minimalism

Spring cleaning for the mind.

8 lasting ways to devote attention, time and energy to what’s most important to you.

When most of us think of spring cleaning, we think of cleaning our home, maybe the basement or some closets. The weather is pleasant so we can open up some doors and windows, maybe haul some crap to the curb that’s been accumulating around the house for years.

When we’re done and hang up that broom, we’re beat, but it feels good. We’ve given some stuff away, we’ve lightened the load. When we get rid of stuff and don’t run out to replace it, the stuff no longer requires our attention. The need to clean it, move it, store it, discard it goes away, freeing up time (and the to-do lists in our head) for more important things.

Mental Clutter

When we think of stuff, most of us think of physical things, but what about mental clutter? The reason Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day wasn’t because he was trying to become a minimalist or a monk, he just wanted a few less decisions to make every day. He wanted to reduce mental clutter.

Reducing mental clutter is simply following a daily practice to clear our mind allowing us to focus on what’s truly important. Our minds are actually trickier than a cluttered basement or apartment because, unlike inanimate objects, your brain constantly responds to outside stimulus like email, notifications on our phone, “service now” lights in our cars, “upgrade today” alerts for every piece of software on our computers. Think of it like a warehouse full of smoke detectors whose batteries are going dead randomly one at a time constantly beeping at us requiring us to find and fix the complaining piece of technology.

This gets at the core of simplification. If we can slowly and steadily reduce the number of inanimate objects, devices, media outlets, emails and stuff that will (ever) require our attention we will free up time to focus on our families, our health, our experiences and what’s important to us. When we use our smartphones and tablets it will be on our terms, distraction free.

Here are 8 habits that will have lasting benefits and reduce mental clutter. [Read more…] about Spring cleaning for the mind.

How a Roman Emperor and a Greek slave helped me develop a life philosophy.

10/15 by The Frug 1 Comment

6 things the ancient Stoics can teach us about modern life.

By Brad Beckstrom

I don’t recall enjoying anything about philosophy class in college. It might’ve been that the class was early in the morning and the professor spoke in a whispering monotone voice, reading texts from ancient, long dead philosophers. I was too busy looking forward to have much concern for these lessons from the past.

I hadn’t learned much about Stoicism. The Stoics had largely gotten a bad rap and their philosophy nearly vanished thousands of years ago. These ancient Greeks, and later Romans, were depicted as stern characters that expressed little or no emotion in the face of tragedy, or even life’s grand victories. They internalized things and were indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain. That last sentence is right out of the dictionary. Holy crap, these guys seemed like a bunch of downers.

As it turns out, they are still largely misunderstood and only parts of their philosophy of life have been communicated over the years. The Stoics were actually full of joy and had truly advanced thinking on how to live the best life.

Discovery [Read more…] about How a Roman Emperor and a Greek slave helped me develop a life philosophy.

The Time Poor.

09/15 by The Frug 1 Comment

How to escape time poverty and join the free.

By Brad Beckstrom

My oldest son came home a bit stressed out the other night. He recently started driving and has started to experience the chaos of rush hour traffic. I enjoy having everyone home for dinner and gave him a hard time about being late. I told him he needed to start managing his time better.

I sounded like one of my first bosses who used to say “We start at 8 Beckstrom, not 8:07 am or 8:11 am” or whatever the exact number of minutes I was late by was, as he tapped his Patek Philippe watch. At the time, I fixed the problem by planning to arrive at 7:45 AM. That worked for a while, until I realized putting on a suit and commuting to an office would not be my path.

Later, as an entrepreneur,I took time management to a whole new level, using day timers, Palm pilots, Treo phones (remember those?) I created multiple to do lists and scheduled my day to the minute, starting early and often finishing late. It was my turn to give people a hard time about being late. I was time poor.

The Time Poor from the book Vagabonding

“Sierra Club founder John Muir used to express amazement at the well-heeled travelers who would visit Yosemite only to rush away after a few hours of sightseeing. Muir called these folks the “time poor”- people so obsessed with their material wealth and social standing that they couldn’t spare the time to truly experience the splendor of California’s Sierra wilderness.”

120 years later, this hasn’t changed. Despite more people being fortunate enough to be able to travel, many, including myself often take only one week to see a place like Ireland or a day or two to see Rome as part of some whirlwind European trip. Staying in nice hotels, eating expensive meals but never really seeing a place. “Yep kids, look there’s big Ben Parliament.” Chevy Chase from European Family Vacation.

Many have chosen stuff and material wealth over time as a way of life. We tell ourselves we’ll take that long trip someday, spend more time with family, friends. Will take some time to get healthy again when things “slow down” a little or after we retire. Some of us fool ourselves into believing that by working harder we can buy ourselves some time, only to find out that managing more work and acquiring the finest, biggest stuff only makes us more time poor. Even the wealthiest billionaire cannot buy more time on this planet. In many cases, a high stress lifestyle will shorten your life versus lengthening it.

Bigger homes, bigger cars, bigger jobs, longer commutes only escalate time poverty. For years I was a victim of time poverty. In my 50 some odd years on this planet there are few things I wish I had picked up on a lot earlier. The good news is we’re fortunate enough in this century to fix the time poverty problem and it’s never too late to start.

So here are a few things I would’ve told my 25-year-old self.

Develop core principles and a philosophy of life. [Read more…] about The Time Poor.

Trending Minimalist. Looking for less.

07/15 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Tiny houses, bring em on. Tiny house on the beach, even better, less lawn care. Less yard work, absolutely. In fact, tiny everything, that would be perfect.

Spent several hours last weekend pulling huge weeds in 95° heat. I like to take a stoic approach to work around the house. I should be thankful to have a yard, some people have no weeds to pull. I’m fortunate to have the rain and subtropical heat that helped create these epic tree-like weeds. Some people’s yards, somewhere, are burning up, literally, droughts, forest fires. So yeah, bring those weeds on, glad to have them. If I get too hot, there is a ton of stuff to do inside as well.

Years of Work

In fact, there is easily a couple of years of work waiting for me in the house. Closets, drawers, the basement and garage to clean out. You see, I am trending minimalist. I’m defining this as “moving in the general direction towards less” less clutter, less stuff. The thinking behind minimalism is freeing your life of stuff and possessions to focus on whats important.

Maximist
[Read more…] about Trending Minimalist. Looking for less.

The Snack Artist.

11/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

A Minimalist approach to snacking.

With football season in full swing and the holidays on the way, this would be a good time to go deep on snacking.

When I used to work in an office, one of my coworkers would regularly bring in a large jar of dry roasted peanuts. He used to leave the dry roasted peanuts in a few different spots around the office.

Several times a day he would walk by and grab a handful of peanuts from the jar. He would also gesture at people, with the jar and say “nuts” ? I would usually answer yep, then, keep on walking. Other times, I would grab a handful en-route to a meeting.

I always wondered why he didn’t just leave the nuts in his office. Later, I realized my coworker had a snacking strategy. By leaving snacks in a location outside of his office, he had established a routine whereby he needed to get up and walk to get to the snack. [Read more…] about The Snack Artist.

The Frug Manifesto

08/14 by The Frug 1 Comment

My name is Brad and I write about Living Lean, Working Lean and Traveling Lean. I recently shared “finding your why by creating a personal manifesto”. In the process I created this manifesto for thefrug.com. I guess you could think of it as a giant tag cloud that includes many of the things I write about. If this looks good to you please join my email list for a lean serving of about 1 post a week.

Thanks.