521 | One Day Less

The Minimalists talk about consumerism's role in workplace overload, what it takes to work fewer hours, the hidden reason grocery prices have increased, why certain 'Buy One, Get One Free' deals have been outlawed, and much more. Discussed in this episode: How does consumerism force us to work more hours each week, and what can we do about it? (6:43) What would it take for you to work one less day per week? (26:03) Right Here, Right Now: How to Write Better and the end of our Earthing grant. (42:53) Listener Tip: Book a Clutter Counseling session with T. K. Coleman. (47:10) Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected]. Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast

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, welcome to the minimalist podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with the less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn and joining me here at our beautiful studio in beautiful West Hollywood, California is my good friend TK Coleman.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  It's a wonderful day to be alive.

• 0:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Happy New Year to you TK. It's our first episode of 2026. We've got some of our favorite people in the studio with us today. Professor Sean's here. He has a monocle on right now and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches because How to Write Better, our writing class he and I teach together is, it's opening for 72 hours. We'll talk about that in a bit, but that's why he's dressed to the nines like the professor that he is. Savvy D is on the board. He's taking notes over there. Maybe he's just drolling in a notebook. I'm not sure what he's doing. Skateboard is taped to his feet right now. And TK, brand new year, any resolution for you this year?

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Oh man, to take one day at a time with all things. The breaking of old habits, the building of new ones, the appreciating gratitude, the appreciation and gratitude for the relationships we have, investing in the things that matter. It's all about taking one day at a time.

• 1:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, you know, the episode we put out during the week of Christmas was called Begin Again and it was a re-airing of one of our live events because we took, we closed the studio down for Christmas and we had this great event in Orange County and we were talking about beginning again, although that event happened in the summer. You don't need the new year to begin again to have a resolution. It's a great reminder to maybe begin again, to take it one day at a time. For me, I've been thinking a lot about reacting versus responding. And especially in a heavily mediated world, social media world, YouTube, online, content, content, content. It's so easy to react, to have an opinion about everything.

• 2:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But I love this idea that you talk about sometimes with having an opinion fast. And sometimes you can do intermittent opinion fasting. And that means I don't need to react to what is in front of me right now. I could take my time and respond if it requires a response. One of our recent fams calls, we do this Friday afternoon, minimal Zoom, the first Friday of each month. And one of the most recent ones, someone was asking about like best practices in your email inbox and what are some things I can do to sort through this? Because this barrage is weighing me down. It's overloading me and I don't know what to do.

• 3:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And one of the things that I do is I respond only when an email requires a response. And at first that's difficult because I'm so used to responding with, okay, thanks. Or, all right, let me take a look, or whatever it is. And most emails don't require an immediate response. And many of them don't require a response at all. I can express my gratitude next time I see you in person. But one of the reasons that we're so overwhelmed are the number of reactions and responses that we constantly have. And I realized that most of my email responses weren't responses, they were reactions. I need to send something back immediately. And so I'm constantly reacting and the people are reacting to my reaction. And it's this cacophony of noise.

• 4:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And the first step in quieting that noise is just taking a pause and saying, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna fast, do an intermittent fast on my opinion, on my reaction in this moment. And if it requires a response later, that's fine, but this isn't an emergency.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  It reminds me of the rule that we followed when we were servers at restaurants. You know, you get really busy, you feel like you're in the weeds and you gotta rush everything. But my manager would always say, just take the minute to review the order that you typed in and make sure it's good because I know all these other servers are waiting behind you. You use the computer and you look at the restaurant and everybody's waving their hand for your attention. But if you get it wrong here, that's gonna cost you 15 or 30 minutes and a couple of free meals elsewhere. But if you get it right here, over the long haul, it's gonna save you so much time. So embrace the pause. Do what Jason Fried calls, give it five minutes, even when something does warrant a response. If you just take a moment

• 5:01Speaker 02

  and breathe and give a response that is intentional, it might save you so much back and forth. Sometimes I see people in text exchanges and email exchanges and, and, and they, they say, well, I had to respond, but the response is so low quality and so reactive that they end up having a 10, 15 minute conversation about something that could have been settled in a 30 second phone call or a 30 second intentional text message. So even when you have to respond, give it a few minutes, respond with intentionality and that can resolve it.

• 5:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And often we respond out of emotion. I feel overwhelmed, so now I'm going to overwhelm you. I don't even realize I'm doing this. It's just going on in the background. And if I don't take that moment to pause, then it continues to escalate. And all of a sudden, we're having an emotional exchange over something that is perfunctory at best. Well, coming up on this episode, we're talking about consumerism's role in workplace overload. What a good time to talk about that, TK. Also, what it takes to work fewer hours, the hidden reason grocery prices have increased and much, much more. Plus, on page three, we'll talk about why certain buy one, get one free deals have been outlawed. Buy one, get one free

• 6:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  outlawed. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you to join the program. It's 406-219-7839. Give us a call or email a voice recording 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. Our first question today is from Autumn.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Autumn. I'm from South Carolina and I've been watching you since ninth grade. I'm currently 24 now. I wanted to know your thoughts on this consumerism society and how it is making us work all the time. Unfortunately, I am fine working a very minimal amount because I'm satisfied with less. And there's a stigma now that we have to work, work, work. So what are your thoughts on that?

• 7:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Do we have to work, work, work, work, work TK? I'm interested in this. Savvy D, you've been listening to the minimalist for a while before you came on board. Were you listening to us in ninth grade even?

• 7:31Speaker 04

  I don't think ninth grade. I got into minimalism from the documentary when I was like, I think in 10th grade.

• 7:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay, yeah, yeah. So you and Autumn have a lot in common here. And I would lean on some of your insights here too Savvy D, because you talked about how this is like the first job where there's this amount of flexibility that's going on here. And we try to create that. Obviously, we need to be here in the studio on days of record or if we have something going on here. But we try to be pretty flexible. I think that's not always the case. And sometimes it can't be. I think about my brother who builds cabinets at a factory. He has to be there when other people are building the cabinets with him. And so they adhere to a particular schedule. And for them, it's not about work more hustle culture. It seems to me that that hustle culture mindset TK, and you have a lot of

• 8:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  experience with this, it's more in the knowledge work, the what we used to call white collar jobs. There's the mindset, the grind set, as they call it. And a lot of people are overwhelmed by it.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  That's right. Well, I will say too, that in my father's generation and my grandfather's generation, men who grew up on the farm and worked very hard, not necessarily doing things that they love, but doing work to provide for their families, they would look like the ultimate hustlers to today's generation, including those who advertise.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Hustle culture, they would outwork those guys any day of the week. I think hustle culture has become a kind of disparaging term that we use, you know, to talk about a certain segment of thought leaders and podcasters, many of whom, to be fair, are misunderstood because everybody that gets lumped under that name hustle culture is not preaching a philosophy of unhealthy culture. This is something that Gary Vee, for instance, gets attacked with a lot. But if you ask Gary Vee, do you think everyone, regardless of what they want to do and how healthy they are and what they can tolerate, wants, needs to be working 60, 70 hours a week? He would not say yes. I've heard him talk about these kinds of things. So I think there's, there's room for a nuanced discussion on hustle culture.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  I think it's, I think it gets lots of clicks to, to make oneself an enemy of it in an unqualified way and just lump everybody that's in self-help in it. But anyway, with that being said, there is such a thing as toxic hustle. There is such a thing as being a workaholic and using work to compensate for what you really want, for what you really need, for the time that it might take to be intentional. It's like that old quote that you often say where, forgive me for writing something so long. I did not have the time to make it brief. Sometimes when we don't step back and ask ourselves, what do I really want to say here? What am I really trying to achieve here?

• 10:21Speaker 02

  We compensate for that by overdoing it, whether it's with talking, making effort, working things along those lines. And I think the toxic element of hustle culture is, is a work version of that.

• 10:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, I just call it busyness. Because for me, whenever I say I'm busy, that has been a status symbol for a long time. What are you up to? Oh, I've just been so busy, right?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But now when I say I'm busy, I say, what am I really saying? My life is out of control. Everyone else's decisions has become my urgency, or maybe even my emergency. And then, of course, I'm putting out fires of my own. The fires that I started, now I have to put them out. It's what we talked about at the top of the episode with constantly responding. Am I adding to the blaze right now? This weekend, I was driving with my wife and we were listening to Donovan Woods. He has a song called "Manmade Lake", and there's this great line, and he talks about how his boat is taking on water in a manmade lake. Woo, and isn't that what we're doing?

• 11:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're drowning, but we created the lake in which we are drowning in. And whether you call it hustle culture, or you call it busyness, you call it distraction, you call it overwhelm, ultimately, it's a status symbol. Look at me, look at who I am, it's all part of my identity. I'm the type of person who has all of this going on in my life. I'm the type of person who wants to be successful, and to be successful, I see other people doing these successful things. For me in the corporate world, and this is why I identify with Autumn, when I was 24, I'd be the first person in, and I'd be the last person gone. Ironically, that's often the case now that I run a small business, right?

• 12:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because I need to do a lot of the things that other people don't do, but it's me being considerate of the other people that I'm working with. And it's not mandatory for me, but also, I enjoy working. And so, well, it depends on the type of work, right? If it's work I have to do, then it feels almost punitive. Or if it is work that I get to do, or if it's something that supports the work that I get to do, then it doesn't feel like grinding. In fact, that word, like, we associate it with other things, like grinding my teeth, right? I'm so tense, I'm so anxious that I'm grinding my teeth. Why would I want to be on the grind?

• 12:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so, yes, whenever I say I'm busy, I recognize I'm using one of those four-letter words I don't want to use. And maybe I need to step back and say, okay, this is Henry David Thoreau, he said, "It's not enough to be busy", I'm paraphrasing, obviously. It's not enough to be busy. The question is, what are you busy about? Because ants are really busy, right? They're super industrious, right? But what are you busy in service of? And maybe I would set that down and say, I don't need to be busy in order to be in service of something that's meaningful to me.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. The tricky part of what we're dealing with today, when we analyze the effects of consumerism on our approach to work, is that there are so many social constructs around what we need to live a life. And previous generations have proven that it's possible to create a happy life without many of these social constructs. But you can't solve the problem simply by saying, well, that's a social construct. You can just opt out of it. Because social constructs are realities to be contended with. They are at a second order of reality compared to like a tree or the air that we breathe. But they are realities, even if only social realities.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  And you can't just pull one thread without making other things move. And so we can say, well, hey, you don't need a cellphone today. You can opt out, okay? You can, but communicating with your friends, getting to work, paying for parking, all of those things are going to be a lot more difficult. And you're going to have to get creative in about 10 to 15 other areas of your life that you used to didn't have to think about. That is possible, but how much time do you have? How confident are you in your ability to make those adjustments? And so we can say things like, well, I don't need a car. I can just do the bike thing. Well, I don't need a cellphone. Well, I don't need those luxury goods. But life isn't that simple. There are things that we don't need biologically,

• 14:52Speaker 02

  but we're hooked into a system. And many of these systems are propped up by very powerful forces that incentivize to stay in the machine. And so it's a really difficult thing to sort out.

• 15:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it's possible to unhook from the system, to get out of the machine, as you're saying. But often the costs are pretty high. You know, Derek Sivers, he wrote that great book, Hell Yeah or No. He's written a bunch of things that I really enjoy, but he- And his son moved into a cabin in the middle of nowhere. And there's no cellphone reception, there's no internet. And he's opted out of the system, but the cost of that, you have to be willing to pay. And sometimes you might withdraw yourself from society for a while. And whatever respect you're withdrawing, whether it's from work or email or social media. And you say, okay, but now I'd like to go back and use that thing intentionally. What we left social media for a year and the question is, can we go back and use that intentionally?

• 15:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And same with Ryan and I moved to a cabin in the middle of Montana for, you know, back in 2012 to write a book. It wasn't the intention for us to go live there forever. I was open to that, but what do I miss about the quote unquote real world? Because you're right, ultimately, a lot of these things are constructs. Even when you talk about the tree or the air, those are constructs as well. What constitutes a tree even, right? It's a collection of branches and a trunk and leaves. Okay, well, are those individual parts also? And so everything is a construct. It doesn't mean that it's less real, especially to the observer who's overwhelmed by these constructs. And so to address the question specifically that Autumn is asking.

• 16:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  She's basically asking, how is consumerism force us to work more hours? And what can we do about it? For me, consumerism is an ideology that externalities will complete you. Usually that's through our acquisition of material things. And the way that manifested in my own life in the corporate days was I want all of the trophies that symbolize success. I want to prove to other people that I'm worthy, that I'm valid. You know, when you go to valet parking and they validate your ticket for you and then you're validated? I kind of wanted that. I wanted the Lexus or the big house or the manicured lawn or the walk-in closet or the designer belt.

• 17:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So the people would validate me. What did I really want? I want people to see me, to know I'm worthy of their love. Okay, well, then I can bypass. It's not a shortcut. It's actually, you learn that consumerism is the, the long route to the thing you really want. Cause you could buy all the things and now people what? Like you? Well, maybe, or maybe they just like your things. They like the idea of you. They like the construct that you have put together, the identity that you have formed. They like your ego in a way, the false self, not the arrogant self. But they like your identity that you've created, that you've built, and you've adorned it with all of these things. And so what can we do to opt out of that?

• 17:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  For me, TK, it seems that we realize what we really want when we want those things. Because it's true. Consumerism kept me tethered to a lifestyle where I was working 80 hours a week, many weeks. I worked 362 days a year. And no, I wasn't doing the farm labor that you were mentioning earlier. But it was a lot of work. It was early mornings and late nights. It was managing large groups of people and lots of meetings and spreadsheets and interacting with customers and getting yelled at and having cell phones thrown at me. It was intense. It was a lot. And it was nonstop. And in fact, there was no light at the end of the tunnel. It just kept going and going and going. And eventually I get to a point where I'm like, when is this ever going to end? When's it gonna ease up?

• 18:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Maybe it's when I get the next promotion. I've already had several promotions and every promotion, the work doesn't get easier. It becomes more challenging and there's more demand on what I'm supposed to be doing here. The expectations increase as your salary increases, as your status increases. And so in a way, I was tethered to everyone else's expectations. And so I did have to opt out of that system in somewhere, at least put a plan together to stop being tethered to that lifestyle, which for me meant paying off debt so that I was financially free. That took me about four years of, of really difficult work, paying down hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.

• 19:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But then it also meant that I was no longer relying on my self-image to be propped up by the trophies and the accoutrement of yesteryear.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I like to think of consumerism as a drug because I think it it highlights two very important things. Number one, consumerism, like drugs, have the power to drive our behavior in ways that are unnatural. It has the power to make us do things that we, in a sober mindset, would not even want to do or ever think to do. But the second thing is it illustrates the relationship that we have to the will. If you present to me a hard drug, like a Schedule I drug, I've never taken it before, I have a choice. I can say no, and it's pretty cut and dry, and this is the peak of my willpower. But

• 20:12Speaker 02

  if I say yes, even just this one time, my will begins to diminish. And it may very well be the case that after I say yes one or two times, I no longer have the capacity to say no at the same level I had before I never engaged the drug. Now my willpower has been surrendered to this. Now my nature has been distorted in a way, or damaged in a way, to where if I want to say no in the future, I'm gonna need to think creatively, I'm gonna need to think as a community, I'm gonna need to approach this differently. And I think that's how we should approach consumerism. It's it's not as simple for us anymore to just say, hey, I'm gonna opt out of the consumeristic games. Oh, no. We're

• 20:54Speaker 02

  all hooked into this system in various ways. Even if we didn't know any better, we've all made so many choices that have gotten us addicted to and attached to so many things. And how do you deal with that? Well, you abandon all or nothing thinking. You don't pressure yourself to say, I'm gonna go completely off the grid and never do anything. It's sort of like this Instagram reel where this guy sits down and eat a bowl of noodles, and a voice says, hey, that plastic fork, it has these toxins in it. And he puts it down and he gets a regular, like, silver fork. And it says, hey, you put that in the dishwasher and it had all these toxins in it. And he's like, oh. And he puts that down. And then he tries to eat with his hands. And the voice says, hey, you didn't wash

• 21:37Speaker 02

  your hands. And he goes to wash his hands, put some soap on there, and the voice says, hey, that soap- has these toxins in it. And so he picks up a towel to dry his hands. He says, hey, that that towel has all this toxic laundry detergent on it. And he's like, what the heck? And so he just looks at the bowl and he just pours the noodles into his mouth. And then it says, hey, those noodles have arsenic.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  But the guy can't do anything because everything's toxic. So what do you do when you find yourself in that situation? You try to find one small little way in which you can unplug from the unintentional autopilot way of doing things. What's one area of my life where I can introduce a small dose of intentionality so that I can begin to unplug bit by bit such that even if on the day I die, I'm still hooked into this system in in forty five different ways. I've taken that number down from forty eight. I've taken that number down from eighty eight, whatever it may be. You want to just reduce the number of ways in which you are hooked into systems that are not soliciting

• 22:45Speaker 02

  your participation consciously.

• 22:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that's spot on. And what I do there is try to detangle consumption from consumerism. We all need to consume some things. It doesn't make me a better person because of the car that I own or the clothes that I wear. And the same is true with the work that we do, right? I'm not better because my job title improved, right? It doesn't improve me as a human being. And that's one of the great lies of the corporate world is your status equals who you are. Your net worth equals your personal worth. And back to the toxic thinking, I think there's an eighty twenty rule with that as well. And you illustrated it perfectly with that video is ultimately the noodles were

• 23:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  poisonous. I mean, there's arsenic in the noodles. And so even if you change all of the other things around the edges, you're still eating the arsenic. And so the question is, what's the arsenic part of the hustle culture that you're embedded in right now and addressing that? And then recognizing that you can do the small things around the edges, but there's twenty percent of the Thing that's leading to 80% of the discontent in your workplace. What is that? And if you address that, everything else sort of becomes a side dish to that, that main meal that they were completely swapping out. Autumn, I'd love to send you a copy of Everything That Remains. That's Ryan Kedemis's and my story.

• 24:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's that five-year transition period of leaving the corporate world, simplifying our lives, walking away, no longer being tethered to that lifestyle and no longer being tethered to all of the bills and consumerism as a result. One of the beautiful benefits about simplifying my life is I stopped spending as much money, but strangely, I became more financially free because I was no longer dependent on those outside things to make me me. And that book is really about, the first line is, "Our identities are shaped by the costumes we wear." And the biggest costume we wear every day is like, what am I wearing into work? And that could be if you are, you know, if you're in sales and you have to wear a suit, great.

• 24:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Or if you work at a restaurant and you're wearing the apron, maybe that's your uniform. Those are fine as uniforms, but as soon as they become my identity, I'm a yoga instructor, therefore, I'm the type of person who has to dress like a yoga instructor. I have to wear these types of beads. Nothing wrong with the accessories. The problem is when that is me and I am not me without them. So that's what Everything That Remains is about. If you want the book book or the ebook, we'll send those to you or the audiobook version as well. TK, before we get back to our callers, and we've got some good ones here, it is time for the lightning round where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week. And this is where we attempt to answer questions with a short, shareable, minimal maxim.

• 25:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims, a bunch of new maxims, every Monday for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists.e-mail. We'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements, but we'll start your week off with a dose of simplicity. All right, the question of the week this week. This is a good one to pair with Autumn's question. What would it take for you to work one less day per week? What would it take for you to work one less day per week?

• 26:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, before we get to our pithy answers, TK, and you have a couple really good ones here. Let's see what some of our listeners had to say. Alexa says, "For me, to work one less day per week, it would take an actual livable wage, not to mention the cost of living to stop drastically increasing every month." Now TK, I think you have your doctorate in economics.

• 26:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Street economics.

• 26:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No, I always think of TK as our resident economist. And you're always like, "Stop, stop, stop saying that about me." But like, to me, you are so wise when it comes to economics. And I appreciate the fact that it is, it never feels stuffy. It feels real world and practical. And you go talk to real schools with real people. And you could talk to kids about economics in a way that doesn't seem like I'm opening up an economics textbook and looking at graphs. So as my personal resident economist, when you think about a livable wage and then you think about cost of living increases, what do you think about?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Man, I think about a lot of things. You know, I think about all of the land in this country and all of the buildings, you know, that are completely empty. That would be so useful to so many people. But we've got everything from all types of zoning laws and regulations that just place these artificial restrictions on human creativity so that we can't do anything with a lot of the land and the property that's out there. Like, you'd be amazed at just how much of a problem that is, right? And you contrast that with homelessness in this country. It's a, it's a very unfortunate thing. I, I think most of what gets talked about when, when we, when we talk about economics and livable wage are...

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Talking points that can be reduced to something that is anti-left or something that's anti-right. And that's a tempting direction to go in because you know that half the country will love you when you do that.

• 28:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Isn't that that absolute thinking you were talking about earlier too?

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Well, it's part of that, but it's also political and economic opinions come with a social cost. The moment you articulate where you stand on some matter of politics and economics, at least half the country is going to be mad at you. And so it's good to know that you got another half that's gonna have your back, right? And so the safest path to take is to say something against the left or say something against the right, just sort of, you know, identify what tribe you're gonna attack, blame them and their policies, and then you know that somebody's got your back for the attack that's coming at your way. What I think about is something that neither side of the political spectrum seems to be too interested in because it's just not politically profitable to talk about. There are people that are interested in it, but they don't really say anything about

• 29:10Speaker 02

  it because it doesn't make them more electable, and it's not a sexy issue like so many other things are. And that's the topic of sound money and the way that sound money imposes all sorts of constraints that nature does not give us on our capacity to create wealth. We have very little transparency and accountability when it comes to the very means by which we measure our capacity to create value. What you hold in your hand, the product of your hard work, the product of your labor, the product of the problems that you've solved for people, you don't know what that's gonna be worth because there are no objective rules that determine that. You know, there's no accountability for how much more of that

• 29:51Speaker 02

  can be printed, for how that can be devalued. There's no sense of what that's based on. It's just sort of like a naive faith that we don't question because we happen to feel stable right now. But the moment that we don't, that's when everything changes. And so I think about sound money, and that's something that I would like to see more discussion on from both ends of the political spectrum. What would it take for us to get to a place as a country where there's some serious accountability and transparency with the increasing of the money supply? And what does it look like to adopt or develop a currency that is deflationary or a currency that is anti-inflationary? And you know what direction that's gonna push me in, but I'll control myself and stop there.

• 30:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, you know, what's fascinating to me is all the knock on effects of what happens with society. Inflation is a byproduct of a lot of things that happen in our society. If it's printing money, there are shortages, there are tariffs, a lot of things will add to our everyday cost of living. There are taxes, there are embedded fees or hidden fees that that we don't know about. You know, when you go to the the gas pump even, that's a tax that we don't even realize that we're paying. You can, I mean, you can look at it, you can see how much of this is tax, but also quite often that is a inelastic good. And if I need to drive here, I have to

• 31:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  buy gas. And even if it says it's $10 a gallon, well, now I'm like, okay, I guess I can't eat lunch today because I still need to be able to go into work. And so there's a whole lot that goes into that. And I agree, it warrants a broader discussion. Maybe we get Steve Patterson on the show, we can, we can really hash it out. Although two of you can't talk about the Trinity when he's here. All right, back to the question of the week, what would it take for you to work one less day per week? Chris says, for me, it would take a mindset shift. This is a different answer. My income wouldn't be impacted. It's more the feeling of, quote, needing to work Monday through Friday. For a while, I took one weekday as a me day to do whatever I wanted. I need to re implement

• 32:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  this. You know, TK, for millennia, humans have observed a Sabbath day. I'm gonna take one day to do nothing to not work.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there's a lot of research to support this. There's a very excellent, excellent book. I believe it's called Rest, that talks about the way in which slowing down actually increases our creativity and our overall wellness. We had Cal Newport talking about the concept of slow productivity. It's an idea that's been around for a very long time. And even at an anecdotal level, we all understand that experience of wrestling with the problem, we just can't quite crack the riddle that's got us hung up. But then you go for a walk, you take a Hour, you do something like let it go, you sleep on it and then it comes to you when you're in that state of rest. Rest doesn't necessarily mean sleep, but rest means a cessation

• 32:57Speaker 02

  of busyness, right? Taking a break and getting rooted in the deep self. And that's what the concept of the Sabbath is all about. Stepping back, saying, I'm not going to focus on doing today, but I'm going to focus on being and I'm going to ask myself, what is the basis for all of my doing?

• 33:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh yeah, the doing versus being, that's something that's so difficult for me. And in fact, I really enjoy the work that we do. Like, I love doing this. Coming in here on Tuesdays with you, getting to have these conversations. How amazing. What a privilege that is. And yet, I force myself, you know, you know, this, I do every other Friday, I take off with my wife and I put it on the calendar. And so everyone knows like, hey, I'm not going to be available that day. I force myself to be because I really like the doing. And so sometimes you might really enjoy something, the same way you enjoy dessert, but if you don't take a pause on the dessert,

• 33:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  it's all just gustatory, imbibing all of the time. And it loses, it loses the joy after a while. And so sometimes setting it down, setting down the doing and picking up the being, just because you're always being anyway, but actually noticing it. Like, I can be here, I can be present. It's practicing a type of presence and without the distractions. And I'll tell you, man, that's difficult for me. It's difficult for me because my default back in the corporate days was my self worth has been tied up. So the pattern I, I develop is my self-worth is part of the work that I do.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  But you've got more than that going on too. I, I, I think you deserve more credit than that. There, there may be some of that and only you can speak to that. But there's also a part of you. I wish I had the words that someone used to describe you in our fam's call, where it's your, your sense of, of what could go wrong drives you to action. It was something like that.

• 34:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, we're talking about OCD there.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And like the things I've become obsessed by.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 34:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Are, are often the things that I want to, I want to kill Godzilla when Godzilla is a baby, not when Godzilla is taking over the city.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Hey man, how about not killing Godzilla at all, man? I, I, I get what you're saying though.

• 35:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You went to your house is on fire and then you tell me how that's going for you.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  But you know, I think there's this, there's also this version of you where you work hard in a way that people have to find out about by almost like catching you doing it. But you wouldn't advertise it, you wouldn't say anything. And it's because you can see that something needs to be done. No one is going to do it. And you can see the way that will negatively impact others. And you'll sacrifice yourself without even advertising it. Because you believe advertisements suck to make things happen. And so I would give you more credit than that. But you know, to your point, getting back to your point, you know, we can easily prove the idea that overdoing it can compromise what we even love doing.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Imagine if we said, hey, this is so fun that we're gonna record this, we're gonna take a 15 minute break. And when we're done, we're gonna do another one. And we're gonna start doing three to four episodes a day. You and I will be so exhausted. And if you think this podcast is bad now, man, wait till we get to the fourth one. It's gonna be horrible, right? And we would have to scale back and say, hey, what's the amount of this to do? That's sustainable. And so we say, all right, one a day, one every few days, one every week. And so the question to ask yourself is, given the fact that you know there's such a thing as doing it too much, do you have a good reason for believing you found the right amount now? Or can you scale back even more?

• 36:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. And sometimes that's through some experimentation. It's okay to scale back too much for a period of time. Or it's, it's okay to scale up. If you know there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I remember we were working on Everything That Remains. I had some 14 hour days working on that book. And that's not sustainable long term. But when you see the finish line there in front of you, you recognize what you're working toward. The difference between that and my corporate days is there was no finish line. The finish line was just a new starting point. And you're like, uh oh, I've made it here. And now this new race is even longer and faster and more overwhelming. And it's uphill. And it's like, what am I doing? And so recognizing that, yeah, sometimes there'll be cycles where I ramp up and that's okay. But I want to make sure that I know where the finish line is.

• 37:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Otherwise, I'm gonna get that sense of burnout. Let's do one more. This one's from Tara. She said, "We own a small business and working one less day per week is our goal. Once we feel like we have financial legs and the business is stable enough, we would like to take this step to have a little more time to live and enjoy our hard work." TK, instead of waiting until she feels like they have enough stability, it might make sense that they figure out what enough is, get concrete. What is enough for you?

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, two questions, actually. One, is there a way I can give myself permission to have some of what I love before I even have enough? So even when I define what enough is, is there a way for me to enjoy something? You know, I get the whole idea of, hey, we're a sports team, man, and we're going through the regular season and we win a game. All right, that's great, but it's not the championship, right? Let's stay focused on the, you know, big picture. But do you really want to live your life in a way where you never get to say yay at all? You never get to take anybody out for a celebratory dinner at all until and unless you win the Super Bowl or you win the championship? That's a really long season. How about stepping back and saying, "All right, where are some markers I can

• 38:39Speaker 02

  give myself permission to celebrate without having to treat my celebration as if it's tantamount to ultimate success? If we make the playoffs, we're all going out for dinner, right? If we beat our rival, we're all gonna have a good time." You want to do that with your life?

• 38:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's exactly why I celebrate, because I'm bad at it. And it's not my default. But it's a nice time to step back, reflect on, "What have I done? What have I done?"

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, yeah. That is great. Now's a good time to reflect on that. And it doesn't have to be the beginning of the year. It could be the middle of the year. It could be the middle of a month. It could be the middle of a drive into work. I'm gonna celebrate where I am right now. And it's just a recognition is what it really is. Let me recognize. And it's a way to step into the present moment. How about you, listeners? What would it take for you to work one less day per week? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat. Okay, give me something pithy, TK. I know you had a couple of them here. What would it take for you to work one less day per week?

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Only work less when less works better.

• 39:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Ooh, come on.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  First, work is not just what you do as a job. Work is the expenditure of energy towards a goal or a value of some kind. And so just because it doesn't feel really difficult, just because you're not sweating, just because you're not getting paid for it, just because you don't have external accountability, doesn't mean that it's not work. When you say, "I'm gonna go get a glass of water," that's work. When you say, "I'm gonna go home tonight and play a video game," that's work because you are investing your energy towards something that is important to you. And so when you realize that, the goal isn't to eliminate the work. The goal is to eliminate the waste. What are those aspects of your work that are not actually creating value for you?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  That's the kind of stuff that you want to minimize. And that's when you say, "Hey, I'm gonna do less work here because that's just busy work that's not really doing anything for my life. And now I'm gonna free that up to do more work here, doing the things that even if they don't pay me, they nourish my soul."

• 40:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Man, I really like that. Eliminate the waste, not the work. And the way that I often do that is by setting appropriate boundaries. And so my pithy answer is a good boundary highlights the unacceptable. I'm not the type of person who just sets up boundaries for the sake of putting... In fact, I think that's really harmful. The, all the talk of boundaries these days, I think it's useful until it's not. And a bad boundary is one that gets in your way. There's a lot of boundary clutter out there because we say, "I'm not willing to accept any of this other stuff," and it tunes us out of the possibilities. I'll give you a good example. In the, we just had our 15th anniversary celebration for The Minimalists. And we hit up the Joy Committee group chat, so we call our team of people who work together

• 41:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the Joy Committee. And Jeff, our very talented brand strategist and web developer, he and Dave, we've worked with them since The Minimalists were two weeks old. And it's because we went to this meetup in Chicago randomly. And I used to have a mindset of, "I'm not going to any events. I'm not going to any gatherings. I don't want to be around people." And yes, that may be a proclivity of mine, but if I set up the boundary that says, "No, I'm not going to do that." That's an unnecessary boundary. That's a bad boundary for me. I would have never met Jeff or Dave. I don't think we'd have the beautiful cover art for our books, or movies, or podcasts

• 42:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  without them. And so, what if I said, "I really hate touring." Well, I would have never met Professor Sean. I would have met Podcast Sean, but I would have never met Professor Sean. We met him in Pittsburgh, however many years ago, 2011. And as a result of doing something that I refuse to put up a bad boundary on, just because I'm a little bit uncomfortable, oh no, that discomfort is a sign that I might be able to grow in that direction. Yeah, I don't like travel, and I don't like crowds of people, and I don't like public speaking. It's not that I don't like them, though. It's they make me uncomfortable. And so, I give myself permission to not have a boundary around those things that is going to get in my way.

• 42:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's almost the end of Page 1. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. Savvy D over there is on the board. But first, real quick for right here, right now, here are two things that are going on in the life of the minimalist. You probably heard at the top of the show, I didn't say, "Coming to you live from Earthing Studios," right? We had a grant from them for a year and a half. Our good friends over at Earthing, Olivia and Clint, and they've been really good to us over the last year and a half. And they came to us and they thanked us for the work we were doing. They were helping us with our live events as well. So, they were buying all the tickets so people could get in. We could pay for the venue. We could pay for Matt and other people on the team to contribute. And so, they gave us a grant for a year and a half, a studio grant. They

• 43:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  knew the whole time that we weren't going to do advertisements for them, but we would do a naming grant, similar to if you go to UCLA and you see the Jim Johnson Building. It was the same sort of thing that we did here with the studio. And so, you've heard that for the last year and a half, Earthing Studios. And that grant is coming to a close as we transition on, but I'm still the biggest fan of the Earthing Studios. Earthing folks. And so I got both of their books here. If you want to check them out, we'll put links to them in the show notes. Clint wrote this book that changed my life. It's called Earthing. It's how I heard about Earthing. So many scientific studies in here. When I started grounding a couple of years into my autoimmune conditions, I realized that it was the main ingredient that was missing. There are other things,

• 44:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  we talked about it recently with changing some dietary things, reduced inflammation with cold thermogenesis. And recently, I've been doing hyperbaric oxygen as well. But the number one thing that has affected my health has been earthing. I wrote a whole essay about it called, I shouldn't have to deal with this. And you can find that, we'll put a link to it in the show notes as well. It's at theminimists.com/earthing. But it's my whole healing story of being in the worst pain in my life and just, I shouldn't have to deal with this. Also, if you want to check out a bunch of really great testimonials, The Mother Earth Effect by our friend Olivia Smith. She wrote this book with a bunch of women who had these amazing testimonials when they started earthing. And so this is not an ad for them. They're not paying me to say this. I just wanted to take a moment

• 45:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and say, thanks to them for that time that we had with them. We brought them out to several of our Sunday symposiums. We had a great time bringing them on the stage. And they've added a lot to this community. And they've, it's because of earthing that I'm still here right now. And that's why I've become an evangelist for it. So I thank Clint, I thank Olivia, I thank the folks at Earthing for all of their contributions. One more thing for you, How to Write Better, my writing course, which I offer a couple of times a year, Professor Sean and I. It's four weeks. It's developing a writing habit. It's four distinct weeks as well. We work with you on the writing habit, because for the longest time, I was an aspiring writer, which means I didn't have a writing habit. I didn't write every day. I didn't write regularly. I wanted to improve my writing. Second week, we talk

• 45:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  about composition, and really getting the words onto the page. And the third week, we talk about editing. And the fourth week, we talk about publishing. What are the different ways to publish now? Do you want to go with a traditional publisher? Do you want to publish yourself? Do you want to start a blog? And I speak from a perspective of someone who has published five books, four of which have been bestsellers. And I I've learned so much about writing over the years, but the old adage ends up being true. The teacher learns more than the students. I remember the first three years that I taught this writing course. Paradoxically, my writing improved so much as I'm stopping, I'm pausing, I'm figuring out all of the ingredients and the sequence of my own writing. And so, the course opens up today for 72 hours only.

• 46:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We only accept 100 students. If you're interested, howtowritebetter.org. You can find all the details. You can find the testimonials over there. If you want to join that cohort, join 100 other students. We have forums over there. You can do it at your own pace. We do it over four weeks, but I have some people who take it over 16 weeks. You can do it at your own pace, what feels reasonable for you. Everyone from high school students to medical doctors have taken this course, and the testimonials are overwhelming. You can find those at howtowritebetter.org. Much more coming up, TK, but first, here's a quick insight from one of our listeners.

• 47:14Speaker 05

  Hello, Susan, calling from Portland, Oregon, Patreon subscriber. And I'm just calling to give a shout out testimonial to Mr. TK Coleman and his clutter counseling. First off, I just wanted to 100% agree with the other caller who referred to TK as her personal Oprah. This is correct. Especially if you've been listening to the podcast for some time, you'll find that you have kind of a common knowledge base, ideology, framework from which to jump in and it's, you kind of hit the ground running addressing your issue.

• 47:52Speaker 05

  TK has what I would call is a transformational presence, meaning just the act of scheduling an appointment with him, being with him, engaging with his curiosity, his intelligence, his courage. It changes your perspective on your issue, the way you see possible courses of action or solutions, your whole stance. And the last thing I would say is you'll have a lot of fun. TK has a great sense of humor and brings a lot of levity to different situations, which I found to be kind of a critical piece of the transformational element.

• 48:35Speaker 05

  So that's my tip, and everyone take care and have fun. Bye.

• 48:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, Susan, what a sweet comment. TK is also my personal Oprah. TK Winfrey over here.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Wow, that was very heartfelt. I really appreciate that. And I don't know. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Yeah.

• 48:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, anyone else who's listening who might want a clutter counseling session with the transformational and fun TK Coleman, you can book a session anywhere in the world over at theminimalists.com. Just click Counseling at the top. For anyone else who has a listener tip or insight about this episode, or any other episode, you can send a voice memo, just like Susan did, over 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.

• 49:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that is the first 36% of episode 521. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two-hour maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, what is the purpose of everything you own? How do I better manage anxiety, avoid resentment, and process past grief when interacting with my relatives? How does one deal with the emotional clutter of feeling overwhelmed? Plus, a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to

• 50:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  all of our podcast archives, all the way back to the very first episode from 2015. It's more than a decade of archives, TK. And that is our minimal episode for today. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Jordan No More, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D, and the rest of our team. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, it's about to be this. Love people and use things. Because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.

• 50:52Speaker 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.