508 | Too Minimal

The Minimalists talk about the pros and cons of extreme minimalism, when simple living goes too far, so-called "sad" items, and much more. Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected]. Discussed in this episode: Why does extreme minimalism make me feel empty? (1:54) How minimal is too minimal? (15:05) Right Here, Right Now: Savi D's skate videos and Sunday Symposium in Ventura. (39:28) Listener Tip: Taking less so I can give more. (43:37) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

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

• 0:20Speaker 00

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

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, welcome to the Minimalist Podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn and joining me here at Earthing Studios in beautiful West Hollywood, California is my good friend, TK Coleman. Hey, hey, hey. Coming up on this episode, we're talking about the pros and cons of extreme minimalism. TK, I also want to talk to you about when simple living seems to go too far, also this new concept of sad items. We'll get into that and much, much more. Also on page two, we've got three ways to let go to minimize procrastination. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or a comment for our show, give us a call.

• 1:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  406-219-7839 is the phone number, or you can email 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. By the way, sucky ad on page three, TK finally agrees with me, might be the suckiest ad of all time. Our first question today is from Manta.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Hi, Ryan, Josh, and TK. It's Manta from Chicago. I've been following you all for over a decade and a half now and consider myself to be what Joshua Becker refers to as a rational minimalist. Downsizing my large home has been on my mind for years, and I had even been exploring extreme minimalism, similar to the lifestyles of the Hugues Sasaki's or Colin Wright's of the world. In a crazy turn of events, my house of 10 years had a fire and I've been living out of a hotel for the past month. All of my salvageable items are currently either boxed up in my garage or being stored in a facility until I can house them again. I finally got to have the packing party that Ryan had so many years ago and live out of a suitcase with nothing else to my name,

• 2:43Speaker 02

  albeit temporarily while my house is being repaired. But the thing that I had been dreaming of for so long, living with only the things I deem essential, has left me empty. I'm at a crossroads and feeling a little lost and confused. Where do I go from here? I still have a family, I still have a young daughter, and I enjoy my corporate life, but I want to do more. Maybe I'm not there yet. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

• 3:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  EK, I think there's this interesting distinction between emptiness and spaciousness. I think empty space is, it's better when it feels more spacious than it feels empty. Right? So you can go into a beautiful dining hall that has some subtle ornate decorations. Or I know you're Catholic, you go to church, you go to these beautiful cathedrals that are mostly empty, but they don't feel empty, do they?

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. You look up and there's nothing that's right above your head, right? It creates a sense of transcendence, right? That I'm part of something that's so much larger than myself, which is designed to kind of help you not only feel connected, but to ask yourself, what am I a part of that is larger than myself in the sense of what I feel right now, my temporal concerns, my anxieties and worries that come up throughout the day? And I think that's in the direction of what we need to be thinking about here with this question.

• 4:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, let's talk to her about why extreme minimalism, in some cases, makes people feel fulfilled. I would say it's not the minimalism that fulfills you. It opens up the space, it gives you that spaciousness to pursue the things that might make you feel fulfilled. But for other people, it makes them feel empty, like... They've lost something. There's something missing here. And as Montana said, I feel like I want more.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  Hmm. Well, you know, you think about it in terms of extreme sports. There's a whole category of of sports like that. Right. Where the goal is to be as close to that edge as possible. And and you're bored if you're not doing something that is incredibly difficult, borderline impossible. And that's for some people. Some people really love that. But for most people, extreme sports is not their thing. But the key is to be clear with yourself. Am I doing something because this is the end unto itself? Or am I doing this because it's a means to an end? Both are fine to do extreme sports or regular sports. But the danger comes in playing one kind of game when you think you're playing the other kind of game. Or to play one kind of game and feel like you ought to be playing a different one.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  Nothing wrong with extreme minimalism if that is what gives you joy, the extremities of the extreme. But if you're feeling like this, it may be time to ask a question like, what is my minimalism for? Maybe I got into this not because of the extremities, but I got into this because there was something I wanted simplicity to support. And maybe I'm losing sight of that, or I haven't taken the time. And so maybe the purpose of space isn't to just say, hey, uh, um, how how can I have more of this physical space? Maybe the purpose of the space is to enter into it deeply and to and to ask yourself, how is this exterior space inviting me to explore the inner space of what my life is really about?

• 6:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And maybe she was given a gift that she didn't ask for. I think about the book and then the film Fight Club. And the main character there, the narrator, he has almost completed his life. He has all of the Nordic accoutrements that that will make his life complete and perfect. And ideally, it will satisfy him or fulfill him. And all of these aesthetic elements that, by the way, it's still kind of spacious. You see his apartment, it's like, I've got the right credenza, I've got the right coffee table, I've got the right espresso maker. I've got the right bed and headboard, I've got the right rugs and I've got the right towels and linens. I've got all of the right things, right? And then there's a fire.

• 6:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And what a gift that fire was for him. Not at first. At first, it's, oh, my God, everything I've worked for my entire life. Is now gone. The inverse of that happened to me. I got to about age 30. And everything I had worked for so hard, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, 362 days a year, working in these retail stores and managing these stores and corporate life and more, more, more. I wanted more. And then I got it and it wasn't enough. And it wasn't enough, even when I got more and more and more. And then I sort of looked around, I realized that, oh,

• 7:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  it's never going to be enough. If I always want more, then none of these things will fulfill me. And there was nothing wrong with the couch or the linens that the main character had in Fight Club. But when it was all taken away from him, he realized that's not who he was. You know, the line from there is like, you are not your wallet, you are not your khakis, you are not your credit card, you are, you transcend all of that, right? You're not your name, you're not your job title. You're not the character that you're pretending to play. And so what happens when you have a fire, it burns down that character, it removes the character that you thought you were playing. Here's my life and here's who I am as a person.

• 8:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I am my accoutrements, I am my accessories, I am my acquisitions. I am the stuff. And we get so tangled up in it, that's where the word complexity comes from. We interweave two or more things together. But when you interweave so many things over so many years, or even over decades, it becomes so tangled. And it mostly becomes entangled in your identity. And so if Montana was one of your clutter counseling clients, and she came to you with this, and there's the identity clutter piece of it, we know that, there's also the physical clutter piece of like, I want more, I've got this emptiness, but I don't have the spaciousness that I want. What kind of questions would you ask her?

• 9:00Speaker 03

  I would say the stuff is often a superficial, superficial, superficial.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  I would say the stuff is often a superficial satisfaction of a deeper desire. And I would ask some questions to get at that, like, what do you really want your life to be about? And maybe we can make that a little more visceral than intellectual and say, how do you want your life to feel? When you wake up in the morning, when you move throughout the day, what's the best way to describe that feeling for you? Where is that feeling already present in your life? Is it entirely absent? Or is it present sometimes, but just not as much as you would like it to be? When it is present, what are the qualities that are manifesting in those moments? What are the things you are doing or choosing not to do?

• 9:49Speaker 03

  I think about a time in my life where it felt like absolutely nothing was going my way. And I got to this point as a kind of defense mechanism, if you will, where I said, nothing's gonna break me. I get to decide how I think, I get to decide how I feel. And I became incredibly good at approaching life as if no matter what was taken away from me, no matter how much the universe disagreed with me, I get to frickin decide how I tell this narrative. And that changed my life. But my father called me out on it. Because he said, you've gotten really good at putting up with whatever gets thrown your way. But there's also another use for that strength.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  And that's to be proactive and to look at what you want and ask yourself how you can make the adjustments necessary to go out and get it. And you've slipped into the habit of waiting for something you don't like to happen so that you can demonstrate that resilience of, I'll still be happy in spite of it. And so even though life forced you to develop that, what was necessary for you to survive one stage of life may not be sufficient to carry you forward to the next stage of life. We all have challenges in life that force us to evolve and to develop certain attributes in order to adjust. We learn how to live simply, we learn how to go without that thing. And we do really good at it and it becomes part of our identity.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  I'm the resilient person, I'm the person who can never be broken, I'm the person who can live without that stuff. But then one day you wake up and you say, why is my life so empty? Because there's so much more to you. Then your ability to live without, then your ability to endure the absence of amenities, the absence of getting what you want. What is the use of that strength, of that power that you once expressed by living minimalistically? What's the creative use of that? Where is your creative energy pulling you? What is that unlived life that's calling you from within?

• 11:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  When I think of some extreme minimalists, you mentioned Colin Wright and some other people, and I would say even today Colin is less extreme because his life has changed. But minimalism was a tool that they used to live the life they wanted to live. And I think that's what you're articulating here is the fact that Colin owned 52 items was not about the number. There wasn't a finish line for him, right? Because if it was a competition, then it was like, well, the next person who owns 49, now they've won. And it's like, you know how all of a sudden, one person ran the four-minute mile? And then within a few years, there was like a dozen people who would run it? But there was a time when scientists thought that it was impossible, like physiologically impossible to run a four-minute mile. And yet, now many people have done it.

• 12:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And someone showed us how to do it, right? But with respect to the items, it's not about a race and getting to a finish line. 52 items was like, this is what's appropriate for me right now. And of course, that might change. 52 might be too many in the future, or it might be way too few. And the key here, though, is that it's just like a horizon. As soon as you get to the horizon, you're never at a horizon. There will always be a new horizon. The one you're at right now is sort of this forced space of extreme minimalism. And that's why, in my view, it doesn't feel good. If you have a fire and everything is taken away from you, you feel like you've lost your sense of agency. Although, there's also, often, I hear people, this happens to people all the time, floods,

• 13:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and fires, and natural disasters, thefts, and things are taken from them. And at first, it's like, oh my God, what have I lost? What am I going to do? And pretty soon, that same phrase turns into... What am I gonna do? What is the opportunity that is here in front of me now that I've got this stuff out of the way? It's why I talk about minimalism as the amplification of spaciousness. It's not the amplification of emptiness. It's not about emptying out. In fact, I think empty is often a misnomer. You can't have the stuff without the space in between the stuff.

• 13:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Even if you go to a stage five hoarder's home, you see them on your TV and it's easy to sort of scoff and be like, "That could never happen to me." Even they have space in between the items. Although if there's very little space between the items, we look at it and we say, "Oh, that's a problem. That's in the way. That's clutter. I need to get rid of some of this clutter so I can get some more what? More space." So maybe the fact that you want more means maybe you want some more space. And then the question is, what is that space for? Mont and I'd love to give you a clutter counseling session with TK. For anyone else who's interested in dealing with the physical clutter or identity clutter,

• 14:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I know you've been doing a lot of career and relationship clutter recently as well. Head on over to theminimalists.com, click Counseling there at the top, and you can book a session with TK via Zoom or in our office in LA. Limited sessions there, but limited all around. I know you just opened up your calendar for this month. So you can head on over to theminimalists.com, click Counseling at the top if you want to book a clutter counseling session. It is time for the lightning round, TK. I've got the question of the week here from Patreon community chat. "How minimal is too minimal? In other words, when does minimalism become too much?" Now, I know you have a pithy answer for me, but before we get to that, I have some of our listeners here, they chimed in.

• 15:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Jennifer said, "Simplifying goes too far if it becomes unsafe, either mentally or physically." For example, getting rid of your toothbrush means one less thing in the house, but that's not safe for your teeth or your health, or you start cooking dangerously as you've gotten rid of all of your pans." Now, I agree with the overarching point here, TK, that...

• 15:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Simplifying does go too far if it becomes unsafe. In fact, I don't call that minimalism. We can either call that asceticism, or there is a form of OCD called Spartanism, where you can't hold on to anything. You have an inability to hold on. And so, you're constantly renouncing possessions. And eventually, you start renouncing your career, and your relationships, and your home, and your city. And it turns you into the type of person who's always pushing everything away. And yeah, for me, that is way too far. Although, I like to avoid prescriptions here. I can think of plenty of people who live a meaningful life without a toothbrush. Have you ever seen the Maasai or the Hadza?

• 16:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  They don't have a toothbrush, and yet, they have really, I mean, especially the Maasai, they have these perfect teeth, and they've never even seen a toothbrush. So, it makes me, I always love to question everything here. Like, can I get by without this? I do this in my own life. Now, I'm not saying go without a toothbrush. I have like four of them. I keep one in my bathroom. I keep one in the kitchen in the early morning, because I don't want to wake up my wife and daughter. So, I go out to the kitchen, and I brush my teeth in there. I keep one in our guest house. So, if I'm over there, I want to brush my teeth. I keep one downstairs in the writers' room here at the studio. So, I'm all for having multiple toothbrushes. That's what works well for me. But I also recognize, if I were to prescribe four toothbrushes to you, that may be too many.

• 17:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Whitney says, "When does minimalism become too much? When it turns into a judgment by which you measure others." You know, I always say that judgment is a mirror that reflects the insecurities of the judge. Why is it so tempting, TK, to tell everyone what they should do?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Sometimes, it gives us company in the journey that we're on. If I have a difficult time eating healthy, or exercising, or watching TV without managing my intake, or if I have a tendency to get addicted to scrolling, it's just easier for me to prescribe as a universal rule for everyone. Because if I've got other people believing as I believe, doing as I do, it makes it easier for me to take a stand. Who enjoys standing alone? And I know you're over there like, "I do, I do."

• 18:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'd rather be alone.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Another possible reason, too, is that... It can be incredibly difficult for us to imagine other people having a different set of strengths and weaknesses and inclinations, even though we all know that to be true in theory. If I am the type of person who can't even look at alcohol without completely falling off the hill, it might be difficult for me to think that there are other people who could go sit in a bar and just be surrounded by it, who could literally be a bartender and just be completely unfazed by it. That might be difficult to imagine. And so sometimes we feel the need to change people because we've done this thing. It makes us so happy. Your life must be miserable. How can you live with all that clutter around you? It's gotta be driving you wild. But as you've told so many times with stories of you and

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Nicodemus, things that drive you wild actually make him feel just fine and vice versa.

• 18:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. And there's a particular kind of moralizing there as well. Even if you think alcohol is a poison, it doesn't mean that you have to moralize it. This is what you should or shouldn't do. I see this happen in the minimalism world all the time where someone's like, I own one pair of pants and you should too. It's like, it was a really interesting observation until you prescribed it to me. Now, I am interested to think, to even hear about, why would you think I should own only one pair of pants? I'm, I'm fine with that, but like telling me, and, and there's almost like this, this finger wagging quality, this, this superiority. And, and I find that there are these different vectors for self righteousness, right? I mean, we, we think of the big ones here,

• 19:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  politics and religion and sexual matters, but anything else that can be perceived as extreme, like minimalism can be perceived as extreme, and it becomes a, a vector for self righteousness. We cling on to these prescriptions or these dogmas because we want to be part of a group. And one way to be part of a group is to unite against something else. We're uniting against that religion, or we're uniting against this sexual orientation, or we are uniting against this political party or against this candidate, right? And it makes me feel good because I, I know that I'm right. In order for me to be right in

• 20:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that scenario, someone else has to be wrong. Someone else has to be demonized.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, or maybe I'm not alone.

• 20:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, but I'd rather be alone. So that's why my political box, I fit a very small political box. It only fits one person. And it, I realized that when we talk about these, the things that where it's like roughly 50% of the population fits into one box or another, or maybe it's 40%, it's really difficult to talk about these things because it's like, oh, wait, you agree with me about this, but you disagree with me about that? How is that possible? This box that you need to go into requires these prescriptions. Like, well, I guess I don't want to be in your box then, right? Take me out of your box. Marie says, "I decluttered close to 80% of my possessions in the past year to certain people.

• 21:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It looks like extreme minimalism, but I have everything I need and I feel at peace in my space." But minimalism can definitely become too minimal if you feel like you have to sacrifice what you truly want. Sacrificing what you truly want. I often think about it this way. I say that, this is one of my pithy answers here. It's impossible to want everything you have if you have everything you want. I think it's a difficult concept. I was trying to explain this to my 12-year-old daughter this weekend, that as soon as you get a thing, you cease to desire it the same way. You know, part of the fun, the enjoyment, and we were talking about, she's really into the Stray Kids, this K-pop band.

• 21:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  She went to go see them earlier this year and it was down at the, um, Intuit Dome. And it's like this beautiful venue and it's filled up. I think there's like 75,000 people there or something. And it was an amazing experience. But what was even more amazing was the months that led up to it and the excitement and the eagerness and the desire. I'm looking forward to this experience. It's like every day she was getting what she wanted and what she really wanted was that desire. And at the end of the concert, guess what? She was like borderline depressed for about a week. I've never seen her like this because the come down was like, oh, I got it.

• 22:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, I have it now and now that I've had it, I don't want it. If you're really, really hungry and I put a piece of steak in front of you, right? Even if you don't like steak, you're like, you're gonna eat it until you get to a point where you're like, "Oh, I don't want this anymore." Well, why? Because you already have it. You've had enough and eating more would be too much.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, when I think about sacrifice, I think about the rumors that on the Titanic, as it was going down, some of the really wealthy people were offering their wealth in exchange for like a life jacket or something along those lines. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's such an interesting thought, right? The ship's going down, you've got nothing, your money can't save you, and you're willing to give all of that up for something which if you were on land, you could buy for twenty to fifty dollars or maybe even less and give for free. And I think of that when I think of sacrifice, the willing to give up what has defined me up until this point in my life

• 23:48Speaker 03

  for the sake of embracing that which can totally redeem me, save me, and transform my life. And when people make sacrifices, they're giving up something that's really comfortable, really convenient, really valuable to them because they have a vision of what life looks like with that new thing they want to sacrifice for, and it makes what they're holding on to just like not even valuable anymore. And sacrifice is relative to the observer, too. There are a lot of things you can do that are just joy-filled. And for another person, it's like, "Wow, you can make those sacrifices." You know, like if I sat there and read a book for eight hours straight, somebody could be like, "Man, like you gave up a Saturday night for that?" And I would laugh, like, "No, I would never give up this for what you call a Saturday night."

• 24:32Speaker 03

  And so sacrifice is relative, man. For some people, it's a sacrifice; for others, it's just an opportunity.

• 24:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and so sometimes sacrificing what you want... Is really beneficial because many of the things that you think you want, you don't actually want.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 24:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You want what's going on behind the thing.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Ultimately, it's always freedom. I think that's, that's the, the ultimate thing that we desire. And we could talk about what freedom is. Freedom always has some sort of boundaries as well. But what you want is not what you actually want. The deeper desire beneath that one. And there's layers. It's like an onion. You start peeling it back. Like, I really want that BMW, the new, the new seven series. Oh, why? Well, because I want the respect of my peers. Okay, why? Nothing wrong with that. Why do you want it? Oh, because I, I want to fit in? Oh, okay. Why? Well, because I feel lonely if I don't fit in. Hmm. And why don't you want to feel lonely? Oh, wow.

• 25:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, because I deeply desire connection or love. Oh, so you want the BMW because you think it's gonna get you connection or love? Oh, what a circuitous route to connection and love. You don't need the shiny object for that. Let's do one more here. Sarah said, minimalism goes too far. When it goes beyond creating a life that's right for you. My dad used to have a predetermined number of everything he would allow himself to own. On a couple of occasions, he denied himself things that would have clearly added value to his life because he already had X number in that category. Okay, maybe we can talk about flexible boundaries versus punitive boundaries.

• 26:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Cause I mean, I like the idea of, of yes, having X number of items. That's what makes sense to me. In my house, I think I have four forks, right? Or maybe we have six. I don't know. But like, having 60 forks would not increase my happiness tenfold. In fact, they would get in the way, right? And so. Having a boundary there is necessary, but it's punitive if I'm having eight people over and I don't find a way to get two more forks for those, for the other two people. Now, I'm forcing them to like eat with their hands or something because I didn't provide them utensils.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. You know, having a boundary involves two things. Defining what your constraints are, but also defining the conditions under which those constraints can be reviewed and considered. So for instance, you have a day on your calendar where we all know, leave you alone. This is your alone time with family. I know if I'm in an emergency, I can without hesitation, call you on that day. And you won't say, what are you doing, man? This is my day off. You're gonna say, hey, is everything okay? And I have to say no in order for you to begin to feel angry. When you see that phone ringing, you're gonna be worried. And I think this is what good constraints do. And it's so good to say things like, even if the number's arbitrary, I'm only gonna allow myself to have this many things. Or I'm gonna do this for 30 days. But you wanna build in to your system,

• 27:34Speaker 03

  you know, hey, at the end of this 30 days, I review it, I see if this worked. Do I wanna continue for another 30 days? Do I wanna make any modifications? Do I wanna eliminate any excesses and so on? It's the same thing with saying, I only can own this many cars, this many clothes, this many shoes. You commit to that for a certain amount of time because you can do anything for 30 to 90 days. But you build in a process of review and you ask yourself, has this really made my life better? Was my initial hypothesis confirmed? Or did it just make things awkward and complicated and without making a substantial difference? What modifications should I make? Oh, I like the way this worked out. I'm gonna keep it going for another 90 days. Oh, I think I'll change this or that. And that's what keeps you from being arbitrary and legalistic and allows you to introduce

• 28:19Speaker 03

  an element of play while still having enough structure so that you're not just changing your mind on whim and never getting the chance to see what your constraints can do for you.

• 28:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and sometimes those boundaries, they just get in the way. I think about Savvy D. He's a professional skater and he has, how many skateboards do you think you have? Like 40? Yeah, probably like forty. Yeah, yeah, but if you had only one, that would be a problem, right? For sure. And why would it be a problem? Because they break. Right. Very often. And so these are like just for win items for him. And so if he and he has a sponsor like sends him boards and stuff and he gets to test them out. And so like having, I can only have three. Well, what if I need more, right? What if I, what if I have a purpose for these? Now, if you give me one skateboard, I will break my neck. And so it's a bad idea for me to have even one. And so one is too many for me.

• 29:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Forty is just right for him. And he's figured that out because he's, I mean, he's skating every day and they break pretty regularly. And he breaks himself regularly, too. In fact, I'm going to talk about that during our Right Here, Right Now segment. Some that's been going on with Savvy D lately. But I once wrote an essay. It was about the, I think it was called My 288 Things or The 288 Things I Own. This is back in 2010, the beginning of the minimalist, like right when we started the site. I needed something to write about. And I saw all these people like Colin Wright and Nina Yau and Dave Bruno and a bunch of other people, these minimalists who were counting their things. And Dave Bruno wrote this book called The Hundred Thing Challenge. And the conceit of that book is it's not about the hundred things, not about the number.

• 29:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's about figuring out a boundary and trying to stick to that for a period of time. But then you'll realize eventually a hundred things might be punitive. Or for Colin Wright, a hundred things was like way too many. That'd be doubling the number of things. That would weigh him down, right? And so I wrote about the 288 things and no one at the time realized it was a joke. It was a joke about legalism. Because I was kind of in a playful way mocking how some people would count their things. Like, okay, you have three pairs of socks, but you counted as three things. Isn't that six socks, though? Wouldn't you count it as six? So I counted my whole sock drawer as one item, right?

• 30:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And then I'm like, well, yeah, I'm like, well, my, I have six pots, but they're all, or three pots and and three lids. I guess I'll count that as one thing. And the point was like, I have 288 items if I count them this way. Yeah. But.

• 30:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If I'm counting, I'm losing. There isn't a finish line here that I was trying to get to. Minimalism, the point of it is not to to count the things. You can count the things. It's okay to do an inventory in your life. And sometimes that's the things that can be counted, right? Pleionexia, the greed for the things that that that can be counted. Pleionexia is like more, more, more of the things that can be counted. We want more square footage, right? And we want more items. We want more luxury items. We want more money. We want more status, more prestige, more, more. Well, status and prestige, you couldn't count them until recently. Now you have follower counts. You can count status and prestige, right?

• 31:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And you can buy status by buying new followers if you have one of these bot programs or whatever. You can buy views for more status. So even the intangibles can now be counted in weird ways that that give us the sense of what? Well, fulfillment, maybe, not really. It's a burst of dopamine that apes the form of satisfaction. But you never really feel satisfied because like, and I can tell you this, like, getting 10 times the views, like, when when our film was seen by 50,000 people in theaters, the very, very first film, Minimalism, like, I never anticipated that. But it's been seen by, you know, 90 million people now. Do I feel whatever the equivalent, 100 times or 1,000 times happier now because of that?

• 32:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No. I feel grateful, but not even 1,000 times more grateful.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Don't ever complain to me again, man. You got 90 million views.

• 32:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right, right.

• 32:29Speaker 03

  Hey, by the way, imagine we had a minimalist basketball team. And before they get, we're part of the PBL, the Podcasting Basketball League. And you came up to me before the game and you says, hey, I want to conserve our energy. I want to play the long game. Let's make sure we don't score more than 80 points today. And I go, well, what do you mean? And you says, don't worry, I average things out. The average winning team scores about like 75 points. So if we score 80, we should be good anyway. You're missing something so critical. Eighty points is only a winning strategy if we have a good defensive plan to stop the other team from scoring eighty-one or more. If our defensive plan isn't set for that, we are going to lose, no matter how proud we feel, over only scoring eighty points.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Two points could be enough if we keep them from scoring anything. A hundred points might not be enough if they score more than that. So the question becomes, what is the game you are playing? What does the game you are playing require of you? Each game is different. What are the constraints? What's the defensive plan for the particular game you find yourself in right now? You get your number from that, and sometimes, just like in basketball, you find out how much is enough in the moment, and you make your decisions accordingly.

• 33:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And the most important part of playing the game is the playing part, not the game part. Because I think it's where we get lost, and we count the things, and Sarah's dad is the game part. The game for him is like fitting within this boundary. And I can only have four forks, but a fifth person's coming over, so now they have to eat with their hands. And that is a problem. Now, maybe you can do that in a playful way. I have a friend. I grew up in the Catholic Church, and we had, my mom's one of her closest friends, they lived in a town next to ours, and they owned this farm. We go over there. They had six boys. It was them and their six boys, and they were all like behemoths, right?

• 34:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so they had eight plates at their house, and anytime one of the boys, when they were teenagers, would bring a girl over to have dinner with the whole family, it'd be one girl, and the, well, and then the husband-wife, and then the six boys, and they would all play a joke on the girl, I will only have eight plates. So the dad would go without a plate, and they would scoop all of his food onto the dinner table. And that was a way to play within the constraints, but actually be playful with it. And, and of course, the date would be like, the girl would come over and be kind of like confused. And, and maybe some of the younger kids were a bit horrified because, oh, you're embarrassing

• 35:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  us, but they were all having fun. It was in the spirit of play. How about you listeners? How minimal is too minimal? In other words, when does minimalism become too much for you? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat. Okay, give me something pithy TK. How minimal is too minimal? And when does minimalism, when does it become too much?

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Less is only best when it fuels your quest. What is it for? So I think about this episode of Blackish where the wife gets stuck in a conversation, or at least so it seems. And her husband intervenes in order to save her and he discovers that it's a conversation she wanted to be in, and he really ruins it by trying to save her. So she tells him, do that less. And so in the future, he's focused, less, less, less, less. She finds herself in a conversation where she's really stuck and she's giving him the eye as he's over there and he's looking at her and he's like, don't worry, I'm not gonna interrupt this conversation. And she's trying to tell him with her eyes, I need you to come save me from this conversation.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  He's like, there is nothing in heaven and earth that could ever make me interrupt any of your conversations in the future. And he held tightly to that less. And then she was mad at him for the opposite reason, because he completely missed the point. What she was trying to tell him when she says, do that less, is really pay attention more, read the room more, watch the signals more, be mindful more. On the other side of less, there is a more. I want less clutter on my calendar because I want more time with my family. I want less busyness in my life because I want more space for reflection. I want less obligation and duty because I want more room for freedom and creativity and the things that I love.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Less matters, but only when it's contextualized by something that makes life richer and meaningful.

• 37:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and in a way, less is always more. And if I were to, I didn't write that down, but maybe that's my pithy answer. Less is always more. And it can be, I have less stuff, so I have more freedom. I have more calm. I have more spaciousness, right? Or it can be, Well, I have less money because I lost my job, so now I have more struggles. And so like, less depends on the context, right? And if you start depriving yourself, if I have less clothes, I'm gonna have more time in jail, right? If I'm just running down the street naked, they're going to arrest me eventually, right? And so you get to this point where you have less, to the point where you're depriving yourself.

• 37:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so less is always more, always. The question is, what is the kind of more that you're seeking out there, right? And what is the less that is required to get that version of more? The thing I wrote down is, too much is never enough. If I were to reframe minimalism, I might just call it enough-ism, minimalism as a lifestyle at least, because it's identifying how much is enough. And in our consumer society, quite often, what we have already is too much. Too much stuff, too much square footage, too many obligations, too many third-tier relationships that I feel obligated to spend time with. I have too much, and so that's not enough.

• 38:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  To get to enough, I might have to let go of the excess. I might have to pare down. We often think about enough as, I need to get more so that I have enough, like a squirrel collecting nuts, right? But the thing is, if I keep getting more and more and more, I'll never have enough, because enough is beneath all that clutter. I also love what Professor Sean wrote down here in the production notes. He said, "Minimalism becomes too much when it gets in the way." Yeah, yeah, minimalism becomes a type of clutter if it gets in the way for you, right? If it's all about the number, right? If it's all about the game and not about the play, if it's not about the playing, then what am I doing?

• 39:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, I've I've abided by the rules and I'm not satisfied by it. So we gotta be careful not to let less get in the way. All right, real quick, for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. Actually, I've got two things for you because Savvy D just put out a short film. In the skate world, they call them parts, which I love, by the way. I love that framing. And my family and I were watching it this weekend. It's it's short, it's like four minutes long. We'll put a link to it in the show notes and it's called Marty. And maybe you could tell us a little bit about it. I, Matt, I loved it and we watched it like three times. We're there watching on the TV on our couch.

• 40:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I shared it over on Instagram stories and he, I mean, he didn't edit out the parts where, I mean, he intentionally edited in the failures and there was something really beautiful about that. Because the moment you were landing these really complex tricks, it was like, oh, there's the payoff. I often tell the writing students that I have that you have to drudge through the drudgery, right? Because that's where the payoff is. And this short film that you put together, this part, which is called Marty, you show the drudgery in order to get to that payoff. So tell me a bit about the, first of all, where's the name come from?

• 40:37Speaker 04

  So one of my best friends from Florida, his name is Jack. Years ago, he just started calling me Mart for no reason. He was just calling me Mart and then it turned into Marty, Martha, Martin, just like all the forms. And I just ran with it. I got like Mart and Marty like tied on to my shirt like and just, I don't know. I just ran with it and people started calling me it and like people from my sponsors like all call me Mart and stuff. So it was just fitting.

• 41:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, his Instagram, which by the way, follow him on Instagram. You can see, you can, you'll see a link to Marty over there as well. It's just at Matt Savadakis. You have to be Greek to work with us. It's him and Nicodemus. They fulfill the quota that we have. And, you know, I, I just so enjoyed it, man. The, I knew you were really good, obviously, I knew that, but you showed it here and Bravo. Who, who shot this?

• 41:31Speaker 04

  This was all filmed and edited by my roommate, also from Florida. His name is John Luke.

• 41:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He's, yeah, he's super talented, man.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Very talented.

• 41:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Bravo to him, Bravo to you.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 41:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's just a great short film that shows his talents and tell me about the backing track. It was perfect.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Like the song?

• 41:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I just, I heard that song maybe like a year ago and I was like, "You guys actually turned me on to Milli Vanilli." I didn't know who they were until you guys mentioned them in and out of value like a year and a half ago, like before I worked here. And I found that song and I was like, "This is the greatest song ever." I had no intention of ever skating to it or anything like that. But we were trying to find a track for the part and I was like, "Oh, my God. This has been in my playlist forever. Like, this is the perfect song." And, yeah, and it worked perfect.

• 42:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It was so good. And like, you were hitting the tricks on beat too. Like, I'm sure that it was edited intentionally. It was spot on.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's all John Luke's magic.

• 42:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, chef's kiss to him and to you. Bravo, Savvy D. We'll put a link to Marty in the show notes. Also, I got one other thing for you here as well. Oh, we're doing Sunday Symposium, a little bit different this month, in October. We're doing like a little bookstore symposium. The theater we usually do up in Santa Barbara, it was unavailable because they had something else going on. So every month, the last Sunday of each month, we do these Sunday Symposium events where you get a few hundred people in a room together and we just, we have an amazing experience. This is gonna be a smaller, more intimate one. I think it's something like 60 people fit into this bookstore. So we're still gonna have a sound bath. We're still gonna have, actually, we're gonna do something a little bit different, though. I think we're gonna do a bit of a book battle. There's a book that I want to read from because we're gonna be in a bookstore.

• 43:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So come commune with us, sundaysymposium.com to get your free tickets. Hurry up and get them now because it's in Ventura, so I know it will, it'll sell out really quickly. We'll put the link in the show notes as well, but you can find it at sundaysymposium.com. That is October 26 in Ventura. Much more coming up, y'all. But first, here is a minimalist tip from one of our listeners.

• 43:40Speaker 05

  Hey minimalists, my name is Kaia and I have a listener insight for episode 488, Non-Transactable Goods. During this episode, you discuss the importance of giving without the need for reciprocity. This reminded me of one of my favorite books written by Indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer, titled The Service Berry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, a beautifully written work on the gift economy. Your podcast has immensely supported me over the past five years in changing the way that I approach people, prospects, and property. Although I often use the word minimalist

• 44:24Speaker 05

  to describe my way of living now, a better way of describing it is taking less so I can give more. Rather than attempt to summarize what I received from the book, I will give an excerpt instead.

• 44:38Speaker 05

  Quote, "Gift economy is a rise from the abundance of gifts from the earth, which are owned by no one and therefore shared. Sharing engenders relationships of goodwill and bonds that ensure you will be invited to the feast when your neighbor is fortunate. Security is ensured by nurturing the bonds of reciprocity." Margaret Atwood writes, "Every time a gift is given, it is enlivened and regenerated through the new spiritual life it engenders, both in the giver and in the recipient. You can store meat in your own pantry or in the belly of your brother.

• 45:21Speaker 05

  Both have the results of keeping hunger at bay, but with very different consequences for the people and for the land which provided that sustenance." End quote. Simply, I believe that minimalism allows us to give more non-transactable goods without the expectation of reciprocity. Thank you again for your time and energy.

• 45:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And thank you for that thoughtful comment, Kaya. Oh, good. Yeah, "Taking less so I can give more." Isn't that exactly what we were talking about? Less is always more. The more giving requires taking less. But of course, the taking more, more, more, more, acquiring the sort of materialism aspect of it. There's often a clinginess to it, a lack of generosity to that. Not even intentionally, but it's as a byproduct. It's all about me and my hoard. It can't be about other people. For anyone else who has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode,

• 46:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 46:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that is the first 33% of episode 508. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, "Why do I procrastinate even though I know it negatively affects me and my family? Should I try to rekindle my friendship with my former best friend? Also, what the heck is a sad item?" Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalists private podcast on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the way back to the very first episode. And that is our minimal episode for today.

• 47:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  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 No More, we've got Tom Cat on the couch today, Professor Sean and Savvy D. in the studio, 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.

• 47:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.

• 47:59Speaker 00

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