545 | Unoptimized Life

The Minimalists talk about the trap of productivity, the point at which optimization makes your life worse, when purchasing quality goods becomes an extravagance, seven minimalist rules that will help you eliminate your email clutter, and much more. Discussed in this episode: Don't you hate when people waste your time? (0:48) How can I escape my addiction to optimization? (6:08) At what point does optimizing your life make your life worse? (17:00) Right Here, Right Now: Give Joshua podcast review for his birthday, and join The Minimalists for a live Zoom call. (29:02) WWJO: Which mattress does Joshua use for floor sleeping? (31:16) Get Joshua's futon: https://amzn.to/4e19RSz Get Joshua's tatami mat: https://amzn.to/4ehrVH1 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, The Mentalist, living a meaningful life with less. Joshua Fields, Millburn here. TK Coleman over there.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  It's good to be here, man.

• 0:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, well, thank you for being here today. Here's something to chew on. Don't you hate it when people waste your time? I wrote about this recently in the Simple Newsletter. Another great reason to subscribe to the free Simple Newsletter. Comes out every Monday. No spam, no junk, no ads, no noise. Just a little bit more of less. You can subscribe over at thementalists.com. But I wrote this short essay for the newsletter. It's called "People Who Waste Your Time." Don't you hate it when people waste your time? Me too. Of course, no one has wasted more of my time than me. Imagine if you had a friend who forced you to mindlessly scroll your phone for hours

• 1:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  a day. "Just one more video." Imagine if they pressured you to stay up late watching vacuous TV reruns. "Come on, let's start another episode." Imagine if they filled your calendar with commitments you didn't want to keep. Come on, man, saying yes is so much easier than saying no. Imagine if they convinced you to go window shopping and then tricked you into repeated impulse purchases. "It's on sale. You might as well get it."

• 2:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You'd probably call that relationship toxic. You'd want to set boundaries and create distance to protect your time. Eventually, your mounting discontent would rally you to stop tolerating their inconsiderate conduct. So I've got to ask, why do you and I tolerate that same behavior from ourselves? TK, why do you think we tolerate behavior from ourselves we would never tolerate from someone else?

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Man, I think about Brother Blackson, who did an episode with this. And one of the things he said was something to the effect of, whatever it is that isn't fully felt, it will externalize as something more noticeable until it's acknowledged. And the reason why that happens is because when something is externalized, it's easier to look at. But when it's on the inside, it might be easier to stuff down, to ignore, to just not see. And I think one of the reasons why we have an easier time wasting our own time is because external accountability weighs in on us with greater pressure. When you've got another person calling you saying, hey, where are you at? When you've got another person saying, hey, we're gonna do this, we're going to the gym

• 3:26Speaker 02

  today, it's just harder to flake because you've got that outward thing imposing on you. But when it's just you and your commitment to go to the gym, just you and your commitment to be a better person, whatever, you can tell yourself some kind of story like, oh, I'll get started tomorrow. Oh, it's just one more video to scroll. Oh, I'll just start another episode. And a lot of times what tips the scales is just having that other person there to be like, maybe we should just go to bed. Maybe we should just go for a walk and not do this.

• 3:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I found that like, even the people that I care about the most, if they had this same behavior where they're like, putting a phone in my hand and forcing me to scroll Instagram for 45 minutes, it would be a type of torture.

• 4:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I wouldn't want to do it at all. And yet, when I convince myself to do it, and then there was a whole non-dual question about that. Who is the convincer here? Who's convincing who to do this thing? And the same thing is true with my impulse purchases or setting meetings, saying yes to them, even though I know I don't want to necessarily attend that meeting or commitment. And I find that it'd be so much easier to create distance. But I, of course, I can't create distance from myself. But the way that I do create distance is to, well, actually, you know what? That's what we're going to talk about today a bit. We're talking about productivity and optimization. And so coming up on this episode, we're talking about the trap of productivity,

• 4:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the point at which optimization makes your life worse, when purchasing quality goods becomes an extravagance, and so much more. Also, TK, on page two, I have seven minimalist rules that will help you eliminate your email clutter. Let's start with the callers. If you have a question for the show, we'd love to hear from you. 406-219-7839 is the phone number. Or you can join the program by just sending a voice recording right from your phone to [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you. Shout out to our Patreon subscribers. Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber when you call in so we can prioritize your message. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps this podcast 100% advertisement-free because sing along at home, y'all.

• 5:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Advertisements suck. You know, I was thinking about this recently. I was writing an essay about this. And it was about refusing to sell your attention to the corporations. And I'm still ironing that out. So please make sure you subscribe on Patreon if you haven't already. We give you this podcast for free. But if you're not subscribed on Patreon, it's the only way that we earn revenue to pay our staff and ourselves and everyone else because we refuse to clutter it with advertisements. All right, let's start with the callers. Our first question today is from Sahara.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Hi, this is Sahara Schrester from Ottawa. I have been a longtime follower and listener of the podcast. I am not a Patreon subscriber, but I hope you will address my question. Over the years, I have purged my life with moving, growing, but the minimalist have still made the cut and still is in my inbox and my playlist even after 10 years or more than that. I would like to know your thoughts on productivity and how it relates to consuming. In today's era, we are consuming and consuming and consuming, but there is no action, is what I think. And maybe it's just my problem. What I mean here is that I feel like I have a problem.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  I am obsessed with being productive, always doing and doing. And now, it seems like I need to go to rehab from my addiction on being productive because I am caught in spiral of continuously doing, and it is never enough. There is no shortage of to-dos. In fact, I can think of various tangents. My mind can go as I plan my to-dos. And then comes excessive planning. I am planning so much that I never get to actually doing. I re-listen to your hobbies podcast a lot because I relate to that very much. I have way too many hobbies, way too many things to do in the strive to be productive,

• 7:39Speaker 03

  only to get tangled in the anxiety of doing and being productive. And with this strive, there is another addiction that comes in, and that's consuming. And also the things that was mentioned in the previous podcast, information clutter, where the speaker, I think she was Erin from Philadelphia, she describes that she is always analyzing and thinking what she can learn from everything. Even in the conversation you're having with friend and I'm thi- and I think that I'm that way as well. I think that comes with trying to be productive. For me, I need to be productive. So I need to, you know, get something out of everything that I'm doing. Also, I need

• 8:19Speaker 03

  to plan. So how to plan? So let's search. So I end up searching for fifty different ways to plan and maybe land on one of one after like hours of searching and then I start planning. But I'm already tired until the time for actually producing it there. Yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this, but I would like to hear your thoughts and obsession on being productive and how to minimize the need to do all the time. Thank you.

• 8:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, there's a whole lot in this question. I identify with it because I am a planner and often I can be an over planner. So Sahara, she's sort of trapped in this cycle of productivity. She's planning all the time. She's constantly seeking out self-improvement and but of course, she feels overwhelmed. She feels anxious. And she also feels like she's unable to take any meaningful action amid all of this doing. So how can she optimize or how can she escape maybe her addiction to optimization?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got some thoughts, but I do want to ask you, since you you made that aside, that you also sometimes overplan. What does that look like for you when you do the same thing?

• 9:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It often turns into a type of procrastination. It's a type of productivity clutter. When I'm, I think often it results in, I hear her question, it's not really about productivity, it's about optimization if I'm looking at through through my lens. And when I try to over-optimize everything, it feels like I'm not going to do any of the work. I'm just planning to do the work all the time. And I'm stuck in that cycle of of non-doing, although it often apes the form of doing. It makes me feel like I'm being productive, but I'm not producing anything. To be productive means to to produce, right? I'm just stuck in the optimization phase instead.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, man. I mean, I don't have the same vice because I don't have the same virtue. And I think our vices are often misunderstood, misapplied, or misplaced virtues. And so if you want to understand something about your strengths, look at what your weaknesses are. And if you want to understand something about the best way for your enemy to take you down, look at what your strengths are because it's somewhere connected. I wrote down four little things when I was listening to this question. Number one was consumption compensation. Number two was planned spontaneity. Number three is constrained planning. Number four is external accountability. I'm going to move very quickly

• 10:55Speaker 02

  through them. I wrote down consumption compensation because I just wanted to say it is no surprise is no surprise to me that because of this hoarding of planning, that it's also leading to unhealthy behaviors with respect to buying a lot of things. Because when we when our truest hungers are not met, we try to satiate those appetites with other things. And that's the compensation element. And so I think we can solve that just by getting you on the right track of aligning with the path of your heart. And those sorts of things go away. When you're feasting upon something that is nutritious and that satisfies you, you won't want the other stuff. But if you're starved and you're thirsty and you don't

• 11:40Speaker 02

  have any good clean water, yeah, you might be tempted to drink a mud shake. The second thing I wrote was planned spontaneity. I think this is a way you could leverage what you're already good at, what you're already obsessed with, to help facilitate the opportunity to do something that you're not as good at. You're great at planning, but you're not doing a great job at allowing yourself room to experience things in life that can't be planned. And so one small step you can take in the right direction is to plan time where you're not going to do something for which you have an agenda. It might be time where you take an agendaless walk, leave the cell phone at home and I go for a walk. It might be time where you say, I'm gonna sit here and do nothing. It might be time where you

• 12:25Speaker 02

  say, I'm going to express myself creatively, or read something or watch something based solely on impulse. So here's an hour. When I get to that hour, what do I feel like doing the most? And I get to do that as long as it's not planning something else. Third thing I have is constrained planning. If you find yourself just planning, planning, planning, planning, and never acting on any of these plans, one thing you can do is you can put a time limit on how much time you have to plan. It's sort of like doing a research for purchases. I'm buying a new couch, buying a new car. Okay, you can do research, but if it's getting out of control, say, I've got 24 hours to do it. I've got 20 minutes to do it. I've got three hours to do it, three days. Something that is appropriate for what it is you're considering purchasing.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  And so if you're planning out your hobbies, planning out your week, put a cap on it and say something like, one hour of planning time, and then I must stop and I must act on one thing on this list. And then lastly is external accountability. We just talked about this earlier. It really does help when someone else out there who loves you, cares about you, knows what you're trying to do. They know how you struggle and they know all the ways that you're good at talking yourself out of it. And they can lovingly call you in, back to your true self, whenever you find yourself fading away, slipping away into these weaknesses or these vices. And so I would let somebody know, hey, here's my plan. Here are the things I want to do. I have a weakness of just staying in theory land, staying in planning land. So maybe every time we talk, you can just ask me,

• 13:55Speaker 02

  how is it going in the arena of acting on my plans? How are those hobbies that I told you about? How are those things that I said I wanted to do? I think those are things that could help a little bit.

• 14:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The planned spontaneity has helped me out a lot and it's also the most difficult piece for me out of everything you just talked about. And I often say that minimalism is the amplification of spaciousness. And I think one area of spaciousness that has been most important to me is finding spaciousness in my calendar. To me, a rich life has very little to do with the amount of money that you earn, the amount of status you have. It has to do with how much space I have in my calendar. Of course, space is also defined by its borders and boundaries. You can't have space in emptiness and vastness, right? Space, this room is spacious, but it's spacious within the four walls, within its constraints.

• 14:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so I still have things on my calendar. But I go way out of my way to protect that time. And one of the ways I do that is I don't commit to things. I don't say yes to something that is far off in the future. And heuristic that I go by there is would I say yes to it today? If someone asks me to go to a meeting, do I want to do it today? And then the question is, is it a hell yes? Or am I just saying yes to placate this other person? And if it is a hell yes, well, why is it a hell yes? And it's a hell yes because there's an outcome that I'm seeking. And I'm, and now I'm looking for some flexibility in the means to get to that outcome. Or maybe the plan spontaneity for me is I need to be less tied to the outcome.

• 15:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I need to be flexible on whatever my outcome is. And that allows me to enjoy the process a whole lot more. I do want to make some more distinction between productivity and optimization. We'll talk about that during the question of the week. Sahara, I'd love for you to download a copy of Emotional Clutter. It's available as a free ebook or ebook over at theminimalists.com on the books page there. Or now it is a beautiful hardback as well. So you can, you can pick up a physical copy of Emotional Clutter. Because this optimization thing, it feels like it's not about the emotions. It's about the, the strategy. And yeah, okay, but there's a story. There's a belief going on behind these strategies.

• 16:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And, and part of that creates a whole lot of dread and sadness and frustration. She even used terms like overwhelmed and anxious. That's the type of emotional clutter. And so I think you'll benefit greatly from getting a copy of Emotional Clutter. There's also an audiobook version TK and I recorded where we did a little mini podcast between each chapter of Emotional Clutter. You can check that out over at theminimalists.com. Just click on the books page. And also I would encourage you to book a clutter counseling session with TK while you're there over at theminimalists.com. Spend an hour with TK and help sort through some of this productivity and optimization clutter. Theminimalists.com, just click counseling at the top and you can book a session there on his calendar.

• 16:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Before we get back to our callers, let's optimize the question of the week TK. At what point does optimizing your life make your life worse? That is the question of the week. At what point does optimizing your life make your life?

• 17:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Worse. Let's check in with the Patreon community chat. Zachary said, "I find that optimizing can be an endless rat race. There's always a newer product or a better service. I can, I feel consumed by optimizing at times." Savvy D, I know this was your experience a few years ago, right before, right as you were moving out here to Los Angeles. You were being the, the good optimized man, but I think it was kind of overwhelming you at some point.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  For sure. So when I was living in Florida, I was working part-time. I mean, it's Florida, so I wasn't able to skate very much, maybe like two hours a day max, like unless I want heat stroke. And so inevitably I had a lot of time on my hands and I spent a lot of that time kind of just like wandering around my room, wondering like, what can I optimize in here? Like, should I get rid of something? Should I get something new? Like, what? Like just trying to find, like, almost trying to find a problem in something that's not even broken?

• 18:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh TK, there's something with that. Like, we're often seeking out problems that we don't even have, and I want to optimize for the problem that maybe doesn't even exist. Do you have any examples of that TK or Savvy D?

• 18:26Speaker 04

  Um, let me think. I just remember so often, because like, especially in Florida, I was ultra minimalist. Like, my idol was Colin Wright. Like, I was like, I'm trying to live like, straight up out of a backpack. So I really did not have a lot, but I was still trying to find something. Like, I remember I did the 30 day minimalism game before I moved, because I was trying to just like, really have nothing coming out of here. And I mean, also, I packed my Prius up and drove across the country. So like, I needed to not have a lot of stuff. But I remember like, picking up a, like, photo album of a bunch of like, drawings that I made from when I was a kid. And I was like, each one of these

• 19:08Speaker 04

  is one item for the day of like, the 30 day minimalism game. So I'd take a picture of it, or like, scan it, you know, put it on a hard drive, and then that was one item. So it was just like, Like, yeah, I was getting rid of things, but it was kind of like not that meaningful. And I didn't have anything better to do with my time. Cause now, like, I was just telling you last week, now I can't even imagine doing that because I have much more important things to be like concerning myself with, you know?

• 19:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, well, I think TK, he sort of illustrated that I couldn't do the thing that was most important to me, the skating piece. So now I'm going to find something else to do. It's interesting, when I think about productivity, I'm often thinking about what gets produced. And often it's not optimized. I write every day, but it's not very optimal, the way that I do it. I produce a whole lot of words and eventually I edit them down to something that is more palatable, something that I feel good about publishing, or most of the stuff I write never even gets published, even though it gets produced. And you might ask, well, okay, well, why do something like that? And same, I think the answer is the same with Savvy D. It's like, it's where I feel most alive. And I'll also say it's a great opportunity for me to contribute beyond myself in a meaningful

• 20:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  way. And even Savvy does that with, with skating. He produces these videos that people really enjoy watching. And so he is producing something, but often it is rather suboptimal, the way that you're doing. He'll drive for four hours to go out, way out in the inland empire to find a, a 10 second video that he'll get. It's not optimized, but he's producing something. And so Rachel here says optimization gets in the way when you end up eliminating something you enjoy because it isn't optimal. And that's kind of what we're talking about here is like, well, I guess my writing, it's not the most optimal thing. Maybe there's something else I could optimize my time with.

• 21:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But I think there's sort of a legalism behind this and that legalism gets in the way.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  That's right. It becomes legalism when we divorce the rule from the purposes that the rule is designed to uphold or serve. I mean, to make something more optimal doesn't just mean to make it faster or to make it cheaper. To make something optimal means that you are making it more suitable for the, the aims. And ambitions of the person that is going to be using it or applying it. So, you know, last night, a few friends and I went to a movie and we could have sat down and said, hey, let's find the optimal place to watch the movie and sort of geographically mapped out the place that is, you know, equidistant from where we all are coming from at the time. And then we could say, well, which place has the best seats or the best temperature?

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Which place has the cheapest snacks or the concession stand that is closest to walk to from the theater? Which one has the most bathrooms? And we could have found the most optimal thing and yet had a miserable experience.

• 22:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You might have even missed the movie. You might have spent three hours optimizing and then you didn't get to experience the thing you actually showed up there for.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. And so you have to do cost benefit analysis with optimism. You say optimizing is only good or useful, rather, if the benefits of my optimizing exceed the cost. But if the costs exceed the benefits, then that means I've missed the point. It's like me giving you directions to someplace and maybe it's 20 minutes away. And I say, hey, look, here's the way you can get there in 15 minutes. Cut all that traffic out. And then I say, oh, you know what? Here's a way you can get there in like 10. Oh, you know what? Here's another way. Hey, if you want a more scenic route, you can do this. Actually, if you want like, if you want to pass up some good coffee shops, you could do this. If you wanted to, now, after a while, if I'm giving you different ways to be there and I've taken 30 minutes, it's like, dude, I could have gone to the place, got a cup of coffee,

• 22:53Speaker 02

  came back and went there again. And the amount of time you're spending giving me the most optimal path to get there, you don't want to miss the point. The optimization should serve you.

• 23:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. Demeter said, optimize what? That's a great question. Because I think we don't even think about that. Okay, I'm going to be productive. Okay, being productive, yes, I go to the bathroom every day. I'm rather productive. I don't think anyone calls that productivity though, right? And it's because optimize what here, right? He said, as you've said on the podcast, we are complete in an empty room and it's not necessary to quote, fix ourselves. Life is meant to be lived, not optimized. I would say, indeed, those are my thoughts. So life is meant to be lived, not optimized. In fact, I wrote down a pithy maxim here. Optimization is for business, not people.

• 23:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, of course, there's times where it makes sense for us to optimize certain things in our lives. But I don't want to optimize my life. There are things that I want to automate so that sometimes my mortgage is paid automatically each month. But I still have to do my budget every month, right? And some of that is unoptimized in a way. I learned this from Leo Babalt, very early on, where he unautomated a lot of the things in his life because it allowed him to be more intentional. Because when everything is on autopilot all the time, you sort of take it for granted. I see Professor Sean over here.

• 24:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I should have thought of this sooner, but I'd like to add my own maxim to this. I adopted this as my own personal credo. It's like two, two or three years ago when I was making some changes in my life. It's actually from a poem by Jack London called Credo. And the final two lines are, "I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." So I wanted to add that.

• 24:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, yeah. There's something so powerful about that because it's always planning for some hypothetical future, some endpoint that you, you never get to. There's always a new horizon once you, once you get to the horizon. How about you listeners? At what point does optimizing your life make your life worse? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. All right, I got my other minimal maxim ready here. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com and every minimal maxim ever over at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes to RecLeader inbox every Monday. If you sign up for our simple newsletter, it's free. You can find it at theminimalists.com. We'll never send you spam or junk or ads, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity.

• 25:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, give me something pithy, TK. At what point does optimizing your life make your life worse?

• 25:33Speaker 02

  The unlived life is not worth optimizing. So Socrates famously said, the unexamined life is not worth living. Someone came after him and said, the unlived life is not worth examining. And so I'm just, you know, remixing and riffing off that. That the whole point of any kind of optimizing is to make your life better in accordance with your understanding of what makes it better. The moment you externalize some concept of optimization and you defy it, you make it a god that you're there to serve or that's there for you to serve. You make it a creed that's there for you to live by. Then you immediately begin missing the point because you're looking at your life searching for reasons to be dissatisfied.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  You know, you can be feeling good about an experience and you move yourself out of that good feeling place by saying, but is this sufficiently optimal? Who cares?

• 26:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Sometimes it's simply good enough to say, you're not dissatisfied, man. Don't go looking for reasons to be dissatisfied. It's just a return to that common sense wisdom that says, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Fixing is for broken things. Optimizing is for things that dissatisfy you. If you aren't dissatisfied, if you're cool, be cool. Enjoy it. Such moments are rare. Let them happen.

• 26:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're making me think about this video I was watching with Savvy D last week. It was our friend Ben Greenfield, previous podcast guest. He's been on here a few times. He's Mr. Optimization. But it lights him up. He is so alive when he's optimizing. He did this video about his sleep routine recently. And it was stressing me out because I started telling myself, this is what I'm supposed to do, or my life would be better if. And it's all of these beliefs that I'm imparting on myself. He's not doing it. He's simply showing me the recipe that, and you can tell it lights him up. I remember the very first time I met him, he was coming on to our podcast. I talked to him on the phone before, but first time I met him in person,

• 27:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  he was at our old studio on Hollywood Boulevard and they had a lobby down there. And I go out there to meet him and he's doing like yoga poses in the middle of just a blank, empty lobby. And he's always finding things to do with his time, not because he should optimize, but because that sort of level of self experimentation lights him up. When we've had him on the podcast, he talks about all the things that he. Experiments with, especially certain things that are on the fringe and he'll write articles for Men's Health or GQ and, and he'll do some pretty radical things in service of, of sharing

• 28:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  what he's doing, but it's also the thing that makes him feel alive. And I know that if I picked that up as a prescription and said, this is what I should do, I might have an optimized life, but it wouldn't be one that I enjoyed living. Which brings me to my pithy answer. When improvement replaces action, optimization becomes procrastination. I think that ties a bow to what we were talking about earlier is I will sometimes find that I need to plan, plan, plan, plan, plan, and planning becomes a form of procrastination for me. It doesn't mean that I don't want to plan at all. I schedule the thing, I do the thing, I publish the thing, and then it's done. I need to walk away from it because endlessly tinkering

• 28:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  is a, just a new form of procrastination for me. All right. That's almost the end of page one. We've got an entire switchboard of colors to talk to, but first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one or two, or maybe even three things going on in the life of the minimalist. First off, today, June 29th is my, it's my birthday TK. And I'm asking everyone listening to this to get me a gift. Now, I don't want any cuff links. I don't want a necktie. I don't even want a gift card. Although I thank you if you have the sentiment and you want to do some, if you want to get something for me, you'll notice that if you're a long time listener to this podcast, we don't hop onto the podcast every week and say, please make sure you like and subscribe and, and leave us a review

• 29:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  here and yada, yada. I don't want to clutter the podcast with that. So, once a year, here's what I ask. Would you please, for my birthday, as a birthday gift to me, head on over to Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify, if you can do it in both places, even better, and rate this podcast. Now, obviously, I'd love to get five stars as a gift, but you can rate it however you want. What matters to me is that you go on there and you, you rate this podcast for us. Why, why is that important? Because it helps us reach other people with this message of living more with less. And so if you head on, head on over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, give us a review here on the Minimalist Podcast. We will read all of them. I'll make sure that I read them and I thank you for that beautiful gift. Also, new month is

• 30:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  right around the corner. Since it's my birthday, it means two days from now, a new month starts. And Savvy D mentioned playing the 30 day minimalism game. Beginning of a month is the best time to start the 30 day minimalism game. Summertime is a great time to play the game as well. Often you have kids at home, they're out of school. And so head on over to theminimalists.com/game. You can download our free minimalism game calendar over there. You can partner up with a friend, a family member, or a coworker and start letting go today. Also, you can come and hang out with me and TK and Ryan Nicodemus. Our next Friday afternoon minimalist Zoom call. We do these monthly Zoom calls, the first Friday of each month for our patrons. The next one is on July 3rd.

• 31:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That is this Friday at noon our time, 3:00 PM Eastern. You can find all the details at theminimalists.com/zoom. Before we move on to page two, let's do a what would Joshua own question from one of our callers. This one is from Elizabeth.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  Hi Josh, I have a question for what would Josh own? As a minimalist, would you consider this to be extravagant? A mattress that is all natural, stuffed with sheep's wool, natural latex, completely organic, and covered in organic cotton to decrease breathing in any toxins. However, this mattress does cost several thousand dollars. What do you think about that?

• 31:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What do I think about that? Before I answer the question, I would like to talk about this idea of extravagance. The way I hear it in her voice, it's, man, if it's extravagant, maybe I I shouldn't have it.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  I think that's a good question to ask oneself. I, I think who we are as human beings, we are capable of handling the challenge of a tough question that, that pushes us to think very critically about our moral responsibility to the world. Are you spending too much money? Should you do something else with that money? That's a tense question. That's an uncomfortable question and it is a healthy one. You're not in danger by asking yourself that. You're in danger when you get to the point where you can say, I have no duties to the world. I never have to think critically. That's when you get to this point where you are at risk of being extravagant. So I like the question. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on how you would assess it because that sounds like a lot, but I know that a lot is relative and it depends on where you're at.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  So I'm, I'm interested in hearing how you would approach this.

• 32:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, I do think sleep is incredibly important and we just talked about Ben Greenfield and he has this super optimized routine. I've tried a lot of that and I find sometimes it makes my sleep worse because I'm worrying about the sleep. I'm anxious about the sleep, but I do think having a good sleeping service makes a whole lot of sense. Recently I got rid of my mattress and we had brought the, the CEO of a company, I forget the name of the company now, my old mattress company. And I'd purchased a mattress from them. So I bought the thing and I brought him on here to, because I heard him on another podcast and, and he was really informed about sleep. But I will say this, it was a really, it was the most expensive thing I had in my home. It was several thousand dollars and it was a nice mattress.

• 33:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It wasn't the same thing she's talking about wool and latex. I'm allergic to wool and I know some people are allergic to latex and yet it was a all natural, organic mattress. And yet it was making this pinched nerve in my neck worse. And so I had optimized theoretically for the best sleep, but I was getting a terrible result from it. I was waking up in tremendous pain on this perfect mattress. The most expensive thing that I owned inside my home was this bed and yet it was making my life worse. Well, was that an extravagance? Maybe, but not an extravagance I want to partake in. If I do have some sort of.

• 34:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Decadent extravagance, maybe it has something to do with food or inexperience. Wonderful, but those tend to be the peaks. They are outliers. And the same is true with, I think a bed is really important, but I wouldn't necessarily say that a more expensive bed equates to a better night's sleep. Sometimes it can, but sometimes, like in my case, it got worse. And so what would I own in this scenario? Yeah, if it helped me out, I have no problem with that more expensive bed. You're spending a third of your life in bed ideally. And by the way, it makes the rest of your, when you get a great night's sleep, it makes

• 35:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the rest of the day so much better as well and more productive. And so recently I saw this video from Michael Chang. I know I've shared that before here on the show and I started trying out floor sleeping. First it was just me and we'll put up on the screen here. We'll have Savvy D and Tom Cat put this on the screen. There are four things that I sleep on. Now I almost brought it in here. I could bring my bed in here. I could carry it in here up all four flights of stairs and it wouldn't be a problem. I have a really simple quilted Japanese futon and it's cotton. It is natural. It's, I'm not worrying about all the stuff that they put into mattresses here. And it is a twin XL. I have two of them, one for me, one for my wife.

• 35:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Originally I just got one for me because I didn't think she'd want to, to sleep on the floor and she tried it out and she's like, oh yeah, my, my hips kind of feel better after a day or two. And I found this whole movement of people who were all sleeping on the floor. And my wife is the fittest person I know, but she gets a little bit of hip pain occasionally and it's helped out tremendously with her. And I just put this Japanese futon, you can see a picture here if you're watching the video version, I put on a little tatami mat, which is, so this is how a lot of people traditionally slept and do sleep still in Japan. There's a thin tatami mat. It's all natural and gives a little bit of cushion, but also it's like sweat wicking. So if you are sweating through, if you're like me and you sleep hot at night, I tend

• 36:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  To sweat sometimes. And so that helps dissipate any of the moisture. So you don't build up any mold. And then I have a nice little futon cover on top of that that zips around the futon. But literally, I could pick this up and take it anywhere. I've been traveling a bit recently. We just finished up the tour and I've been going back. I can still sleep in beds, but it's not as comfortable to me now. They're like too soft. Once you get used to sleeping on the floor, it's this firmness that your body sort of craves. And I enjoy sleeping on the floor so much more now. And the irony of this is, yes, it's more minimalist. I'm not prescribing it to anyone else. I think a bed is totally fine.

• 37:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But for me, it's so much cheaper than buying the really expensive, organic, all natural mattress that costs multiple thousands of dollars. This is a natural alternative that works really well for me. I also sleep on a buckwheat pillow. It's a lot more firm than a feather or cotton pillow. And I just really enjoy the way it feels on my head and my neck. And that's helped my pinch nerve. It's helped my back out a lot. I feel so much better physically after sleeping on the floor for the last, I don't know, six to eight months. It's been pretty great. And every time I go sleep in a bed, I'm like, man, when I'm in a hotel, maybe I should sleep on their floor too. I don't. I can still sleep in a bed, but I wouldn't want to do that in perpetuity anymore.

• 37:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What do you think about that? I know it's a bit strange, right? Most people don't sleep on the floor. And yet I found that for me, the biggest barrier for me is because it was kind of strange. What will people think about the way that I'd sleep on the floor? But the truth is, it's helped me immensely.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Right. And how many people are there to be around while you're sleeping to form an opinion about how you're sleeping? I mean, it's just you and who you live with, you know?

• 38:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. And by the way, I wasn't even prescribing this to my wife. Here's the funny thing. So she tried it one night and she's like, oh, yeah. I could see, for me, it took a couple nights to get used to. In fact, the first night I slept on that futon, my calves were on fire. Not my back, my calves. And I realized that, oh, there's some sort of shifting going on here. And it took me two or three days to get used to it. But as soon as I did, I was like, this is, this is so much better. And then my daughter will come into our room sometimes and she'll lay on it. She goes, this is, this is so much more comfortable than my bed. And now she's asking me, can I get, can I get a Japanese futon? So I can sleep on the floor too. Never once did I say, you should do this, you should try

• 39:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  it out. She tried it out on her own and learned that, oh, yeah, I do prefer this over what I have currently. I'll tell you what, Elizabeth, I will put a link in the show notes and in the description below for the futon that I use personally. So if anyone else is interested in trying out floor sleeping, you can do that. Although, here's what I'll say. First off, no pressure. Your bed that you have, if you enjoy it now, it's probably fine. You don't need to optimize your sleeping surface here. Although, if you're curious about floor sleeping, one great way to start is to simply pile up some quilts or comforters or blankets on the floor and see if it works for you. But if you do want to try out a Japanese futon, the one that I use

• 39:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  is from this company, they're in Japan. It's an actual Japanese company, but I purchased it from Amazon because they do the North American distribution here. So I'll put a link to that. Also, the tatami mat that I use, the cotton futon cover that I use, and also the sabakawa buckwheat pillow that I sleep on. I'll put links to all of those in the show notes. Don't feel compelled to purchase anything. Your life is complete without them. But if you do want to try it out, of course, those are the things that I own now. For anyone else who has a question, what would Joshua own question, or a listener tip for this show, we'd love to hear from you. Send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on a future episode.

• 40:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And you can ask me about anything that I own, or don't own, or used to own, just send in that voice memo. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 40:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that is the first like 35 to 40% of episode 545. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal episode, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, can you be a minimalist if you own only a few things but still prefer premium brands? Also, why does Victor Wimbinyama refuse to do advertisements for soda companies? And how can you remove the logos from all of your clothes? All that and so much more, 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

• 41:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  private episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to the very first episode. And that is our minimal episode for today. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Audio Ben, Spire Jeff and Dave, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Millburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things. Because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.