556 | The Undoing

Joshua and T. K. talk about irreversible decisions, how to simplify everything in your life in five weeks, downgrading your smartphone to a dumbphone, and much more. Discussed in this episode: What did Lao Tzu mean by "It is easier to carry an empty cup than one that is filled to the brim"?(0:44) How much weight should we give a decision based on how difficult it is to undo? (4:20) Give It Five Minutes. (12:50) Right Here, Right Now: Enrollment for Simplify Everything is now open year-round. (26:05) WWJO: Would Joshua consider getting a dumbphone? (29:02) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast

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

• 0:20Speaker 00

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

• 0:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, The Minimalists, Joshua Fields, Millburn, TK Coleman. Here's something to chew on. Wowzoo says, "It's easier to carry an empty cup than one that is filled to the brim." That's a line from the Tao Te Ching. Let me ask you, is the goal to empty the cup? Or is it something else?

• 1:04Speaker 02

  I don't think it's so much about emptying the cup as it is about maintaining beginner's mind. The empty cup being a metaphor for openness and having a childlike sense of wonder. It's the, "You must be like a little child to inherit the kingdom of God." There's something about that idea, man. It's a very old idea where we get to a stage in life where we've just got too much belief baggage. We've got too much ideological clutter. And when someone says, "Hey, maybe we should try this," or someone says, "Hey, maybe you should consider this possibility," or "Maybe we can look over here or look over there," and the first thing we do is say, "Here's why that won't work," or "Here's why that's

• 1:47Speaker 02

  not possible," or "Here's why we can't afford it," or "Here's why we can't do it." And we lose our sense of imagination. And I think maintaining an empty cup is like, always be willing to learn, always be ready to lead with, "I don't know everything."

• 2:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I think the empty cup is one side of the spectrum. The full cup that is full to the brim is the other side. But that is almost a false dichotomy if we think about it, just it either has to be completely empty or completely full. I think this is a perfect metaphor for minimalism. People often think of minimalism as just emptying out the house. The empty container is owning zero things because that must be the antidote to hoarding, to excess clutter, to 300,000 items in your home. And then you map that on to calendar clutter or relationship clutter, or whatever it is. We have very full lives. We're carrying around not just one empty cup, but we have all of these, or not just one full cup that's brimming.

• 2:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We have a bunch of cups that are sort of overflowing and we're trying to carry them all, the full calendar and the full house and the full-time job that is paying off the full-time debt. We have a lot of excess, or at least cups that are brimming and spilling. And no wonder our life is such a mess. Coming up on this episode, we're talking about irreversible decisions, how to simplify your life in five weeks. Also, I want to talk to you about maybe downgrading your smartphone into a dumb phone. We've got some options for that and so much more.

• 3:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Also, on page three, we'll dive into the prosperity gap, emotional inertia, and the fantasy of future use. Let's start with our callers. If you want to join the show, give us a call, 406-219-7839. Or you can just head on over to our website, theminimalists.com/podcast to record a voice recording, a question for us there. Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber so we can prioritize your message. By the way, shout out to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free because, sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. On page three, I also have a sucky ad segment for you, TK. You are going to love this one.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Is it from my show? I can't wait to do the first sucky ad segment on me when I'm selling Tropicana.

• 4:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I can't, actually, you know, it's funny. We'll save it for page three because I gotta have this conversation with you. Anyway, let's dive right into our callers. Our first question today is from Elise.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Hello, minimalists. It's Elise. I'm a Patreon subscriber. My question for you is, James Clear has a wonderful model for making decisions. He calls it hats, haircuts, and tattoos. And it's based on basically the level of reversibility of a decision. And it's been helpful for me to use this framework while moving towards minimalism. And I'm wondering your thoughts on this approach. Thanks.

• 4:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So TK, when you think about decision-making framework, I think that's a useful heuristic. We know James Clear, he's been on this show before. And I do like this delineation. Some things are hats, some are haircuts, some are tattoos. What does this distinction mean to you?

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Well, I think about, you know, hats are pretty low risk. If you don't like the way it looks on you, you can take it off immediately. The haircut, you've got to live with it for a little bit, but you know, it's not life or death. You can afford to get a bad haircut, maybe embarrassing and inconvenient and frustrating, but it'll eventually correct itself and you'll be able to get a haircut the right way. You learn from it. And then the tattoos, that's permanent.

• 5:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, or semi-permanent at least, right?

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Painful to remove.

• 5:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, yeah, I have a friend and she's going through a bunch of tattoo removal right now from some tattoos that she got when she was a teenager and now she's in her 40s and she's saying, "What, wait, what am I doing with this?" My wife's sort of the opposite end of that spectrum. She got her first tattoo, I think, when she was 35 maybe. Now, she's covered in tattoos, her arm, her legs, pretty much everywhere, her torso just full of tattoos. But she did so, so much more deliberately than if she had been 18 and sort of putting those tattoos on. So I think you're bringing up a good point. Sometimes you put a hat on, you're like, "I don't like this hat, but it messed up my hair. So what? Not a big deal. I'll just take the hat off.

• 6:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'll try a different hat on, or maybe I'm not going to wear a hat at all." And then the haircut is, yeah, there's something about that, but also you might also discover a new haircut that you really like. And so there's more to lose there, but I think in a way, there's also more to gain. The same thing with my wife, who has all those tattoos because she went into it deliberately, knowing that these are a functionally permanent decision. I better be relatively certain about this. I think we run into a problem, though, when we start treating hats like tattoos. And that's when the sort of indecisiveness comes in. I wrote down a question here for you, TK.

• 7:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  "How much weight should we give a decision based on how difficult it is to undo?" And so I ask because I wonder whether reversibility is actually overrated. Because, well, when I think about it, I don't want all my decisions to be undoable. I do want some decisions that I can't undo, like the tattoo. And sometimes it makes sense to burn the boats or to burn the bridge or whatever metaphor we want to use there so that we can walk away from that. We don't have a escape path back to the mundane or the mediocre or those decisions.

• 7:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Sometimes I want to move forward in a way that is more permanent.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  And sometimes, you know, to that same point, to really get value out of a thing, you might have to create a fake tattoo. So I think about it with respect to children where mommy, I'm interested in soccer, daddy, I want to play baseball, but then maybe two days in or two weeks in, I don't like this anymore. And on one end, you want to honor that. You don't want to force your child to stick with soccer or baseball if that's not their thing. You want to help them find their thing. But you also want to help them understand the importance of doing something long enough to really be able to say you've tried it so that you can know the difference between, "I quit because it was hard and I don't like it and I didn't have any friends," versus,

• 8:42Speaker 02

  "I quit because I really gave it a chance and now I know some things about myself to say I would enjoy this other thing better." And you need a sense of semi-permanence, even if it's a little artificial, in order to be able to experience that. And so you don't want everything in life to be too easy to get out of because then you're never invested. But at the same time, hats are hats and you don't want to, you know, force yourself to wear a hat if you don't like it.

• 9:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right, but you, sometimes you want the hat to feel more like a haircut. And using that same analogy there, my daughter is going into what would be the eighth grade this year. She just started and she goes to an unschooling program, so they don't have any grades. But some of her friends have just recently left the sort of unschooling program. They're getting older, they're postpubescent, and she's 13 now. And so some of them are trying out the traditional high school and they're going into eighth, ninth, 10th grade. And she came to me and was asking about whether or not I think she should do that. And instead of just giving her an answer, I started asking her some questions and getting really curious about it. But the one thing I did tell her is, "Whatever you decide, I'll support that.

• 9:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But if you decide you do want to go the public school route, you're going to have to try it for at least a year." You're making, this is a haircut decision. It's not permanent. But in some ways, there is a permanence to it. Whatever path she take, whatever path we take, there is a ripple effect or an echo of every decision. I think where we get indecisive, though, if I bring this back to the clutter in our homes, or clutter elsewhere in our lives, where we tend to get indecisive is we treat a small thing. You find an old charger that is in a drawer, and you treat it like it's a tattoo, like getting rid of it is forever going to be this permanent decision, as opposed to, no, I can just replace it if I need to.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then there's the reverse, where Ray Fleming talked about this, where he says, we have all the Amazon one-click purchases, and the boxes are coming into the house, but that stuff's not going out. The incoming far exceeds the outgoing. And so, when you bring something into your home, you at least want to have some consideration for, what's it gonna be like to move it out? What's it gonna be like to get rid of it? And it doesn't have to be easy, it just has to be something that you're at peace with. And so, even when it comes to things that are permanent, you don't have to take it super seriously, you just want to proportionate to your willingness to do whatever it takes to either put up with it or get rid of it.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Because there are some people out there that may say, yeah, I thought these tattoos were really cool when I was in high school. I don't really like them that much anymore, but it's okay. It's just kind of a symbol of what was important at the time, and that's a part of me. It's all good.

• 11:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and being able to let go of it that way, that's really powerful. If I were to sum this up as a sort of minimal maxim, what you're saying here is, the easier a decision is to undo, the less certainty it requires. And so, if I just throw away the charger, it doesn't require a whole lot. I don't have to be very certain about that. That's not a tattoo sort of decision. That is a hat, I don't have to be super certain about the hat. I will sometimes say that whenever I've tried a hat, I feel like the guy who's auditioning to play the role of a guy who wears a hat. I just don't wear hats well, for whatever reason. It doesn't feel like me. And so, in some sense, a hat, in that respect, feels like a tattoo, even though I know that it's not.

• 12:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I know intellectually, but viscerally, and I would say the same thing. If you go into your attic and you find a box of photos you didn't even know existed an hour ago, but now it feels so permanent to let those go, we don't make a decision. I think fundamentally, what we're talking about here is the appropriate amount of time to wait before we make a decision. And just this week, coincidentally, you sent me this article from a previous podcast guest, Jason Fried, and this was from his Signal Versus Noise blog. How did you want to handle this? You want me to read it, and then we'll talk about it?

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Let's do that.

• 12:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay, so, this is from 2012, but you were saying that you think it rings true, maybe even more so, in today's times. All right, this is called "Give It Five Minutes" by Jason Fried. We'll put a link to this entire article in the show notes if you want to read along. We probably won't read the whole thing, so if you want to check it out, check it out over there in the show notes at theminimists.com. Jason says, "A few years ago, I used to be a hothead. Whenever anyone said anything, I'd think of a way to disagree. I'd push back hard if something didn't fit my worldview. It's like I had to be first with an opinion, as if being first meant something. But what it really meant was that I was thinking hard enough, I wasn't thinking hard enough about the problem.

• 13:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The faster you react, the less you think. Not always, but often." Let's pause on that point for a moment, TK. The faster you react, the less you think. Where have you seen that ring true in your own life?

• 13:52Speaker 02

  I mean, that's just a matter of principle, right? Because thinking is the art of stepping back, processing, and making the decision to not judge a thing according to its initial impressions. Let's see how this lands on me if I give it some time to make more of itself known. And, you know, the more you react, the more necessary it becomes for you to have done a lot of thinking up to that point. You know, perhaps you can afford to be a little more reactive when you do a lot of thinking outside of the moment. But yeah, I see this as a pretty self-evident point, and, you know, like I mentioned to

• 14:31Speaker 02

  you earlier, I think this point is more apropos for our time than when this article was written.

• 14:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And why is that?

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Well, because we have more opportunity than ever before in history to express our opinion, be heard, and create an impact. I mean, for most of history, humans didn't have mass media, and so, the biggest audience most people could have might would be like 10 to 15 people, and that would be a lot. But then, even in the age of mass media, for most of modern history, you might have been able to write a letter to the editor and had your comment selected out of thousands of others. But for the most part, if you didn't like a movie, you could tell your friends, but you couldn't go on the internet and have the shot of your comment going viral, or hurting

• 15:21Speaker 02

  the feelings of the actor that's in the movie, or getting a reaction from the director. But these things are possible, and so, it incentivizes us to be more opinionated. The more we're rewarded, the more we get attention for our behavior, the more likely it is we'll do. And so, now more than ever, we need a message that says, hey, just because you have a reaction, doesn't mean it's the best reaction to have.

• 15:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It also doesn't mean that it's wisdom. I wrote an essay about this recently. It just came out in the Simple Newsletter, it was called "Curious Feelings." And the opening line to it, it sounds like a riddle, the opening line, I'm going off of memory here, but it said, "I feel like it's snowing in Los Angeles right now. It's currently 92 degrees and climbing." And at first, you're like, well, how is that possible? And I say, both of, it sounds like a riddle, but both of them actually point to something true. Because the first sentence said something about a feeling. "I feel like it's snowing in Los Angeles." That can't be wrong, that is how I feel. The other one is an observation of a fact. Here's what the thermometer says.

• 16:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  "It's 92 degrees outside." The first one says, "I feel this way." Most of our reactions, when we don't give a five minutes, is, I'm going to react to this based on the immediate emotion that I feel about something. I'm going to leave the comment, or it could be someone in your house saying, hey, I'm thinking about getting rid of this old pair of pants. "Oh, well, why would you do that?" Okay, let's pause for a moment, right? "Hey, honey, I was thinking about, what if we don't want to sleep on beds anymore? We want to do floor sleeping." "Oh, my God, that's crazy." Okay, like, that sort of reaction, if I give it five minutes, maybe what I'm really doing is I'm giving some space for some wisdom.

• 17:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I love what you talked about a moment ago with respect to this article. You were saying it's about stepping back and thinking, but it's also giving yourself a deadline here. It's not, give it a while, that's not the heuristic. It's give it five minutes. Now, five minutes can just be a metaphor for whatever period of time. We have something called the 30-30 rule with the minimalist. We also call it the wait-for-it rule. If something costs more than $30, I wait 30 hours to purchase it. Not because I can't afford the $30, but I can't afford to act on every impulse. And I think that's what this article is saying.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  That's right. You know, I saw a really good example of what you're talking about just the other day on social media, where there's a clip of Conan O'Brien, and there was an old show where, I believe a supermodel was on there, and the two of them were just kind of playing around, and they end up giving each other a kiss. And in the comments, the one that had the most likes was like, "This guy's disgusting. He's married, I'd hate to be his wife and have to watch something like this." And that got a like, and there were other people, like, supporting it. And then someone comes in and says, "He didn't even meet the woman who became his wife until

• 18:31Speaker 02

  two years after this aired." And that had like, two likes, but nobody really cared. The person who called him disgusting, and made the salacious comment, who gave that reaction, they had the social reward of whatever it was, the 400 likes and the comments. And then the person who came along, "Yeah, but actually, nobody really cared." And I think that's kind of a characteristic of our times, where the fear...

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Of sounding like someone who was too lazy to do the research has been replaced by the fear of missing out on an opportunity to be first, to get the reaction, to get the clicks.

• 19:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  To be right.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 19:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And in order to be right, part of this, you have to be first. Otherwise, you're just agreeing with the other people who are right. It's all the people commenting on that comment who are saying, oh yeah, this person's right. And I get to stand up tall on my high horse and prove my self righteousness. In that same essay I was referencing, I said that anytime I have a knee jerk reaction, it's my first response to assert my rightness. In order to do that, I have to say, you're wrong. And let me, as the, as Earth's arbiter of certitude, let me be the one who sets the record straight. Let me correct you.

• 19:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that's what you're talking about here is we're all our own arbiters of certitude. And we're certain that our worldview is right. But if you step back and realize that when people are making these comments, it's really appending it with those two words, I feel. Oh, you think that president or that politician's a moron? Okay. What they're really saying is, I feel like that politician is a moron. Oh, okay. Well, I can't argue with that. That is a statement of truth. You do feel that way. And why would I try to argue with your feelings? But also, I don't want to mistake your feelings, or my feelings especially, as some sort of wisdom that I should always act upon.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  That's right. Now imagine this scenario to get a sense of the incentives that govern, you know, reaction today. Suppose there's a news break that an archaeologist has discovered two new, previously unheard of documents written by Aristotle. Okay. How many YouTube videos would there be out within 24 hours? More than you can consume in your lifetime, right? In fact, this happened with St. Augustine. There were, I believe, like fragments from two sermons. And he's like, early, right? And so you know, people are like looking for like, oh, this proves my side. This proves my side.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  I don't think there was anything interesting there in terms of like proving anybody's side. I think there were kind of like devotional homilies that he gave, and they were just like fragments of them. But it's like, soon as they were discovered and the news is made known, there are so many YouTube videos, here's what it's all about. And we're going to go through it. And that's okay. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. But it's feeling like more and more of a lost art to say, how much time do we need to know what we're dealing with even?

• 21:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  You know? And if you're the type of person who says, oh, that is interesting. I want to look into that. And I want to give myself some time to wrestle with it and process it and see if there's any implication there. And then maybe after a year of digging in, I'll make a YouTube video and tell people what I think. But guess what? When you make that YouTube video, the world's already moved on, man.

• 22:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. Right. Although what I would say is maybe what that year gives you is enough perspective that you're still able to cut through the noise because you paused and didn't feed during the feeding frenzy. You simply stepped back and you gave it five minutes or one year. And I think that's why deadlines are important. And I think if you walk away from this question from Elise with one thing is, let's not treat our hats like tattoos and let's not treat our tattoos like hats. I don't want to make a decision that burns my whole life down because there was an emotional reaction. And now all of a sudden, I'm doing the lifestyle equivalent of a tattoo and I'm moving to Saskatoon because I saw a billboard

• 22:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that told me I would get a 1% tax break or something. It doesn't make sense. But also, it doesn't mean I don't want to consider it. I want to step back and consider it carefully. And if I might realize right away that, no, I don't want any tattoos. And that's okay. Well, then the decision is made. Not acting is in and of itself a decision. But the real decision is recognizing, I've made the decision. I've cut myself off from the tattoos or with respect to the haircut. You know what? I don't want to go do anything drastic with my hair right now. That is okay. I'm going to make this decision. I also don't want to treat these things like they're in a different bucket. They're a different category. And the same thing is true with the things that we're holding on to,

• 23:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that we're clinging to. It's like, literally, it could be getting rid of a hat. I got rid of a hat this weekend.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 23:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I did. I got rid of a hat this weekend.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  How did you get the hat?

• 23:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I wear one occasionally when it's super sunny out and I go on hikes.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  What kind?

• 23:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  A black hat.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Like a top hat?

• 24:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Like I'm a villain.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Like I see you hiking with a magician's top hat?

• 24:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No, come on, man. It's just a baseball cap. And I actually replaced it because this one was really old. And imagine though, if I treated this, if I get rid of this, what is it? This is a permanent decision. No, it's not. It's just a freaking hat. And as soon as you start saying these things out loud, like getting rid of this hat, I can't get rid of this hat because it means so much to me. As soon as I say that out loud, especially if I say it in front of an audience, and they start looking at you like, what are you talking about, man? It's just, it's just a hat. Oh yeah, that kind of puts it in perspective for me.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  There's an interesting book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. I imagine you could write one, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Tattoo.

• 24:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Elise, I'd love to give you a copy of Very, Very Simple in audiobook form. This book makes it easy to, well, it makes these easy decisions simple, especially with the stuff in our homes. It's some rules, some tools we use, some boundaries, the set of deadlines for the stuff in our homes. It's called Very, Very Simple. It's 12 tools for a simpler home. You can find it at very, very simple.com. It's in print as well, 69 page book that fits in your purse or your pocket. But I'd love to send you the audiobook. TK and I recorded the audiobook together for Very, Very Simple. We'll put a link to that in the show notes, but we'll send you a copy of that as well. Elise, for anyone else, you can grab your tickets. Also, Elise, I'd love to offer you a couple of tickets

• 25:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  to the tour stop I'm having next month in New York City. It's the How To Let Go Tour. Grab your tickets at theminimists.com. For anyone else, if you sign up for our simple newsletter, you'll be the first to hear about new tour stops near you as soon as I announce. We're talking about doing some more of those next year as well. And if we do any other live events, you'll be the first to know. Sign up for the simple newsletter. No spam, no junk, no ads, just a little bit more of less. We're halfway through page one right now. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. But first, real quick for our Right Here, Right Now segment, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalists. We recently made a big change to Simplify Everything, our five week decluttering course.

• 26:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Instead of opening enrollment just twice a year for 72 hours, which is what we did before, it is now available to anyone at any time, 24/7/365. So if you're ready to declutter every aspect of your life, you no longer have to wait for us. You can just start whenever you are ready. This is a big change for us. Why do you think this is good for our listeners, TK?

• 26:40Speaker 02

  I think it eliminates an element of FOMO that makes it easier for people to get involved. Professor Sean manages the course right now, but I managed it for one round. And I remember when we opened enrollment, like the enrollment flooded in, right? And so my inbox was full, just as I thought it would be with people asking different questions about enrolling. But there were also a lot of people who were catalyzed by the notification that enrollment was open. And they go, oh, I just remembered that I didn't complete the course. Like, can you help me find my password again? Or can I be added to this cohort so I can take it with these people? And I think there are a lot of people out there who want a sense,

• 27:23Speaker 02

  they have a sense of like, well, I need to wait for the next round or I need to wait for somebody else that's doing it. And this allows you to sort of like, do it at your own pace, but also have a sense of someone is always doing it. It's kind of like the difference between, you know, just having a 24 hour fitness that you can go to when you're ready and someone's there, someone's doing the things, you know? Sometimes it's busier than others, but someone's there and it's not strange for you to be there. But versus a fitness center, that's kind of more like, hey, it's only during these times. That creates a little bit more stress. So I'm excited about this.

• 27:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, me too. And I especially like it because some people want to start simplifying right now and they don't want to wait till next December to start letting go. And of course, the way that it's structured now, it's still the same course. It's five weeks. It's me and you and Ryan Akademius. And each week has three different lessons that are sent out to you. And we start with the physical clutter. And then we get into financial clutter and relationship clutter and different forms of clutter that we're helping you simplify over the course of five weeks. And you can take it at your pace too. You don't have to do it all within five weeks. If you want to expand it out beyond that because you don't have the time for it, that's great. And we help you do that. There's a workbook in there and it's five distinct weeks.

• 28:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But what I like about this is you don't have to wait for us. It's like, oh, I'd love to take Simplify Everything, but I can't take it until January. So I'll just, I'll wait, I'll put it off. You don't have to put off simplifying anymore. You can find all the details and our testimonials from people who've already taken the course over at simplifycourse.com. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Before we move on to page two, let's do a what would Joshua own question? This one is from Courtney.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Hey Josh and TK and Ryan and Spirit. I'm out taking a walk. It's raining. It's really nice, but I'm listening to episode 544, What a Mess, and you're talking about, you know, thinking of getting a phone for your daughter. And maybe you elaborate on this in the next 30 seconds, but I wanted to run by you almost for a what would Joshua own?

• 29:32Speaker 04

  If you would consider getting a dumb phone with your daughter, I know that you have a lot of events and you're very involved with lots of people to plan for the podcast and other avenues of your work, but I'm kind of asking you for me in advance because my daughter's only five, but I can completely see this becoming a thing, not for a few years yet, but I'm kind of already anticipating how to respond when that comes up because my husband, who I love very much, has a different relationship with technology than I do. And they've introduced the video games, she and her brother, at a young age, which I really fought and I still struggle with, but I'm trying to make the best of it.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  And we try to have balance, but I feel like I really want to put my foot down in 10 years or less when it's time maybe to upgrade to some sort of communication device. And I'm just sort of rolling this around in my head that maybe I will say, you know what, I will get a dumb phone with you and show that I'm not just telling you to do it, but I will live it and I will walk it with you. So it's just interesting you touched on that because I'm kind of early thinking about this, but I'm just curious what your thoughts are in you and/or your wife mirroring that experience with her to know what it's like. Because, you know, we started from the ground up of getting it and then upgrading and to this point, but so many kids don't have a baseline of understanding life without all this.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  So it would be good for her to see, okay, my parents aren't being unfair. They're actually doing it too, but also it would maybe be good for us as parents to experience like, okay, okay, this is frustrating when we also are one of many, many people, the minority, who are functioning without a smartphone. So I guess this is a question for me also, what would Joshua own and a challenge to both of us and parents in general? I'm just really curious your thoughts if that's something you'd be interested or willing to do. So thanks so much for your time and I'm a Patreon subscriber, so I'd love to hear about this soon. Thanks. Bye.

• 31:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Courtney, thank you so much for the observation, the insight, the question. I think it's very timely and I think you bring up a good point. The first thing I'll say is that your habits teach even when you don't. And so, yeah, I think it's okay for you to have a smartphone, but tell your kids not to, but at the same time, they look at you and they're like, but you imagine if you were smoking in the house and you were telling your kids not to smoke, there'd still be a good reason you'd be telling them not to smoke, but it's harder because your habit is teaching them that it's okay and it's permissible. But also I think it's a bit quixotic for us to believe that we can fix our problems

• 32:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that have been caused by technology with more technology or better technology or different technology. I think sometimes you can, but quite often I think we're headed in the wrong direction. It's sort of like buying a bunch of clutter coffins or organizing bins to hide your hoard. It's more stuff doesn't really solve the stuff problem, right? And that said, I have considered several dumb or dumbish devices over the last year or so. The Light Phone 3 is something that's interesting. Do you know the Light Phone, they came out with a flip phone now too. I think I sent you a video for that TK. Yeah, it's called the Light Flip Phone. And that one was aggressively simple, right?

• 33:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It harkened back to the old Motorola Razr days from the early 80s. And so the Light Flip Phone, there's another phone called the Wise Phone 2 that I've looked into that's really interesting. It straddles the fence there. It's more of a smartphone than the Light Phone, but it is less of a smartphone than say an iPhone, for example. And then there are other devices I've looked into. There's something called the Minimal Phone 2. There's the Clicks Communicator, which I'm really enthralled by. That's a, I don't know what you would call it. There's another one called the Titan 2 Elite by a company called Unihertz. And I think all of these, they sit somewhere in between smart and dumb phones.

• 33:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And maybe we should start calling them phones of average intelligence because they're not smartphones in the traditional iPhone sense or Android sense, but a lot of them run with a Android backend. So TK, before I give my thoughts on what I'm going to do with my daughter, I have a question for you. Should parents adhere to the same technology boundaries they set for their children? I mean, if I decide that a smartphone isn't appropriate for Ella, should I also give up mine or do you think the rules are different for adults and children? Are they fundamentally different?

• 34:30Speaker 02

  At the level of principle, you should be absolutely consistent. At the level of particulars, there has to be variance because you're at different stages in life. So for instance, at the level of principle, you can't ask your child to eat healthy if you don't eat healthy. You can't tell your child of value exercise and rest if you don't value exercise and rest. But what that means for you, based on the stage of life you're at, might be different than your child. For your child, valuing rest might mean you've got to be in that bed by eight o'clock. For me, it might mean I can stay up an hour earlier, but I can't preach the message of valuing rest to you if I'm up till four in the morning playing video games myself, right? So as a parent, I will necessarily have more freedoms than you because I have other

• 35:15Speaker 02

  responsibilities than you. And so there will be variance at the level of particulars, but I must live in a way that doesn't make the principle I'm espousing to you seem contradictory. And a second important corollary of this is when I have freedoms that you don't have, it is absolutely vital that I do not flaunt those freedoms in a way that produces discouragement in my child. So for instance, let's say I'm excited to put the kids to bed. It's like 7:30. I'm excited to be putting them to bed because I get to watch a movie. That's fair. That's totally cool. But while I'm putting the kid to bed, I'm not going to be like, oh, I can't wait till you fall asleep because I'm going to watch a movie and it's going to be fun.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Yes, you have the freedom to do your thing, but you're embodying it in a way that is going to predictably make them jealous. You know, you gave the example of the cigarettes, but like, think of it in terms of like fast food. Let's say that, you know, your child, you're like, no, you can't have any candy. You can't have the McDonald's tonight. You need to eat what's been prepared for you. But let's just say you have been on a fast or following a rigorous diet and you're going to have a cheat day where you get to eat a bunch of the things that they can't eat. That's not wrong, but if you sit there while you're having them eat the broccoli and you're eating the chocolate that they want to have, you're handling your freedom in a way that's going to make them predictably jealous and discouraged.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  And it's like, you got to do them a solid by living out your freedoms in a way that encourages them and makes it easier for them to see the principle. And so anything you can do to be a model for them is absolutely vital.

• 36:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think also abstaining is an option with all of this. It's not just about getting rid of the smartphone and downgrading to a dumb or dumbish phone or a phone of average intelligence. Sometimes it makes sense to abstain, at least for a period of time for a few reasons. One is you're showing yourself you can do it. I did this with about a year into the minimalist when we first started. I was doing these soical experiments where I'd give up something for 60 days or 30 days or a year sometimes. And I gave up my smartphone for 60 days and I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about the habits. I learned a lot about my programming, similar to when we gave up social media in 2024.

• 37:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You learn a lot by abstaining. It doesn't mean you can't go back to it. I obviously went back to a phone, but ended up using it differently. But also you can go back with the best of intentions and still get caught up in the slot machine that is in our pocket. And so I'm, I'm hypersensitive to the subject because I do think that by and large, a smartphone is a tool that can be positive, but is probably a net negative for most of us. And that's difficult. I liken it to maybe handguns as an example.

• 38:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I own several, I'm a responsible handgun owner with registered handguns and I have a lot of training on that front. And I've received a few death threats and that was the reason that I first went down that road, but I wanted to go down that road responsibly. And so I don't give a handgun to my daughter, but I demonstrate what it's like to be safe with handguns. We have them in a safe that she doesn't have, but it's actually multiple safes throughout the house that she doesn't have access to. But I also don't treat it like it's some big scary thing that she should never touch. We go over together and we can clean a Glock 19 together. She, she knows about that. I'm

• 39:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  not going to just simply hand her a handgun and say, here, you figure it out. And I think the same thing is true with a smartphone. I don't just want to hand my daughter a smartphone and say, here you go. You're of age and I see your other friends have firearms, so you should have a firearm too. No, I want to be really careful because I know what you can do with a firearm and I also know what you can do with a smartphone. You have access to gory videos, to pornography. You have access to all of the distractions, to the, to social media and short form video that is just rigging your dopamine so that you are constantly looking for more and it becomes an addiction, the same way that smoking

• 39:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  is an addiction. If you had one cigarette, is it going to kill you? Probably not. Almost certainly not. But we also recognize why we don't just give our kids one cigarette. And I think scrolling is the new smoking and that's why I think this question is important. And it's not just smoking for our kids. It's smoking for us as well. And we like to tell ourselves, well, I've built up the mental musculature that I, I can handle it. Yeah, right, man. Do you know how these multi-billion or sometimes in some cases trillion dollar corporations?

• 40:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Are really good at getting around our ability to add friction to our lives. They've made our lives so frictionless that it's so easy for me to pick up a phone and start scrolling and not even realize, because I had to re-download Instagram recently because we're promoting the How to Let Go Tour. And every time I re-download Instagram, I get caught back in that Bermuda Triangle of scrolling before I even recognize it. Now YouTube is even prioritizing these short-form videos and I find myself scrolling on YouTube, even on my desktop. And I realize, oh, they got me. They got me. And so I need to put some governors on it.

• 41:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that's why I don't think the, the real problem isn't the phone. It's doom scrolling. And so I've got this video for you. I'd love for you to check out because I don't know if you know this, but your iPhone now has a dumb phone mode built into it that's optional for you. Check this one out.

• 41:23Speaker 05

  Your phone has a built-in dumb mode, so let me show you how to get it. I didn't create the dumb mode name for it, so please don't come for me in the comments. First, go to Settings, click on Accessibility, scroll down till you see Assistive Access. Then you're going to set it up and include all the apps that you want, and then click on Start Assistive Access. It's going to start entering, and there you have it. It's so easy. Like, look at this camera. You can take a photo and then go back. Just go on any app and you'll see how simple it looks. I wanted to show you this because my grandma would have loved this feature because she could never use a smartphone. This is great for setting too, because you can exclude any apps that distract you. And then to exit from the dumb mode, all you have to do is click on this button three times and then exit.

• 42:07Speaker 05

  And that's it.

• 42:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And what you can do with this is you can actually make it password protected. So you can give this to a kid and they can't access any of the other apps that you don't want them to access. It's called Assistive Access. Now, I will say that we're actually going to try this out with my daughter. This is what we landed on just this past weekend. Bex and I, Bex has this old iPhone. I think it's an iPhone 11. And she just upgraded last year. We held on to it, knowing that there might be a use. In fact, for the longest time, we've just been using it so that Ella could stream music on this phone. It was the only thing she could do on the entire phone. But now she's really wanted a phone number to give out to friends, to be able to text

• 42:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and call, and then also listen to podcasts. There's a couple of podcasts that she really likes and be able to listen to music as well.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Does she get you with the dad? How am I gonna listen to the minimalist without a smartphone? You're like, oh, okay, baby. I understand.

• 43:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I built her an app with just the minimalist podcast on it. It's the only podcast you can listen to, Ella. No, I, I, we decided to go this route because I didn't want to just buy new technology to fix our technology problem. The question is, could I use the existing technology to add some friction? And what this does, and we're going to test it out and I'll report back. If it works well, great. But she wants a phone number. She wants to be able to send text messages and she wants to be able to do some different video calls, whether that's on Google or on FaceTime. And this will allow her to do that. But the way we're setting up with a password, she can't get onto any social media app. She can't download apps of her own.

• 43:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There's no web browser for her to use. We could add those things if we wanted to, but I don't want to. And then the question is, why don't I try that out with my own phone? And that's a question worth asking. It's a question I'm asking myself right now, and I don't know the answer to that. Would it be useful for me? Or would it be just more useful? Because then I'd have to give it to someone else and get a password to get around that. Or just, is it more useful for me to identify what are the three apps that I'm wasting the most time on and removing those from my phone? For me, that's Instagram, which I usually have off my phone, except I'm promoting the tour right now. YouTube has become a distraction more and more for me recently.

• 44:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And then what else would be on there? Hmm, those are the two for me, really. I could name a third. I could go in and look at screen time and stuff, probably podcasts to some extent, or maybe audiobooks, but those are less distractions and they're, they're more deliberate. But I could tell you, social media right now, it's quite the distraction. Last thing I'll say is, it's also about what am I using this device for? And the other devices I mentioned earlier, like the minimal phone and the Clicks Communicator and the Titan 2, they're more productivity devices. They're more about creating than they are about consuming. And for me, the problem has much more to do with what I'm consuming with my phone, not what I'm using it for.

• 45:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Is the phone using me or am I using it? We used to call BlackBerrys CrackBerrys back in the day because we were always on them, right?

• 45:27Speaker 02

  And they didn't have anything on a BlackBerry.

• 45:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  They didn't, but the distinction I would make is, it was so much more productive. They were productivity tools. I was doing something. I was creating as opposed to consuming. The only thing I was really consuming on those was emails and texts. I don't have email on my phone, so that's another thing, because I know that can be so distracting for me. And so I do think it's about eliminating the distractions and buying a new piece of technology isn't always going to solve that problem. Any last words on that?

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, what I love about your, what you're doing with Ella is I would describe it as like an experiment in better living. You didn't weigh down dogmatically. You didn't give a promise that this is going to work. You're not committed to liking it. It's totally possible that in six months, you come back on here and you're like, yeah, that didn't work out, so I'm doing this.

• 46:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  But you gave it five minutes. Instead of reacting by saying, no, she doesn't get a phone, I'm maintaining my heart line. And you also didn't say, okay, I'm just going to get her one of these acceptable phones. You said, well, wait a minute. Maybe there's a middle ground here. And you, you even called your own standard that you've held publicly into question in a completely non-scandalous, non-hypocritical way by just giving it five minutes and being open to possibility. And I think the key here to topics like this is maintaining a spirit of experimentation, being willing to try new things, being willing to have new conversations and exploring, hey, what can we try? We, we, we can just give it a certain amount of time. Like, what does that look like?

• 47:03Speaker 02

  30 days, 60 days, 90 days? Let's try this. And if it doesn't work, we'll have a conversation about it and we'll find something that does.

• 47:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, for us, it's trying until the end of the year, unless something were to go catastrophically wrong before then. If she jailbreaks the phone and we find out she's downloaded apps that, then it's gone immediately. We've, we've set that expectation with her too, that this is what you're to use it for. And if you want to use it for anything beyond that, it would require a conversation. But right now, this is what you're using the phone for. And we're giving you that level of freedom within those boundaries. The last thing I'll say for me is, what about the damn green bubbles? Yeah. I, I mean that as a metaphor, a synecdoche of something broader. I don't really care about the, the green versus blue bubble debate. I know some people get really riled up by that.

• 47:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But what I'm really saying is, the biggest thing that's keeping me from switching to one of these other phones, whether it's the Light Phone or the Clicks Communicator or the Titan 2, because I see those as more productivity devices, but I'm so embedded in that Apple ecosystem. I can send a, a text from my computer and from my phone at the same time, and it's all synced already. My camera roll is synced with my iCloud and it's all synced up and I'm in that eco. And that's exactly what they want. They want you to be in the ecosystem. It's a level of convenience. The hurdle for me is how much do time, energy, attention do I have to spend or waste if I were to switch to a different device?

• 48:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And for me right now, that's not a cost that I want to pay. Although I did reach out to a few of these companies before we were recording this episode and said, hey, if you send us a device, I will test it, but I don't know if I would make a long-term switch, not because of the green bubble discussion, but because I'm so used to using my iPhone this way and the way that it's synced. The cost may just be a bit too high, but I'm willing to give it a shot. I'm willing to, to spend a little time, energy, attention, even money to, to see whether or not it makes sense to either abstain or to switch to a completely different device.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, that, that Apple ecosystem sound just like the devil. I will give you all the kingdoms of the world, just come into my ecosystem. I've got people over here, people over there. I'll make everything easy for you, man. I've got a whole network. Just come into my ecosystem. You'll never be able to get out. Take a bite of the apple. That's a commercial, man.

• 49:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's so true. If anyone else has a WWJ O, what would Joshua own question for the show? Visit theminimalists.com/podcast and record a quick message so we can feature your voice on a future episode. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back. All right, y'all, that's the first 33% of episode 556. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two and a half hour maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, why doesn't organizing your stuff actually solve your clutter problems? When does cultivating something you love turn into clutter?

• 50:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What are the origins of minimalist philosophy? That was like a 45-minute deep dive, TK. We really got into the history of minimalism way before lifestyle minimalism. We went way back and we got an education ourselves and we were able to talk about some of our own preferences. And so we dive deep into the history and the philosophy, the different philosophies that are behind today's modern lifestyle minimalism. Probably got all of that and a million more simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. Just hit the link in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to our very first episode.

• 51:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that is our minimal episode for today. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Audio Ben, Spire Jeff and Dave, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Millburn. 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.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Peace.