Search Results for: perfection

Let’s Clean This Mess Up.

What you can learn from a minimalist lifestyle even if you’re nowhere close to adopting it.

By Brad Beckstrom

Minimalism is hard. After five years of working on it, I’m not even close to my original goal of a vastly simpler lifestyle. I’ve worked on applying minimalist ideas in everything I do. I’ve slowly realized that for me there is not some ultimate minimalist goal or destination. The reason is that there’s always stuff coming into our lives. And it’s not just our stuff, it’s our family stuff, our work stuff, stuff related to our home, our hobbies, our kids. The average American home has 300,000 things in it. So, I guess my family’s making progress — we’ve gotten rid of about 50,000 of these things over the past five years.

I think part of the reason adopting a minimalist outlook is hard is that many of us have lived our lives doing the opposite. It’s only much later, after decades of accumulating stuff, that we realize it’s all really just weighing us down. Given this, it’s going to take some time to unravel all that.

One of the interesting things I’ve found is that you can apply minimalism to a lot more than just cleaning out closets and garages. Over these past five years, I’ve developed everything from minimalist investing strategies, work habits, and exercise routines.

As I’ve been working to apply minimalist principles, I look around and notice people adding more more more. Like spending 30 minutes driving to and from a CrossFit Gym to spend hard-earned dollars on increasingly complex workout routines. Constantly bringing complexity into life with high-tech toys often built into expensive new vehicles and smart appliances. Using social media, news apps, and productivity apps to create more and more urgent notifications. Complex volatile investment schemes involving everything from cryptocurrency to meme stocks. Utilizing multiple tools and technologies that were designed to lighten the load, but instead, end up adding hours to the average workday.

Let’s simplify this stuff.

I don’t think anyone will ever look at me and my home or family and say “Oh, that guy is a minimalist”. For me it’s not about that, it’s about applying minimalist principles to one part of your life at a time and making small improvements. So, in the spirit of minimalism, if we could apply just one idea across everything we do it would make a big difference. Here’s one idea I use: [Read more…] about Let’s Clean This Mess Up.

There is Nothing Wrong With Your House.

03/19 by The Frug Leave a Comment

7 Ways to Save Money on Home Improvements and Free Up Your Time.

One of the hassles of owning a home, especially a home that’s more than 20 years old, is the steady flow of things to do. Not just general upkeep or lawn care, there are repairs to make, appliances to replace, projects to plan.

Should I do my own home improvements? Maybe ask my wife to help me? Or have a few friends over and trade beers for some labor?

There sure are a lot of YouTube videos out there showing you how easy it all is. More resources than ever before to help you get these jobs done easily.

As you get older, get married, maybe have kids, start a business, you really start to look at your time closely and wonder if you are spending it wisely. So, even though I’ve done some minor repairs and home improvements in the past, now I often look at them and find that my time is better spent elsewhere. Time with my family, time outdoors, or even an equal amount of time that I could spend doing work that I enjoy such as writing, photography or creating digital campaigns.

Another way to justify outsourcing home-improvements is to compare what you may earn spending that time creating. In my case, the time is better spent doing some work that could generate income long-term and comes easier to me than home improvements. In my case, I tend to be more handy with the laptop than with the hammer.

Outsourcing

So, for me, it’s decided. I’m outsourcing home improvements and repairs, even the simpler ones like painting and landscaping. For years, every frugal bone in my body told me this was not the best way to go about it. Then I decided to view this from a different angle.

There is nothing wrong with my house.

[Read more…]

Take Imperfect Action.

10/18 by The Frug Leave a Comment

How regularly screwing up can help you get stuff done.

By Brad Beckstrom

I’ve always liked taking action. Getting stuff done. A friend once told me, “The best way to fall asleep is to lay in bed and think of each thing that you did that day from beginning to end. Include the little stuff, washing your face, taking the dog out. If you’re like most people you probably do a lot of things even though at times it doesn’t feel like much. By the time you get near the end of the list, you will be asleep.” This trick didn’t work too well for me, sometimes I would lay there and think of the things I forgot to do which was a great way (not) to fall asleep. It’s okay that it failed. I was trying to do something that would help me fall asleep. I’ve learned something by trying this out, it didn’t really work, I’ll try it again, I took imperfect action.

What’s “imperfect action”? My first thought was doing something that didn’t work or trying something like a shortcut that just made the task longer. It could be something that was unproductive but got you 1% closer to reaching your goal. Maybe it wasted a good chunk of your day but you learned something from it.

Taking imperfect action is something that can help both the perfectionist and the procrastinator. [Read more…] about Take Imperfect Action.

Big Box America. Maybe our middle class is vanishing because they’re buried under a pile of stuff.

06/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

The average U.S. household has 300,000 things.

Let that sink in for a second. Okay, how about this one: Children in the United States make up only 3.7% of children on the planet but have 47% of all the world’s toys and children’s books.

Who comes up with these stats? As it turns out, quite a few people. Anthropologists and archaeologists, sociologists and economists are all studying our addiction to stuff. When you think about it, it’s fascinating. Writers and academics want to document this phenomenon so that thousands of years from now when an archaeologist comes across 750 plastic toys at a single family dwelling dig site she will be able to explain why.

Life at Home in the 21st Century

The UCLA Institute of Archaeology Press recently published a book called “Life at Home in the 21st Century.” The book is filled with U.S. stuff statistics, but what I found more interesting was the thousands of photographs from families who bravely opened their doors to researchers. [Read more…] about Big Box America. Maybe our middle class is vanishing because they’re buried under a pile of stuff.

How to live lean, work lean and travel lean by asking a simple question about stuff.

02/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

Will this _________ simplify my life? Go ahead, fill in that blank with anything. In this country, we live with an abundance of stuff. You can walk into any big box store and browse upwards of 150,000 different things. We have millions of apps available with one click and many of the good ones are free. Often with things that are free (especially with things that are free), you need to ask the question. Will this “free _____” simplify my life?

As someone who writes about living lean and working lean, I need to ask the simplicity question often. As an entrepreneur, I need to ask this question about any piece of software, new gadget, health plan the list goes on.

Sometimes the answer is yes, but you don’t really know that until you’ve already purchased it. I had no idea my iPhone would replace over 20 things until quite some time after I purchased it. So often you need to ask other people – How’s that __________working out for you?

“Perfection is achieved, not when there’s nothing more to add, but there’s nothing left to take away”

I repeat this quote, as I look at my cluttered basement. You can apply it to anything. Bruce Lee did when he was learning the perfect kick and the perfect punch. He said, “It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.”

Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive aspired to this when working on the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone. These devices were revolutionary, not based on what was added, but what was taken away, like excessive buttons, bells, whistles, and keyboards. They were asking the simplicity question over and over, not just about the device but about every element of its design.

Bloatware. Something as straightforward as creating a document or a spreadsheet is often ruined by bloatware like Word, Excel & Powerpoint. The bloat comes from developers trying to best the competition with features and add-ons. Simple wins. Check out Google docs before Google ruins it with feature creep.

Keeping up with the Joneses. Things that start out as something simple, something that just works, become bloated with too many features. For example, cars with talking digital dashboards trying to sync with your phone and laptop. Will that simplify your life or maybe help you end up in a ditch somewhere, because you weren’t looking at the road? At some point you will definitely end up at the dealer amazed at the cost of repairing your talking digital dashboard.

Examples of when to use the simplicity question:

That presentation you’re working on — Try getting rid of some bullet points. Give it a 50% haircut for starters. Use images instead of words.
Working on an app or a piece of software — Start making a list of features that can be removed.
Creating some copy for a website or writing a blog post — Try to remove every other word. See how much you can cut.
Traveling — Use a website like Kayak.com to sort available flights by total travel time. Always include time in the value equation.
Cleaning out closets and garages — Ask the question “Will keeping these things make my life simpler?” You probably already know the answer.
Buying a car — If the owners manual is the size of a textbook, that should be a warning sign. Always go for quality and simplicity over features, especially electronic ones.
Making a big purchase like a new home — Ask the question about your commute, the condition of the home, how much space you really need, the type of loan.
The utilitarian item — Look at quality first, features last. Is it something you’ll use every day? What will it replace?
Exercise — Complex, backbreaking routines often found in programs like P90X, Crossfit others. See what you can cut out and get your workout down to something you can complete in 20 minutes and enjoy. You’ll stick with it a lot longer if it’s simple.
Looking at shiny displays in the big-box store — Ask the question.

So try asking the simplicity question more often. Picture yourself as Bruce Lee executing a perfect kick as you eliminate stuff from your life.
Life can be simple again.

The Frug

10 things you should know about great dive bars

02/14 by The Frug 4 Comments

By Brad Beckstrom

Years ago I worked for Miller Brewing Company. Part of my job was visiting wholesalers who were independent distributors of our beer. I worked in marketing, so after my pitch on the latest programs from the brewery we would visit key accounts including bars and restaurants in the market. We’d say hi to the bar owners, buy some beers, discuss what the competition was up to, and how our programs were stacking up in retail.

Many of these beer distributors were in small towns. I visited places like Snoqualmie WA , Cumberland MD, Ocracoke Island NC, and Harpers Ferry WV. As a recent college grad, this was a great opportunity to see the country and spend time with experienced business owners.

The distributors would take brewery reps like me to their best accounts. These were generally taverns that sold a lot of beer. They were always independently owned (not chains) and had a large local following. The formula in all of these accounts was remarkably similar. Keep it simple, sell ice cold beer and great food. Keep it relatively dark and cool inside and hang a lot of interesting stuff on the wall. These were classic dive bars.

In search of local dives.

Fast-forward many years and true dive bars with good food are getting harder to find. This is especially true if you are living in the suburbs. Around Arlington, are always plenty of places to eat including chains, ethnic spots and high-end concept restaurants owned by restaurant groups and celebrity chefs. Some of these restaurant groups even do a nice job at re-creating the feel of an Adirondack Tavern or a Nantucket Sailing Club. Sure you may feel like you’re in a hundred-year-old tavern, but you’re paying for it.

There’s nothing wrong with this once in a while, but just because you enjoy something like a great bottle of wine at an expensive restaurant, doesn’t mean you need to try and recreate that experience every week or even every month. In an expensive area like Arlington Virginia, trying to recreate this dining experience weekly can add up to a couple of car payments every month.

This is where the local dive becomes important. They’ve spent very little on decor. There is no wine list, just what’s on the table tent. The focus is on value. If you’re a Frug, you need to seek these places out. You need to support them. I’m not talking about hipster dive bars. These are very easy to spot. I can find any number of them over the bridge in DC. They may look like dive bars but they charge eight to ten dollars for a cocktail or seven dollars for a microbrew. Sadly they are often the victim of location (high rent district) and no short supply of urban hipsters. More power to them but they’re off my list.

How to spot a true dive. These are getting harder to find.

It’s coveted by the locals. Reputation and repeat business from regulars is what keep these places going. Ask around.
The floor may be dirty but the dishes and glasses are clean. Serving ice cold beer or a cocktail in a perfect spotless glass is a true dive bar’s bread-and-butter.
The menu is simple, and generally unhealthy, but the quality is there.
The price is right. They should offer a good selection of old-school domestic beers like Miller High Life and PBR for about three dollars.
The taps are clean. If you get a funny tasting draft beer, be suspect. A good dive bar will have very clean beer lines, just like a great Irish pub will pour a perfect Guinness.
The customers are definitely more interesting than those you may find at a local chain restaurant,
The hipsters may have discovered it but the owner doesn’t care,
A good amount of the decor has been provided by local beer and liquor companies. Some of the stuff hanging on the wall is over 50 years old.
It’s not well lit, which helps hide many imperfections.
The kitchen is simple and clean. You can hear the cook complain about your order.

If you like to go out once a week or so, try seeking out the best local dives. Heres how.

Explain to your wife, friends or significant other that you want to try something different and that this will be a new experience.
Do your research. After all if you find your favorite local dive you may be going there for 10 years or more (like we have) so it’s worth a little bit of effort.
Start with Yelp or Foursquare. If you don’t have the app it’s just as easy to visit Yelp.com. Create a free account so you can bookmark your dives.
Do a search for dive bars or dives. Look for 4 star ratings on Yelp and Google Maps or a rating of 80 or higher on Foursquare.
Don’t just stop there, browse some of the food comments this is always a good indicator of the quality of the dive.
Do a test dive. Don’t just show up for dinner on a Saturday night. Maybe stop by for happy hour and try some chicken wings to get a feel for the place.

It may turn out not to be a place you want to eat but the drinks and bar food may look great. While you’re trying it out share your thoughts on the yelp app or foursquare.

Keep searching. Like most other things in life, you only need to find one.

To get you started here’s a list of my favorite dives, http://goo.gl/kgWvkl

The Frug