declutter

Mo Stuff = Mo Problems

Separate happiness from owning stuff

by Brad Beckstrom

You would think someone who writes about living lean and minimalism would not have a stuff problem. Think again.

It’s the start of a holiday weekend and I just spent a over an hour on the phone with Apple support. Turns out I have too much stuff on one of my two computers. I have too many extensions on my Chrome browser. One of these extensions, or other apps, are creating issues, causing the browser then the computer, to hangup.

Apple was nice enough to help me with my out of warranty iMac. I’d imagine there’s some reason for this. Maybe they looked at my support file and got a glimpse of how many Powerbooks, Macs, iPhones and iPads I’ve purchased over the years. I’m embarrassed by this number. When you add in my wife SuperK, my two kids, and various ventures I’ve purchased Macs for, I am very embarrassed by this number.

Mo Stuff = Mo Problems

See the problem is not really the Mac, it’s the number of Macs and the number of apps. Mo Stuff = Mo Problems. Rapper Notorious B.I.G. famously said Mo Money = Mo Problems and things did not end well for him. Shot dead, likely due to some money problems with other rappers. [Read more…] about Mo Stuff = Mo Problems

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

How to create your own personal search engine and remember everything.

01/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

– Brad Beckstrom- Thefrug.com.

Have you ever scribbled a quick note, found something on your smartphone or online and bookmarked it, only to never find it again? Sure, the bookmark in your browser worked fine, it’s just you’re having trouble remembering some of the details, like what it was you thought was so great about the company, idea, article, gadget or piece of information in the first place. If the thought comes to you again this certainly makes it hard to find.

This can be especially frustrating at work. What was the name of that company that makes that free widget? Wazzle, Ziplot, Xplant. Search even becomes more difficult with all of the similar sounding Web 2.0 names out there. There’s just not enough information in most domain names or descriptions to make bookmarks very useful.

I have hundreds of bookmarks, dating back years. They are basically useless broken links from companies I don’t recall much about. I’ve found a better way.

On May 9, 2009 at 10:07 AM, I discovered Evernote. A free note taking, smartphone, web and desktop app linked to the cloud. I remember this because every note is automatically annotated with a date time and location. I took a picture of a place I wanted to stay at the beach. The photo automatically included a map and was now searchable by the address, name of the property, date time month location etc. Even the text in the photo of the sign was automatically synced and searchable. This included text in logos like Sunspot below.

I was just getting started. I also added the free Evernote App to my iPad , Google Chrome, and the desktop version for my Mac. All of these sync with one free Evernote account. This is where the personal search elements really come in handy. Once you add Evernote to your browser, you can clip and quickly tag information on any webpage. Evernote then saves all kinds of information to help you find that page in the future. You can add your own tags like “Taxes” or “Vacation“ or “To Do.” This browser plug-in / extension is available for most modern browsers and is super convenient for quickly saving a simplified version of any article, stripping away all of the extraneous screaming headlines and other unrelated information like banner ads with dancing monkeys.

For traveling, I like to add the airport code as a tag or note to make things easier to find. like PDX for an upcoming trip to Portland. The Frug likes to make reservations way in advance and this comes in handy when trying to instantly pull up flight, hotel and event details I lined up four months ago. It’s also helpful when you visit a city several years later and want to pull up your old info, like a cool restaurant or hotel you found. You can also clip any type of information and attach it to a to do or reminder in Evernote. Example: book this hotel next May.

The greatest feature of Evernote is the search function. You can obviously search in the app or in your Evernote account but the most useful feature is the search plug-in for your browser that displays all of your past related notes directly in your Google search results. So, if I search Dewey Beach not only do I get that note I created back in 2009, but also some important info related to a client program and a hotel reservation.

After a very short time, you will find yourself remembering everything and being of great assistance to friends, clients and family members who can’t remember the name of that thing we found or place we stayed. Because you’re primarily searching just your results, there’s much less muck to dig through to find what you’re looking for.

Here are my five quick steps to creating your own personal search engine with Evernote:

Go to Evernote.com and create a free account.
Download the desktop app and browser plug-in available for most computers.
Activate the browser plug-in or extension, Evernote calls this web clipper.
Get the smartphone app.
Start clipping, snapping, tagging and sharing anything that interest you. You’ll be glad you did later.

You’ll also be able to get rid of all those notes and scraps of paper that pile up on your desk and in your wallet.

Do you suffer from click tangents? How to get on a high quality, low information diet.

12/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Herbert Simon

The first time I read about a low information diet was in one of my favorite books The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. Tim talks about cultivating selective ignorance by ignoring news in general. It took me a while to adopt this philosophy, but living just outside of Washington DC, it’s become enjoyable ignoring the news, with a US Congress that has basically become a circus of bought and paid for fools, on both sides of the aisle.

I’m sure many may push back on this idea saying that they need to keep up on business news for their job or for the concern that they may come off as uninformed on current world affairs.

So, instead of ignoring all news, I am going to share my strategy for ignoring 24/7 world news outlets and, at the same time, improve the quality of information that’s relevant, and most importantly, enjoyable for you.

1. Ignore the major news outlets. All of them. Everywhere.

If this is a diet, then most major news sites are potato chips. Little distractions and pieces of news that you click on and 30 minutes later you forgot what you were doing. These include those little feature articles at the bottom of news sites with fascinating tidbits of information that you just have to click on. As an ad guy, I can tell you many of those articles are bought and paid for and really don’t have any useful information that cannot be found elsewhere from a better quality source.

Even with my efforts to ignore them, these types of stories occasionally still find me, primarily through cookies in my browser. Next thing you know I’m clicking through 10 slides about some useless tidbit of information that has nothing to do with what I’m working on or any entertainment value.

I still find myself occasionally wandering off on what I call “click tangents.” .Take a look at my browsing record and you can even see that the link I clicked on regarding inexpensive places to live was a paid link. If you start at the bottom you can see I was reading an article about Apple’s deal with China Mobile and was distracted by one of those boxes with eight pieces of fun and interesting news tailored specifically to my browsing history aka cookies. Then I continue to click through 10 consecutive slides that also were on pages with ads tailored to my browsing history.

While this may be effective for clients promoting products it’s certainly not effective for getting anything done personally.

2. Quality Content Curation

Recently I shared my rant on cutting your cable bill using content curation for TV viewing. The same strategy can be applied to the entire web, including what you listen to in the car or on your phone. This can all be accomplished with two simple tools RSS feeds (reading) and podcasts (listening).

Get an RSS feed reader. RSS now stands for really simple syndication. In a nutshell it allows you to follow a distraction free list of the most knowledgeable sources on any topic. I’m going to just recommend one feed reader here (Feedly) but there are many out there. Once your feed reader is set up you can search for top bloggers authors and writers on nearly any topic.

I like Feedly as it allows you to easily group and filter the blogs and writers you follow. They also have smartphone apps and apps that work right in your browser for Google Chrome, Safari and others. They also make it easy to un-follow or quickly add feeds directly from websites. Once your feed reader is installed, just type in the feed or topic you’re looking for and click subscribe.

You can organize feeds into simple groups.

personal finance
comedy
photography
technology
cooking
fitness

Now you’ve created high-quality curated news that’s designed just for you. You can completely skip over reading about Congress, the latest budget battles or Middle Eastern oil negotiations. Major news outlets just shovel the stuff out and are trying to deliver lots of content surrounded by distractions.

If you’re just starting out, go slow. Just follow a few of your favorite bloggers or writers. Avoid the major news outlets and other (firehose style) feeds that dump five or six articles per day into your feed. These will get old fast and you’ll be right back where you started with too much content and not enough quality. Search for quality content from writers who post maybe one or two well thought out articles per week.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Tim Ferriss

Mr. Money Mustache

AJ Leon The Pursuit of Everything

The Minimalists

If you do most of your reading on a tablet or smartphone, I would recommend the app Flipboard. You can search and follow the same writers there. The app uses a fantastic touch interface that is perfect for these devices.

3. Quality mobile curation for your listening pleasure

Once you dump the news outlets, it’s time to get rid of their radio broadcast counterparts including all the chucklehead DJs deep diving into completely useless topics. If you like to get your newly curated content on the go, walking or in your car and don’t want to be one of those people stepping off curves or worse because they’re looking at twitter on their phone then it’s time to rediscover podcasts. Podcasts used to be a pain in the ass. You would have to download them or transfer them to your iPod then try to sync the whole mess and go back in and delete stuff.

This has all changed with smartphones. Just search for a highly rated podcast app in your phone’s app store. You’ll be amazed at all of the high quality content on virtually any topic delivered commercial free largely with the exception of a few sponsor mentions. You’ll never hear another law firm or next day loan ad again. I’ve been using the new podcast app in iOS7 and I will never listen to the radio in the same way. Here are a few podcasts I’ve discovered and I’m just getting started:

Ted talks audio – Ideas worth spreading

Blogcast FM with Srinivas Rao

The Nerdist podcast

This American Life Podcast

Once you download the podcast app, you can search under any topic or try out a few that interest you from the popular by genre list. I recommend downloading a few recent episodes while on Wi-Fi so when you want to go for a run or a long drive they’ll be loaded up and ready to go and won’t run up your wireless bill.

Good god, I ramble on, time to wrap this up.

Simplify your life and avoid click tangents by putting some heavy-duty quality filters on any information that comes into your world.

Avoid the major news outlets. They profit from sensationalizing bad news that has little effect on your day-to-day life.
Curate what you do read with a high quality RSS Feed Reader.
Stop listening to chuckleheads and news on the radio. Subscribe to a few high quality podcasts.
Avoid similar distractions on Facebook and Twitter by using RSS feeds and podcasts.

Keep living lean….The Frug

“One Man’s Trash” My 5 year experiment with Craigslist

11/13 by The Frug Leave a Comment

And 10 Tips on selling stuff from an adman.

Starting with $60 for a grill I couldn’t give away.

My first experience with Craigslist was about 5 years ago. We had an old Weber Genesis 1100 grill. This thing was about 15 years old and we had it for about 10 of those years. A neighbor had given it to me in fair condition. We put it to good use, and it showed. The bottom was rusted out and various other parts had started to give way. Ours was actually in worse shape than the photo above.

Curb Alerts

I’d heard about other people listing old couches and other various items on craigslist as a curb alert. Curb alerts are for things generally not suitable for sale or donation to charity. Our grease covered rotted out grill was definitely in this category.

To my surprise, in searching craigslist, it turned out that this grill was a “classic” and there was an active market of people who purchase these, paying from $40-$80 then use the parts or completely restore them. Here is an “after” photo I found of one of these restored grills on craigslist.

Restored grill for sale as seen on Craigslist.

As they say, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” and this sure beats a trip to the dump. Also, call me a Frug, but I feel bad just chucking something that may have a few more years of useful service in it. So I took the leap and created my first post on craigslist, included two photos, grill info, and listed it for $60, a price well beyond its scrap value. My thinking was maybe someone would want to restore it like the one above.

Craigslist a powerful tool in my war on stuff.

I was a bit concerned about getting mocked, spammed, or receiving offers for escort services in response to my ridiculous first attempt at a craigslist ad for a rusty grill. But, based on the immediate responses, my inner ad-man had come through and created a successful post. By that afternoon, not only did someone reply, but actually arrived at my home to pick up the grill with no negotiation. Just three crisp 20s and a thank you!

Craigslist has become a powerful tool in my war on stuff. Here are a few tips to make getting rid of stuff on craigslist easy:

Always use multiple photos. Just like any other customer, craigslist shoppers want to see what they’re getting, even if you are giving it away for free.
Try to get a good photo by placing the item outdoors, or in a well lit area, without distractions or “other junk” in the background.
For quick posts. use a craigslist app. Once your account is set up it’s easy to just snap a photo with the app then add a headline and a good description.
Good headlines work, something like “Vintage Peugeot French Road Racing Bike.” I used this description to sell my 12 speed bike from 10th grade that was still in my garage until about a year ago! Another “classic vintage” item that had retained all of its value 30+ years later.
For more expensive products, it’s always good to paste in a quick description from the manufacturer. Just do a quick search including the model number and you’ll get a bunch of options. These more detailed descriptions will also make your item easier to find for searching shoppers.
Avoid using photos from the manufacturer’s website unless what you’re selling is brand-new. People will be disappointed if your sale item differs from the photograph.
There is no need to include your email, phone or home address in the post. Just use your craigslist mail ID which forwards to your email box. This helps you avoid spammers.
If someone asks you to deliver the item, just say no, unless you know them. The time involved in this negates any benefit you get from using craigslist. Think of this more as a garage sale. People should just take things home and leave you with the cash.
When you come up with your price give yourself about 10% to 15% negotiation room. People who purchase on craigslist generally like to ask for some small discount from your list price.
If you are getting rid of stuff that is in really bad shape just do a quick curb alert, Craigslist has some good mapping tools so you can just drop a pin on the curb location and it will be gone in no time.

Zach Galifianakis presents Craigslist Joe

Once you start playing around with craigslist, you’ll find there’s a whole hidden economy involved. It goes way beyond stuff, and includes fantastic vacation rentals, computer repair services, handyman services, on and on. Check out the film Craigslist Joe about the guy who travels the country relying solely on the support of the craigslist community.

Unloaded anything crazy on Craigslist. I’d love to hear about it.

The_Frug

Just Get Started

07/13 by The Frug 2 Comments

You have to start somewhere. If you have read my posts, you know I’ve declared a War on Stuff. The reasons are pretty simple. Stuff wastes a lot of time. Storing stuff, cleaning stuff, buying stuff to clean your stuff, looking for stuff, shopping for more stuff and the list goes on.

Check out George Carlin on stuff, it’s a guaranteed laugh.

If you’re interested in getting rid of stuff and decluttering your life, but haven’t found the time to get started on it, I’ve come up with a simple way to have a constant reminder in front of you each day. We set up a box in the hallway right next to the hamper. Any time SuperK or I come across something we no longer use or want to get rid of, we drop it in this large cardboard box. Usually, after a month or so, the box is nearly full and we can quickly pack up and run it over to Goodwill or call Purple Heart and they’ll come pick it up. You can also reach out to the Lupus Foundation who also does at home pickup.

The box also comes in handy when I’m trying to do some quick decluttering. I can toss in old baby books, toys, videotapes, as long as it’s something that may be usable to someone. I’ll admit I’m not sure who’s going to want that Big Chill soundtrack on cassette but I’ll leave that up to the folks sorting through all this treasure. Don’t get too hung up on the quality or age of the clothing or items you pass along, as long as it’s clean. If it’s not up to Goodwill standards (yes, there are standards) they generally make it into rag stock or recycle it — which is much better than it ending up in a landfill.

If your box isn’t filling up, you may need to schedule about 30 minutes of decluttering a week. If just one or two family members, roommates etc. participate, that box will fill up quickly. This is especially important just prior to the winter months when shelters really are looking for old sweaters, jackets, coats and anything warm. Don’t just wait till spring cleaning rolls around. Get rid of that stuff!

Brad Beckstrom, The Frug