Pod Insights The Minimalists 513 | The Sound of Life About this episode The Minimalists talk about making time for frivolous pursuits, what we're willing to sacrifice for the important things, clutter that shows up unexpectedly, five easy decluttering tips you can apply to every space this winter, and more!
Discussed in this episode:
How can we justify making time for seemingly frivolous pursuits? (2:33)
Solve this equation: X is so important to me that I'm willing to sacrifice Y to spend time on it. (22:13)
Right Here, Right Now: T. K.'s Clutter Counseling videos. (34:24)
Listener Tip: Clutter can show up in the strangest ways. (37:47)
Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected] .
Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists
Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast
Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:20 Speaker 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.
0:39 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Hello, Simpletons. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast, where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn. If I look different to you on camera, I've got these... TK, I've been trying these glasses during the day. They're like blue light blocking and it's supposed to help my sleep and it's not working yet, but who knows, maybe it will. You look like Van Diesel from Pitch Black, man. That's what they all say. They've told me that for years. That other voice you hear right next to me is my good friend. He's joining me here at Earthing Studios in West Hollywood, California. That's TK Coleman. Hey, hey. Hey, thanks for being here today. You ready to have some fun? I'm ready to have fun. I wish I would have brought my shades, but it's all good.
1:24 Joshua Fields Millburn? Well, let's be frivolous today. Coming up on this episode, we're talking about making time for frivolous pursuits. We're gonna talk about what we're willing to sacrifice for the important things in life. Also, we'll talk about clutter that shows up unexpectedly. That was supposed to... We were supposed to get to that last week, but you know, with Guy in here, how amazing was that? There were some things we couldn't get to and thank God we couldn't, because what a beautiful episode that was with Guy Finley. We've got much more to talk about. Also, on page three, we're gonna talk about five easy decluttering tips you can apply to every space this winter.
2:01 Joshua Fields Millburn? What do you say? Let's start with our callers? Yeah, it sounds good. If you have a question or comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. 406-219-7839. That's our phone number if you want to be on the program, or you can just send a voice memo right from your phone to [email protected] . Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber so we can prioritize your message. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Yes. Our first question today is from Paul.
2:37 Speaker 02 Hello, Minimalists, Josh and TK and the rest of the gang. This is Paul from Delaware, a Patreon supporter. I love music. Music is great, but I have a hard time listening to music. I just don't spend time listening to much music and I don't do many activities that allow me to just listen to music. It seems that Josh listens to a lot of music and curates a lot of the music experience that he has. Obviously, he is prioritizing this in his life at times over other audio content. So I'm curious, when does Josh listen to music so much? And what does he sacrifice in order to listen to music?
3:20 Speaker 02 And to have all these thoughts and opinions on the music he listens to? All right, thanks.
3:27 Joshua Fields Millburn? TK, you said you got this earpiece in right now. You might think it's for the podcast. I'm listening to music right now. It's Every Little Step.
3:35 Speaker 03 You will be there.
3:38 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yes, come on. Um, actually, we were at a Sunday symposium this weekend, pulling into the parking lot and all of a sudden Bobby Brown, Every Little Step, comes on. Uh, right as I see TK, I get out of the car and he starts doing the Running Man. It was amazing.
3:54 Speaker 03 And then a couple drives by and they say, hey, we're here for the show. Are we early? And we say, yeah, we're just here talking about Bobby Brown. And the guy in the car, he's there with his wife. He says, no kidding. He goes, they're actually gonna be playing at the Forum.
4:07 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yeah, New Edition.
4:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:09 Joshua Fields Millburn? Envoyed them in. And who else was it? Toni Braxton, I think.
4:12 Speaker 03 That's right. That's right.
4:13 Joshua Fields Millburn? And so, um, one of the things about music for me is I used to listen to a very narrow band of music, especially like in the 90s. I liked like Midwest hip hop. And that was pretty much it. If you were bringing some rock music around me, or if it's like east coast hip hop music. And but then R and B started sort of permeating my life because there were a lot of girls who liked to listen to R and B. And so where I grew up, a lot of people were listening to R and B. And so I said, oh, yeah, they like it. So I'm gonna like it. And I found the beauty in it, right? And so when I, when it comes to these, a question like this, I was trying to figure, how do I summarize this question? I was asking Professor Sean, and what he wrote here is like, how can we justify making time for seemingly frivolous pursuits?
4:58 Joshua Fields Millburn? A couple of important words in there, seemingly, right? Because it might feel frivolous, because like, is this the best use of my time? And, um, you know, it may not be frivolous, though. Sometimes it like doing something like reading a book, especially if it's like a novel, it feels luxurious and that can feel frivolous. Like, shouldn't I be doing something more important? Something more profound, something more difficult? And it's like, well, there are no shoulds. And so what do I want to do with with this time? Am I, am I simply just, uh, uh, living my life for the moving widgets around? You know, what is your purpose? Like you're a machine sort of thing? Or is it like, do I find deep meaning?
5:41 Joshua Fields Millburn? I often make a distinction between purpose and meaning. I don't think human beings have purpose in the sense that like a machine has purpose. My coffee maker's purpose is to make me coffee, right? My purpose isn't to make coffee or to drink coffee, but I can find deep meaning in a morning ritual of preparing the coffee. And the same thing is true with music, although the thing I'll say about music that's different from a lot of these other, he used the word audio content, right? I've never thought of music as content, but I understand what what he means there is it can be done while you're doing other things and not get in the way of those things. In fact, great music enhances many of the things that we do. At our Sunday symposiums, how do we open each Sunday symposium?
6:24 Joshua Fields Millburn? We have a sound bath and it's beautiful and Kelly Jean is there and it's amplifying the experience of the event. And then when Matt and Bonnie and Sean are like tearing down the, uh, the stage to get prepared for us, they're playing every little thing from Peter Doran and that is injected into the event and enhances the event. But it doesn't have to be something grand like a big event. It's just driving to the Sunday symposium and every little step comes on. And now, all of a sudden, it's like, oh, yeah, this is enhancing. It's amplifying my experience. Sometimes it anchors my experience in a way. You know, that song comes on and it's like, and it could be something silly like, I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was, and all of a sudden, you're transported back to 1991,
7:09 Joshua Fields Millburn? or whenever that was, right? Or Will Smith, Summertime comes on and I'm transferred back to the Dayton, Ohio humidity and in the park and in the early 90s. And so it's a time machine as well. It anchors those experiences and brings you places that you didn't even know it could bring you back to.
7:29 Speaker 03 That's exactly right, man. And I have deep, deep concerns about this idea that frivolity can only be justified if we can appeal to some way that it makes us more productive. Whatever happened to the concept of intrinsic value? This is one of the consequences of consumerism, by the way, where things matter because everything is a means to an end. But personalism, which is the philosophy that at the heart of reality, persons, persons are fundamental. We get back to that idea of intrinsic value, that some things matter simply because you think they do. You know, Descartes says, I think, therefore I am.
8:10 Speaker 03 Perhaps we could say, hey, it matters to me, therefore it matters, period. And so I agree that if we make time for music, we make time for play, we make time for fun, that it probably can make us more interesting people, make us more valuable in our relationships. It has ways of being economically useful that we could have never predicted. But even if it didn't do all those things, are you telling me that I would have the power to ruin your life simply by eliminating your need to produce? What a horrible reality, right? There's no paradise possible for such a creature. Hey, Sit back, relax, enjoy yourself, have some fun. There is nothing you can do that must be done. Oh, no, this is hell.
8:54 Speaker 03 But in addition to that aspect of us that can be characterized by the phrase, I must, there is that aspect of our humanity that is characterized by the phrase, I can. Play is essential to our humanity and play must arise from a space within us that is not compelled by, I will be punished unless I do X.
9:13 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yeah, I never feel like I must listen to music. I feel like I can, but also I get to. What a gift that I have these ears to listen to this music. And, and so I think about quite often, music doesn't feel excessive to me. It feels as if it is essential. And, and a lot of the so-called audio content that Paul is talking about is really compelling and it's even addictive, right? And we can get stuck in the, the YouTube loop or the podcast loop or whatever else. And there's nothing wrong with those things. I find great benefit in YouTube and in podcasts, tremendous benefit. But at some point it can become excess.
9:56 Joshua Fields Millburn? And so I think I have to unseat that excess sometimes to make space for the essentials. And music is an essential part of my life. In fact, at the end of every year, I didn't do this last year, but Paul, you've, you have, you've inspired me to do it. So I'm going to do it sort of post hoc here. Every year I do my top 10 list and sometimes it's a top 12 list or top nine list or top 15 list of the albums of the year. It's called The Sound of Life. You can find it at theminimalists.com/sound. And it's just a list of my favorite albums from each year since we started The Minimalist. So I didn't do, do one in 2010 because, but every year after that, 2011 and after. Here's a weird thing.
10:37 Joshua Fields Millburn? Every odd number of years, so this year, 2025, I tend to have a better relationship with the music in odd number of years. I don't know why that is, but odd number of years often produce better music for me, for my, my own tastes. But you'll notice on those lists, the amount of Diversity there because I stopped being so dogmatic and programmatic about this is what I should like is like, no, no, no, what, let me explore. There are no shoulds here. It doesn't mean I'm going, going to like everything, but my two favorite albums so far this year, Rustin Kelly, which is borderline country and I don't even typically care for country music. It's singer songwriter with a, a little bit of country interjected into.
11:18 Joshua Fields Millburn? And then Justin Bieber's album, which has 44 songs on it. I shouldn't like it. Hmm. It's, it might be my favorite album of the year. A lot of songs. It has a lot of songs. It's actually a double, like double disc, even though they don't do discs anymore. Swag one and swag two. I think this was the album that made you want to declare him king of R and B, right? Replacing Bobby Brown, right? He's, uh, he's put out. So here's a weird thing. Like, I think he was disconnected from his whole management group and, and a lot of his handlers. And he finally was able to become a version of himself, but also carry forward all of the, the skills that he's built up over the years. Yeah.
11:59 Joshua Fields Millburn? And he created a project that was fully him and where it was outside of the, the demands of the corporate machine. And he created something really special. And if I was dogmatic, like Justin Bieber, really, Justin Bieber. Now, why would I say that? Because of everyone else's judgment and I, I want to fit in with them. I was like, no, Justin Bieber, like what's wrong with him? Nothing's wrong with him. He's hyper talented. He was a child star. So yeah, maybe he has some problems as an adult, but what child star doesn't? Who, who among us would not be a little like messed up from constant scrutiny since you were prepubescent, right?
12:42 Joshua Fields Millburn? Easy for me because I'm untested by that level of fame, right? That's right. Right. And so it's easy for me to say, easy for me to be like, ah, I, I wouldn't be affected by that. Yeah. I'd be even more affected. Let's be honest about it. Right? And so, um, the judgment keeps us from the enjoyment. Hmm. And so it's like, I can dismiss like, ah, like if you're listening to this, you're like, I don't, I don't like country music. Okay. You're allowed to not like it, but that's a pretty broad sweeping statement. Is there never a country album that's ever been made that you might enjoy one song from? Like, oh, or are you just telling yourself a story you're not allowed to enjoy it? Isn't that a story we tell ourselves all the time? I'm not allowed to enjoy this. I'm not going to do that because I'm not supposed to enjoy this. It's wrong to enjoy this.
13:27 Joshua Fields Millburn? Now, of course, there are some things, if you're harming others and enjoying it, that's not what we're talking about here. But there are some things, just like, that's taboo. It's uncool to like that. No, it's cool to like the things that you like. It's uncool to allow other people to shape your preferences and shame you out of the things that you might enjoy.
13:49 Speaker 03 That's exactly right. And I love the example you gave of Justin Bieber, because it illustrates the underlying principle here that when we're willing to uncouple from the machine of compulsion, there is a kind of creativity that comes out of us that's valuable in a different way, and that brings us a different kind of joy. And so Bieber's an example. I think of Colin Cowherd leaving ESPN. There are some people who it looks as if the machine makes them. Oh, they're only a star because of the machine. They only dance like that because they have the best choreographers. Their songs are only number one because they've got, you know, the producers from Sony or whatever it may be. And then they break away from that machine, and maybe they're not as famous. Maybe they do lose some of the bells and whistles, but we see them take things in a direction.
14:33 Speaker 03 Oh, I didn't know she could write like that. I didn't know he was willing to take it in that direction. Why? Because it's not coming from a place of you must, you must. And it's coming from a place of, hey, I can. And sometimes it's great to find your why, but it's also great to get in tune with your why not. Because your why is your sense of the purpose that compels me. And I love that. But your why not is your sense of possibility. Your sense of what do I give myself permission to do, even though I don't have to do it, simply because it makes me come alive?
15:06 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yes. And and that music is a soundtrack to life. That's why I called that the the list I do, the Sound of Life. And Sean, please send me an email. Remind me to update. I've never, I didn't do the 2024 list. I just didn't feel compelled at the time, although there was a great album. That was definitely top of my list last year. Donovan Woods, he he had an album come out last year that is a masterpiece. It is a perfect album. So if just for that, if I were to put one album on the list, it's that. It's that good. But I like music as this soundtrack to life. It's really important. I'm working on a new film right now. And one of the people who's in charge of of certain elements of it, he was like really concerned about like, I don't
15:46 Joshua Fields Millburn? know, I just I think the film isn't really finished. And then he got a new cut yesterday with the new music that VVE made Nate and and Drew and another guy named John. And he's like, oh, now I see it. It's the music. I was telling him for weeks, like, you gotta wait for the music. It's the music that brings it all out. If you look at our first film Minimalism, the seventh version is very similar to the final version, which is the ninth version, but it lacked the life because we needed the music injected into it. So the version you see now, and and tens of millions, almost 100 million people have seen that film now. It's because
16:28 Joshua Fields Millburn? that music brought something forward, those emotions forward. But you can do that in your everyday spaces. Savvy D, when first thing you do when you come here, what do you do to help prepare the space?
16:38 Speaker 00 We put on some meditative music.
16:40 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yes, yeah, we want the space to be meditative. So there's like a Zen Garden playlist that we have, and we turn that on. And and he puts some essential oils going. And and you're you're sort of setting a mood. I do that at home in the mornings. I'll do the same Zen Garden radio station on Pandora. And then throughout the day, that might change. Later in the day, we we might be playing Two Lanes, which is like this German duo electronic. And it's like it gets you moving. Or I wake my daughter up every morning with a song. And it's just a different song. Might be something from from Dua Lipa. It might be Justin Bieber, it might be a Drake song.
17:20 Joshua Fields Millburn? And like at first she's grouchy, but then her mom and I are in the room just dancing. And like, how can you be grouchy at two people just being the silliest versions of ourselves? Enjoying the morning together and music helps us do that. It's so much more difficult. Could we still enjoy ourselves? Absolutely without music.
17:42 Speaker 03 It's not necessary.
17:43 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yes, it is non-essential, but it adds so much value. Why would I want to get rid of it? There are so many things I'd rather get rid of. Here's one other thing that I often think about, especially when I was managing a bunch of people in the corporate world. And you get people that call off in retail stores, right? And the question that I would ask them is if I gave you $10,000 today, would you be able to make it in?
18:09 Joshua Fields Millburn? And most people, well, yeah, of course, I guess I could force myself to come in. But sometimes the answer is honest. The answer is no. I can't, I couldn't have made it in because I got into a car accident and I ended up in the hospital. You could have given me $10,000 and there's nothing I could have done. Now, I never say a million dollars because it's like, yeah, I'll drag my body into the retail store for a million. But for $10,000, which is a lot of money and life-changing for many of us. There's still some things that I couldn't do. Now, why am I bringing that up? Because I feel the same way with, with music is like, hey, Paul, if I gave you $10,000 to figure out how to inject an hour more of music into your day, would you figure out what else to get rid of?
18:51 Speaker 03 Oh, can I ask a variation?
18:53 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yeah.
18:54 Speaker 03 A real time, honest question for you. If I gave you $10,000 to stop listening to music?
19:00 Joshua Fields Millburn? Well, not a chance. That one's easy. That's so easy.
19:03 Speaker 03 What about a couple of days a week?
19:05 Joshua Fields Millburn? No, not a chance. You could give me a million dollars and I wouldn't stop listening to music a couple of days a week. Cause what can I do with the million dollars that's going to change my life more than that frivolous pursuit of music? Which isn't frivolous at all. It's, it's inspirational. It's joyous. It, ah, it's life, man. It's like, can I, can I give you a billion dollars, but I kill you next Wednesday? No, no, I want to live.
19:34 Joshua Fields Millburn? I don't want to die as a billionaire, right? Like, I want to live right now. And for me, great music enhances the moment. And here's the other side of it. Last thing I'll say about the music side. There's music I don't like that I really enjoy. Because my daughter enjoys it. And so every Friday, I take her to her unschooling program. I'm driving her there and I'll put on a song and then she'll put on a song. And then I'll put on a song and she'll put on a song. I love that. And I'm, we're listening to Whitney Houston's National Anthem. And then she's playing a Stray Kids K-pop song for me. And she's singing every lyric, even though she doesn't speak Korean. And most of it's in Korean, but she knows all of the words or the sounds.
20:18 Joshua Fields Millburn? And I don't like the music and I would not listen to it by myself. But the compersion I feel for her, the joy I get from her joy. Whew. It's made possible through and with the music. Wow, wow, what a great start here. Paul, thank you so much for your question. Let's, before we get back to our callers, it's time for the lightning round. This is where we talk about the Patreon community chat's question of the week. And we attempt to answer questions with a short, shareable, minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims right over there in the show notes at theminimalists.com/podcast. And find every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. Savvy D is doing something great.
21:02 Joshua Fields Millburn? We have thousands of minimal maxims there at the site. And he took a list, I think Sean got the list of 1,200 maxims. I started with the first 1,200, there were way more than that. And we pared it down to 250 of my favorites. And he's putting them in fortune cookies for our Sunday symposiums. Because we like talking about some of the things, like unpacking them together. And so we're putting these, you know, I've always wanted to be a fortune cookie writer. And now I accidentally became one. And so we're going to unpack these together at our live events. In fact, we could talk about, actually, our next Sunday symposium's coming up. It's in Orange County, Black Friday weekend. That is November. Number 30, if you can join us there, by the time this comes out, there should still be
21:47 Joshua Fields Millburn? a few free tickets. If not, please put your name on the waitlist. We'll let you know as soon as some tickets open up. By the way, we'll deliver our weekly show notes to your inbox, including seven new maxims every Monday for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists.com. We'll never send you spam, or junk, or ads, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. Oh, I should say, tickets for Sunday Symposium, sundaysymposium.com. All right, the question of the week this week, we actually had two. Do you remember the debacle, TK, of the question of the week? So originally, it was written sort of like this, "What is a hobby activity or ritual that you prioritize making time
22:29 Joshua Fields Millburn? for, even when it means sacrificing something else?" And I like that, but we got a bunch of answers where it said that what people enjoy doing, but I didn't know, what are you sacrificing for, right? Because it's like, yeah, everyone wants to be a billionaire if someone hands you a billion dollars. No one's going to be upset with that necessarily, right? But I'm not willing to sacrifice what it takes to earn a billion dollars. So, the same thing can be said with music, or any other activity. And so, I rephrased it a little bit here. So, the new question of the week is, solve this equation. "X is so
23:07 Joshua Fields Millburn? important to me, that I'm willing to sacrifice Y to spend time on it. X is so important to me." What is that X? What is that thing that's so important to me, that I will sacrifice Y, this other thing that's also important to me, so I can spend time on X? Now, before we get to our pithy answers, TK, let's hear from some of our listeners. Lee said, "Taking my motorbike into the hills, through the forest, emerging onto a beautiful hilltop view." I get there as the day fades, slightly smelly, very muddy, but with a huge grin on my face, having seemingly left all my troubles behind.
23:50 Joshua Fields Millburn? I sacrifice time that could serve productivity or relationships. I risk physical safety for solitude. I abandon the social script that says evenings belong to family, work, or rest. But every sacrifice is a trade for something rarer. Clarity, self-ownership, silence. The loss is surface, the gain is depth. TK, tell me about gaining depth by sacrificing some of the surface things.
24:22 Speaker 03 I mean, it's almost like the difference between swimming and snorkeling. Which one is right? I mean, they both have their time, they both have their place, they're both beautiful. You can't do either one of those things all the time. But snorkeling or scuba diving allows you to go deep. You can't cover as much of the surface, right? So swimming is more fun in that way. You get to cover more, not ground, but cover more surface. But when you scuba dive or when you snorkel, you go deep. And you don't get around as much, but you see the life that is underneath. You see the life that dwells in the waters. And there's something beautiful about that. And when you see life in the depths, you're able to come back up and appreciate the surface in a very different way.
25:06 Speaker 03 And so you can't always live in the depths, but you can live from the depths. And if you're gonna live from the depths, you have to be willing to sacrifice the surfaces sometimes.
25:14 Joshua Fields Millburn? I love what she talked about with the social scripts as well. Here's how you're supposed to spend your day. And some of those traditions are actually useful as templates. Not as shoulds, but like, okay, I'm gonna structure my day so that I wake up in the mornings, which aligns with my circadian biology. Does that make sense? Okay, and so if I'm doing that, then maybe the workday is nine to five. Okay, that makes sense. And then I'm gonna eat meals at these times. If it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that's a societal script. These are... Prescriptions in a way, but you don't have to take them, right? You could say, yeah, I'm gonna tweeze out this ingredient. That works well for me. You know what? That doesn't work well for me. And I'm not gonna feel the guilt or shame of living differently
25:59 Joshua Fields Millburn? because I've made an intentional decision.
26:01 Speaker 03 So, one example of this is I spoke with someone recently who lost their precious little dog and took walks with the dog once or twice a day. And one of the things we talked about was, while we're here in this space of not yet having another dog, not having decided what we're going to do about that, what if we gave ourselves permission to take a walk by ourselves? To continue taking that walk? And when we do things like that, we get to the heart of something. We have these societal scripts that says, okay, it's cool to take a walk as long as you got somebody with you. It's cool to take a walk as long as there's a practical reason and you have a dog. And so, people are confident when they take walks with dogs because other people do it.
26:45 Speaker 03 But you take a walk by yourself, does that make you a creep? You know? And it's not that you should never factor those things in for the sake of your own safety, but societal scripts can be very subtle and they can prevent us from doing little things that give us great joy just because we don't want to look out of place. And things that we do alone, take yourself out to dinner. Go out on a date with yourself this Wednesday. Go to a movie by yourself. Go for a walk with yourself. Speed Levitch says, "I go salsa dancing with myself every Tuesday night." Take yourself salsa dancing. It can be a wonderful experience if you have the courage to break away from those scripts.
27:23 Joshua Fields Millburn? And when it's intentional like that, it never feels frivolous. It feels life-affirming and life-giving in ways. You're making me think about, um, when I used to live in West Hollywood, I'd bring my daughter to the dog park. Down there and we didn't own a dog. I'm allergic to dogs and so, uh, but she would just go into the playpen there and like people just imagine she had her dog with her too and it was running around and she'd just go in there and play with the dogs for like an hour.
27:50 Speaker 03 I love her so much.
27:52 Joshua Fields Millburn? I would watch her petting these dogs and like at first she's trepidatious because like, you know, this is just a bunch of big dogs, small dogs, whatever. And she's just enjoying the dogs and yeah, she wasn't worried for a second. Like, is this creepy? What are people going to think about me? Like, well, no, she was six. And so when we're six, we, we have that childlike wonder and we're not worried about what are other people gonna think about me? I'm gonna dictate my life by, by these societal norms. That doesn't make any sense to a six-year-old.
28:25 Speaker 03 That's why we have some of the best friends when we're children, right? Because we're not yet, and we lose this very quickly, but we're not yet at this place where we say, oh, am I gonna have to make some social sacrifices for having this as my friend? Am I gonna have to be unpopular or not liked by the so-called cool kid if I'm friends with them? We lose that innocence very quickly.
28:46 Joshua Fields Millburn? Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do one more here. This one's from Music Man on Patreon. He said, "Playing league volleyball, playing league volleyball because it forces me to move and toss around my aging body. Be around others and be in the moment. When the ball is in the air, there is no room for any other thoughts." What a metaphor there. "When the ball is in the air, I have no room for other thoughts." He says, "Playing volleyball is so important to me that I'm willing to sacrifice certain career goals, skip many social events, and leave the comfort of my bed." TK, this is fascinating. Music Man here, he skips certain social events, right? But
29:29 Joshua Fields Millburn? he's still able to get his socializing during volleyball. So sometimes our perceived sacrifices aren't actually real sacrifices.
29:39 Speaker 03 That's exactly right. I like to think of them as, as initial sacrifices, right? Meaning that- Upfront, you have to make a sacrifice because you're not going to get the something in return immediately.
29:51 Joshua Fields Millburn? Right.
29:51 Speaker 03 You have to give that thing up and then you go do something else. And it's not until after you do something else that you say, oh, I'm so glad I did that. And I love that special interests have a way of focusing our social lives so that we find ourselves congregating and communing and collaborating and connecting with people that we have so much in common with, based on this particular interest, but all of these other intersecting interests as well.
30:16 Joshua Fields Millburn? Hmm, spot on. All right, listeners, how about you? What hobby, activity, or ritual that you prioritize making time for, even when it means sacrificing something else? What, what is that hobby or ritual? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat. Okay, give me something pithy, TK. What you got for us today?
30:35 Speaker 03 You can't scroll your way to a soul.
30:40 Speaker 03 If you want to be a person of substance, you can do as much superficial stuff as you want. In fact, you should do superficial stuff. But ultimately, you have to be willing to go within and do the work of cultivating your own interior life. And in a way, our souls can be likened to a garden. You, you have to cultivate the garden. You have to till the land. You have to do the work. A garden is capable of being a very beautiful place, but it's also capable of being a very horrific, ugly place if you don't take care of what's there. So I like to think of part of the aim of life as the construction of an interior chapel, where we can go within and meditate and not just go within as a way of escaping from the world,
31:25 Speaker 03 but as a way of engaging the world with greater depth from a place of substance. And so imagine a person trying to construct a chapel and they're just using pieces of paper. And, and every time they like get a wall, it just blows away. And you say, what are you doing? They say, I'm building the chapel. Well, you'll never get it done with paper because it doesn't have enough substance to hold when the wind comes along and blows it. In a similar way, if we try to build our souls with all the superficial things, the distractions, the things that don't reflect our Deepest interest, but they just reflect what we're reacting to based on someone else selling us or successfully grabbing our attention. Then our souls become like paper. When the wind blows, life tosses us to and fro. Everything comes crumbling apart.
32:07 Speaker 03 But when we build that soul with substance, which is silence and solitude, we become beings of fortitude, strength and resilience.
32:15 Joshua Fields Millburn? Well, speaking of silence, silence is just like a space between the sounds in a way, right? So my pithy answer is, we're sticking to the theme of music here. The best music plays with the spaces between the notes. And you see that with a song, like it's obviously not just noise. If it's noise, that's not a song. We don't call that a song. But if there are chords and there's a melody, the space between the notes isn't space, really. It's part of the song. It's a prerequisite. You have to have the space. And if you want to slow down a song, guess what? You have more space. Isn't that true for your life? If you want to slow down your life,
32:59 Joshua Fields Millburn? it's not about doing more to slow down. It's about doing less. It's about adding more spaciousness there so that the notes stand out even more. As opposed to, we fill it up right now and it's just noise, man. What have you been up to lately? I'm so busy. Here's another way to say that. My life is so noisy. And if it's noisy out there, guess what's going on inside? I don't notice how noisy it is in my mind, but it's chaotic there. And if I don't have any space between the notes, if I don't have any silence, any stillness, then, um, yeah, yeah, it's, I'm not making room for that joy, for the, for the beauty. I'm simply, you know, moving from thing to thing amid the,
33:44 Joshua Fields Millburn? the background white noise of everyday existence. And that's freaking exhausting, man. And so when I think about, when I think about music and I think about the space, I don't think about that as a sacrifice so much, right? You're not sacrificing the space for the notes. You are playing with the notes with the space. And so when done well, the sacrifices, the spaces there are actually what is required to hear the music. All right, that's almost the end of page one, TK, but we still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. But first, real quick for right here, right now, I've got one thing that's going on in
34:28 Joshua Fields Millburn? the life of the minimalist TK. I hear you've been talking smack about your job. In fact, Professor Sean caught it on tape. Check this out.
34:39 Speaker 03 I feel stuck in a job that's beneath me and a job that drains me and a job that makes me feel deeply unsatisfied.
34:51 Joshua Fields Millburn? Why didn't you come to me? Why didn't you just tell me, man? Why do I have to find out like this?
34:58 Speaker 03 Why I have to find out all YouTube? I went into the minimalist YouTube channels like today we're gonna talk about Josh. I put on my blue blockers. This blue blocker wearing joke cracking black shirt.
35:13 Joshua Fields Millburn? No, TK, you just started this new clutter counseling series on YouTube. You can check it out on the minimalist YouTube channel, youtube.com/theminimist. And you've been doing these videos, they're like short counseling sessions, eight to 20 minutes long, and you tackle a specific issue. Some great titles so far. How to Tell People to Shut Up is maybe my favorite title. But what are some of the things you're talking about here in the series?
35:39 Speaker 03 So I have one called, you know, How to Say No Without Feeling Guilty. The one that you just played was a segment from What to Do When You Hate Your Day Job. So many people fill the gap between their dream job and their day job, and they can't just traverse that gap overnight. So what do you do while you are there? Or How to Get Out of an Argument Spiral? You know, those conversations that just take a wrong turn and you know that you shouldn't say what you're about to say, or you know that everything they say is gonna make you feel bad. The heck do you get out of that? I also have one where, you know, the one about how to tell people to shut up is really about how to deal with those conversations that we feel trapped in and maybe we feel too politically
36:21 Speaker 03 correct or polite to end it because we don't want to sound like someone who's saying, hey, shut up. We know that hurts people's feelings and getting free isn't worth that. For some people it is. But what do you do in those types of situations? So whatever comes up in my clutter counseling sessions or observations of life, I just take a little time to riff on it and try to give people, not necessarily a comprehensive list of all the things that can be said about the topic, but rather, you know, three or four things that they can do to maybe reframe the way they experience that.
36:51 Joshua Fields Millburn? Beautiful. And you can check those out for free over at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/the minimalist. Looks like we're putting those out every Saturday right now. So if you subscribe over there, you'll get the, I don't know, what do I tell people to hit the notification bell and ding the like and all these other things. Every time when my daughter was really young, you know, I was putting, tucking her into bed and I say, good night. Make sure you like and subscribe.
37:16 Joshua Fields Millburn? Look at me so confused.
37:20 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yeah, I don't care if you like and subscribe, but if you enjoy the, the, the videos, you can find those over on our main YouTube channel, not on the podcast channel, but youtube.com/the minimalist. Also, if you want to book a clutter counseling session with TK, theminimists.com, click counseling at the top. We just opened up his calendar for this month as well. So you can book your session there via Zoom, anywhere in the world. Theminimalists.com, click on counseling at the top. Much more coming up, but first here is a quick minimalist tip from one of our listeners.
37:51 Speaker 04 Hi, I'm a longtime patron subscriber from Charleston and I wanted to share one mindset that really helps me pare down my stuff, which was reconsidering sets. This is often the case with kitchen supplies and other household items like sheet sets, vacuums, hair dryers, etc. Especially with the way things are made and packaged today, I often have found that I have to buy something like six bowls because they're the style that I like and it's what's available when I really only needed maybe three of them.
38:25 Speaker 04 I used to consider sets as one item altogether and wasn't able to get rid of pieces of it. But then, at one point, I realized that I'd had my vacuum for 10 years and I had only ever used two attachments for it, but was storing a full box of other attachments for whenever I might sell it or give it away. Because, of course, the next person would want that full set. But I realized that if someone asked me to store a box of garbage for 10 years in my cupboards, I would easily say no. So I let go of those attachments and have not looked back, nor have I needed them in the few years since. Hope this helps someone. Thanks.
39:02 Joshua Fields Millburn? Oh, Ellie, thank you so much for that insightful tip. Man, clutter could show up in the strangest places and the strangest ways. Where have you found some unexpected clutter recently, or any time in your life?
39:13 Speaker 03 Oh, man, I usually find clutter in my lifestyle in the arena of those ambiguous maybes. We just had something come up last week where Sean was like, "You wanna do this?" And I go, "All right." Professor's like, "You wanna do it?" I'm like, "All right." And then you come up to me and you say, "Ay."
39:35 Speaker 03 And you're like, "I'm hearing some maybe in that yes, man." So I want you to know, if you gotta do it, do it. You can do it. But if you don't wanna do it, no is cool. No is real good sometimes.
39:48 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yeah.
39:48 Speaker 03 But don't ruin your life with maybes, because you're giving other people permission to follow up with you, you're giving other people permission to harass you, you're giving other people permission to rightly criticize you, to be disappointed with you for justifiable reasons. You can save a lot of time and energy by eliminating those unnecessary maybes. Sometimes, maybe is a good option to have, but you don't wanna have too many maybes.
40:14 Joshua Fields Millburn? Yeah, maybe essentially means "tell me more." And for me, that's much more useful than just saying "maybe." Because my maybe is like, "I'm not fully committed to this." But every yes is a micro commitment. Am I willing to commit to this? Because I realize I'm saying no to other things. So the question for me is, what else am I saying no to? If I'm saying yes to this, I have to say no to something else. And that could be as simple as I'm scrolling on my phone. I'm saying yes to this, it's a micro commitment to scroll. We don't think of it that way, but as soon as I say that, I'm making a micro commitment to scroll for the next 15 minutes. If I'm still, if that's still a yes, then it's still a yes. But if as soon as I say that out loud, I might just like, ah, let's delete this app. I did that recently on Instagram.
40:57 Joshua Fields Millburn? I met someone at a grocery store yesterday and they were like, let me give you my Instagram. And I'm like, I don't have an Instagram right now. But here, here's my notepad. You can put it in here. And, uh, and that, that's freeing because I, I stopped saying maybe to Instagram. It was just, you know what? This is, I didn't want to say I'm making a micro commitment to say yes to scrolling for the next 20 minutes. And how often am I, am I doing that? For me, unexpected clutter is exactly the metaphor that Ellie brought up here. She talked about the vacuum and getting rid of those, what? Attachments. What a perfect metaphor.
41:37 Joshua Fields Millburn? Because don't we often hold on to these things that don't serve us? And they become attachments. It can be literal vacuum accessory attachments, but we become attached to all these other things that, as she rightly pointed out, are functionally trash. And if someone else gave you these attachments, you would say, I don't want to hold on to your trash. But then why are you holding on to your trash for a decade? For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, you can send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, TK, we got page two and page three, but first let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.
42:24 Joshua Fields Millburn? All right, y'all, that's the first 39% of episode 513. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two hour maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, how many plates do you actually need in your home? Why is self-destruction necessary for creativity? That was a long conversation. That was one of my favorites we've had, TK. And why am I afraid of letting go of my situation ship? Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, You can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the way
43:06 Joshua Fields Millburn? back to the very first episode, a decade of podcasts. All right, that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Jordan O'More, Tom Cat, Professor Sean over there on the couch, and Savvy D. on the board, and the rest of our team. I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.
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