposium at the end of February. Kristin, let me know if you want to join us at Sunday Symposium at the end of February, and then we'll be back in Los Angeles in March. Now, these events always sell out, and so if you go there and the tickets are gone, go ahead and put your name on the waitlist, because here's a secret, sometimes people can't use their tickets. We released a bunch of tickets on the waitlist last time, you have 24 hours to claim those tickets, and so if you're unable to get a ticket because they've already sold out, these are free tickets, by the way, these events are free to the public, but seats and space are limited there at these small venues, they hold just a couple hundred people.

• 19:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so, we always have these large waitlists, get on the waitlist, we'd love to give you tickets to Sunday Symposium. Sunday Symposium.com is the website. We hope to see you over there. Before we get back to our callers, and we got a bunch of callers, Malibu, what time is it?

• 19:35Speaker 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.

• 19:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed. Now, during the lightning round, we 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, over 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?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  What are you most likely to waste your time on right now?

• 20:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What are you most likely to waste your time on right now? Being generous, apparently.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  There are worse things.

• 20:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, TK, before we get to our pithy answers, I want to hear from some of our simpletons. Malibu, what does some of our listeners have to say?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Sandra and several other patrons said, "I'm wasting a lot of time on social media. For a year or so, I had completely quit Facebook and Instagram, but my job brought me back. It's unbelievable how much time you can waste there."

• 20:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, if you don't set your own boundaries, someone without your best interests in mind will set them for you, right? And that could be, take your job out of this for a moment. We often have our boundaries set by external factors. So, we just got back on social media as The Minimalists. We're at The Minimalists on all platforms, and we're focusing a lot on Instagram. In fact, Savvy D. and Jordan O'More and I were out at a mall recently, and we were filming. We-

• 21:11Speaker 04

  They still have those things, malls?

• 21:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're gonna get to that in the private podcast. The shopping malls are dying at this amazing rate, and we have an article about that. And I want to talk about my own experience. I used to manage 150 retail stores. So, we'll talk about that on page three. But getting back to the boundary question around social media, I don't think social media is inherently good or bad, just like I don't think a knife is inherently good or bad, but I can do some terrible things with a knife. I cut my hand. Remember when when Alyssa was in here her first like two days? Yes. She's had to go to the emergency room. She sliced her whole hand open with the knife. Now, I'm not saying, you know, we really need to get rid of knives now because she sliced her hand open trying to cut open an avocado, but I want to be responsible with that tool that I have. And the same is true

• 21:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  with Instagram or Facebook or Tik Tok or any of these other platforms. And for some of us, the boundary might mean, you know what? I'm going to go without this completely. No knives in my home because I'm going to cut my hand wide open. Totally fine. That's an intentional decision. But for some of us, we've decided, especially with the minimalist here. And I'm going to talk about this more during right here, right now. But we've decided that this is a great way for us to connect with people and to add value as long as we have the appropriate boundaries in our life.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, you got to think ahead about these boundaries. If you're making all these decisions in the heat of the moment, it's the casino technique we talked about. You can go in there, you can gamble, you can play around, but know your number ahead of time. Because when you get inside that place, you will realize it is designed to keep you in there as long as possible. So it is with social media.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Violet and several others said, I start each day by going to YouTube with the intention of watching a self improvement video. But before I can even type anything in the search bar, I spot several videos that the YouTube algorithm feeds me. Three hours later, I realized I've fallen down a rabbit hole and watched dozens of random videos by channels I'd never seen. And I still haven't watched what I have intended to.

• 23:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Violet, I tend to have the same exact issue, but not with YouTube, but with Instagram or Tik Tok. I can fall down those rabbit holes. And so it's another question about boundaries here. And sometimes there are some tools that help us set up some boundaries because you're talking about these future regrets that you experience, right? These you're wasting your now and that's producing some future regrets. It feels pleasurable in the moment, but something that simply feels pleasurable, but doesn't have much of a payoff, often feels like regret in the future. And so what I did is I reached out to our good friend, Professor Sean. I sent him an email. And I asked him, what YouTube blocking app does he use? Because I know for him, he wanted to cut out the ads, but he also wanted to cut out the distractions. What did he have to say?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Professor Sean said, "I use one blocker. It has Mac Safari, iOS, iPadOS, and Vision Pro versions. It's $3 a month, or $15 a year. It has as decent YouTube ad-blocking as you're going to find, but blocking recommended videos isn't as simple as just checking a box or turning on a feature. You have to use the app to block an element, and then select the area of the page you don't want to load, in this case, the section with the recommended videos. It can take some fine-tuning, but it's worth it." Finally, just turning off autoplay in your watch history in YouTube will do wonders. There won't be any recommended videos on the front page, and any recommendations in the sidebar, or at the end of a video, and it won't be based off a personal algorithm. They'll just be pretty uninteresting.

• 24:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So if you're wasting your now, whether it's on social media or YouTube, there are ways that we can block that out altogether. You can, of course, keep it off your phone, or not have it on your computer, but eventually, when you get there, there may be these boundaries you want to set up, like having a blocking app there. For me, I pay for YouTube Premium to avoid having any ads, but there's still all of the recommended videos on the side. I tend not to fall into that, for whatever reason. I'm not as compelled by it, but I could see why it would be compelling for many other people.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Julia said, "My husband and I just bought our first house, and there are quite a few things we need to purchase: a lawnmower, a ladder, and several other items that we didn't need at our apartment. I've wasted a lot of time scrolling Facebook Marketplace and messaging sellers to purchase these items in a more sustainable and cost-effective way, but many sellers don't respond, even if you send a friendly message."

• 25:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, well, the true cost of a thing extends way beyond its price tag. If you're wasting your time, you're wasting your now. And so sometimes, it might feel like, "I'm doing the responsible thing. I'm going to spend eight hours researching this $13 purchase. Is that the best use of this time? Is that even a sustainable use of your time?" Because your time used like that is not sustainable. It's simply being wasted.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  Right. A money budget is when we say, "How much money do I..." I want to spend on things like that. Okay, $50 a month for wireless, maybe so. $300 a month for just wifi, probably not. We gotta do the same thing with our time. How much time do I want to spend on things like that? If I can get what I need by maybe spending an hour or less? Or sending out a few messages? Fine, but if it's two weeks later? And I'm still chasing down people on Facebook Marketplace? I don't think giving yourself a part-time job when you've got other things to do? Is a sustainable, cost-effective approach.

• 26:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The minimalists call this a selling deadline? And this often works like if I'm trying to sell something, I'll give you an example. My daughter's outgrew her smaller surfboard. We live maybe 20 minutes from the beach in Ventura County. And she outgrew her surfboard, which we got from Facebook Marketplace originally. And now we put it back on Facebook Marketplace? And sold it, but if we couldn't sell at the price we wanted within the first week? What do we do? We lower the price. If I can't sell it in a month, then I try to donate it. If I can't donate it, then I try to recycle it. If I can't recycle it, then eventually it will end up in the trash. That is how I let go of possessions in a sustainable way. But notice that there is a trash component there because? I also recognize that my time is worth something.

• 27:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And for me, I don't want to hold on to that thing for 90 days, 100 days, just because there's the, well, I paid some money for it. And so we look at Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or eBay as our storage locker. And we went to the storage locker, got a surfboard that we used for a couple of years. She's outgrown it, so now it goes back into that storage locker. And someone else gets to use it. I'm wondering if there's a reverse here TK? Where it's, there's a buying deadline piece of this? Where it's like, if I can't find the most sustainable option within an hour? Then I'm going to go with whatever plan B is.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. It's like driving around, checking out different stores to get a sale. That's totally fine. That's actually a good thing. But how many stores do you have to drive to? Before you say, all right, the cost of getting a better deal has now gone up so high that it's offset by me just buying the more expensive version by the place that's near where I live.

• 28:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And of course, remember that the most sustainable purchase is the one that's left at the store. Let's do one more, Malibu.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  This one's from Hannah. I've been wasting time wallowing in the sorrow of a divorce I wasn't expecting. It has been almost nine months and the emotional progress through the grief has been so small.

• 28:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, what can you tell Hannah about grief and other forms of unexpected emotional clutter that are really hard to let go of?

• 28:43Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know if wallowing is what you're actually doing, or if that's a word that you're using to judge yourself for what you're actually doing. Certainly, we don't want to wallow in sorrow, but we do need to process our grief. And perhaps you are processing, and if you are processing slowly, that's okay. Sometimes we need to process slowly. You can't process according to someone else's quote unquote socially acceptable guidelines or demands. So I would encourage you to take your time to go slow. You're not doing this for anyone else but you. And I would encourage you to have people in your life that you can trust and that you can talk to about these things. Processing is an important thing. You're not, you're not a bad person. You're not going too slow because it's taking you a while.

• 29:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I guess I should stop working on my How to Let Go of Grief in 10 Minutes book. How about you, listeners? What are you most likely to waste your time on right now? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way, did you know you can join the Patreon community chat for free even if you don't subscribe to the private podcast? Of course, we'd love for you to support the private podcast and get the rest of the full maximal episode. There's so much more of less over on Patreon. But even if you can't afford to subscribe, you can still join us in the Patreon community chat, interact with us over there. Okay, give me something pithy, TK. What are you most likely to waste your time on right now?

• 30:04Speaker 04

  All right. Comfort is a prison for progress. There are two kinds of comfort. Comfort as rest, comfort as hiding. Comfort as rest is when you do things that are not work, that are familiar, that do feel Good because they replenish the soul. They revitalize you with energy. They are good for you. But then the other kind of comfort is one where you know there are areas of life where you need to be challenged and endure some pain for the sake of something better on the other side. And you hide from it. You resist it. And so for me, the thing I've got to commit to this year is to embrace more ascetic discipline in my life and do things that feel painful in the middle of it because of the way in which they reflect my values and bring into manifestation my future self.

• 30:49Speaker 04

  Joy isn't just determined by what feels good in the moment. It's determined by what's consistent with your highest excitement.

• 30:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think about wasting my time. And I think wasted time is perspectival, right? Now, we were talking about this before we started recording today. Me, you and Savvy D, we were talking about what is restful for you?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that was a hard thing for me to kind of come to terms with because I twisted my ankle really bad this morning, or not this morning, rather, this weekend. And I spent the whole weekend not being able to do the things that I had planned to do, which involved going and running errands, doing DIY things that required me being on my feet. And suddenly I couldn't be on my feet. And you asked a really great question of what is restful to you? And I went, ooh, I have to think about that. One of the things that I did that was restful to me was play video games. We talked about that in last week's episode, how I had taken a 10-month break from playing video games. But if I had played video games for the entire weekend, that would not be rest. There's a point where it's no longer restful.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  But taking time to do things that are a monotask, that would command my attention in a way that's enjoyable for me, like reading or taking a bath or even taking a walk, which I couldn't do, finding things that I could do with the limitations of my twisted ankle, that was what ended up replenishing me.

• 32:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So for me and you, reading a book for both of us is a restful endeavor, right? And yet it's a monotask. I'm actually focusing on something. It is an active way to rest. But if I were to hand a book to my daughter, who's 11 and doesn't enjoy Reading at all, it would not feel restful to her whatsoever. And I think the same thing is true with wasting our time. Something that feels really important and meaningful and significant to me might feel like a total waste of time to someone else. And so my pithy answer is there are no refunds for misspent time. You can buy something from a mall. You go into a store, you buy a thing, you don't like it and you check what the return policy is.

• 32:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And you bring it back in with the receipt and they give you your money back. But they don't give you your time back. We can't get that time back. And so I want to be really careful with how I am spending this time right now. And if I'm not in control of my time, someone else is going to control it for me. I wrote an essay called Unbusy, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. And it's really about whenever I say I'm busy, what I'm really saying is my life is out of control. Everyone else's emergency is now my urgency. And so what I've learned over the years is that your priorities are dictated by your now, not by your ideas.

• 33:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Your priorities are what you do, they're not what you say they are. Cause I might say, yeah, my, my health is my biggest priority. And I'm eating a McDonald's cheeseburger and smoking a cigarette. And it's like, well, I said that was a priority and I might even believe it in my mind, but my real priorities are dictated by whatever is going on right here, right now. Speaking of right here, right now, that is the end of page one. We have still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. But real quick for our right here, right now segment, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. Actually, I've got two things for you, TK. You know, we've been easing back into social media and I've really been enjoying, I've had some revelations and I want to talk about those on a future episode.

• 34:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But going back in was like, it's like taking a year off sugar. And then if you have a little bit of sugar, you're like, this is too sweet for me. Yeah. It was overwhelming with sweetness and stick. And so I learned really quickly like, oh yeah, yeah, I need to set up some new boundaries here because the apps look a little bit different, the way I interact is a little bit different. And so I don't do it anything from my phone, other than I'll post something, I'll download the app, post something and then done with that. If I want to engage with anything on the app, I will just do it from a web browser. And that's the the limitation I've set up. So I certainly can't do it while I'm driving. I can't pull over and start looking at things.

• 35:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that way it doesn't feel like I'm wasting my now. When I go pull up my computer, I go to a web browser, I've done so intentionally. I'm going to go watch this thing or look at this thing or read this thing or scroll through this thing. There's an intentional element to that. And some of my favorite videos that you all, our audience tends to share with us are these different decluttering or minimizing tips, or there's sometimes they're just hilarious videos, like the one we did about the the coffee mugs last year. And so I'm looking for you listeners, if you would like to have us comment on different videos, we could do different stitches on Instagram and and other things, minimizing videos, decluttering videos, purchasing

• 35:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  videos, consumerism videos, please DM them to us on Instagram. We're at the minimalist over there. We'll take a look at them. We'll share some of our favorites. I think people will get value from especially the really funny ones, the ones that resonate with a lot of people. We'd love to comment on those with you. And a quick programming note for next week, we don't have a podcast. Our studio is going to be closed because, well, I'm going to be on the East Coast working on our new documentary. And so while the studio will be closed next week, we're gonna have a little bonus for you in your feed. Not a full episode, but a, what are we calling it? A maxi single. Yeah, not a minimal episode, not a maximal episode, but kind of like, you know, a little bonus for you next week. We're gonna be talking a bit about

• 36:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  smart devices. And then after that, we start our five-part household clutter series featuring famous minimalists that you already know and love. We're gonna bring them into the studio. And together, we're going to let go of your living room clutter and cabinet clutter and garage clutter and closet clutter and so much more. Alabama, what else you got for us?

• 36:52Speaker 01

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

• 36:56Speaker 05

  Hello minimalists. My name is Alexis and I'm a Patreon subscriber and a longtime listener of the podcast. I really enjoy all that you guys do and as many people who call into the show say, I get immense value from all that you guys talk about. I wanted to share a little bit of value that I found, share it for your listeners and you guys as well. I've been doing a yoga teacher training and getting really into that the last few years. I really like the philosophies of yoga as well. And I feel like minimalism and yoga both overlap for me. There's a book that we were reading for my teacher training and it's called How Yoga Works. I have a little excerpt that really overlaps

• 37:40Speaker 05

  with minimalism and I wanted to share it. "And when you're done clearing out all the extra things around your house, then you have to go on your very way of life and do the same. Throw out extra things that you do that you really don't have time to do so that you can focus. Throw out extra things that you say that don't really need to be said anyway. Learn to be with your friends, a few good friends, in a happy sort of silence that you both understand and appreciate. Cut down on all the extra useless outside stimulation of your physical senses. Too much food, too much news, too much entertainment. All of them fine in themselves, all of them

• 38:20Speaker 05

  healthy, but in moderation. And amounts that you can focus upon and enjoy deeply. And then the mind will be free to come inside and arrive at its own nature. Concentration, contemplation, uninterrupted attention, medicine for the channels, medicine for the inner winds. And so for health and a happy state of mind that lasts. It's all a kind of cleanliness in a way. Tightness on the outside, tightness on the inside." Thanks again for all that you guys do.

• 38:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Alexis, what a beautiful, beautiful comment. Throw out the extra things because our material possessions are a physical manifestation of our internal lives, but you might also say that about our busyness. You might say that about our careers. You might say that about our relationships. These are all manifestations of what we have going on inside us.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  That's exactly right. I love that phrase too about the mind discovering its own nature. In the same way that you can't expect to build intimacy with another person if you don't spend quality time with them and you're always with your head on a screen whenever they're talking to you. It's the same way with your heart. It's the same way with your mind. It's the same way with interior richness. You can't get to know yourself without creating that kind of undistracted space.

• 39:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So good. Thank you Alexis. For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Same goes if you have an answer for someone who calls into our show and you have a different perspective from what TK and I are giving them. We'd love to hear that as well. You can send in your voice memo, [email protected]. Up next, page two and page three, but first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 40:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that is the first 29% of episode 476. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition. We're going to talk about the honey scam. It's my favorite advertisement suck segment, yet we're also going to talk about dying malls. Oh, our social media platforms, the next dying malls. We're going to answer other questions like, how can I help my husband understand that the way he treats me is harmful to our relationship? And are video games and similar activities a total waste of time? Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space.

• 40:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Malibu, post-production Peter, Inspire Jeff, Inspire Dave, and Savvy D. over on the board, oh, 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.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  We'll see you next time.

• 41:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Peace.

• 41:18Speaker 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.