John: Hey, what’s up?
John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I’m still here in Iceland.
I just got out of the gym in Iceland.
It’s called World Class Gym here and just finished my workout and as I was walking back
to the car I was thinking about how I’m using someone else’s car as I’m doing
a home exchange here in their house and just about—it’s been over 3 months now since
I left my house with a backpack essentially, right?
I’ve survived just fine.
Obviously I’m using a lot less stuff than what I would expect that I need.
I thought it would be interesting to talk a little bit about that idea.
I’ve been a minimalist for quite sometime.
It’s difficult to be a minimalist when you have a 4-year-old, when you have a young kid.
Aside from her and her stuff because she’s always getting stuff, I’ve tried to be a
minimalist and before we had my daughter I was definitely pairing down my stuff to almost—to
as small as I could.
But there’s a couple of—first of all, you don’t really need all this stuff.
This is something that’s really interesting.
You can see as I’m here traveling Europe for 3-1/2 months.
Next week I’ll be back home, in about a week from now, actually, exactly a week from
now.
Anyway, it will have been 3-1/2 months that I have been traveling with literally a backpack.
I have with me a few shirts, very durable shirts that can be worn multiple times even
without washing, merino wool clothes.
I mean they’re durable things.
One workout outfit that’s it, my laptop, some socks and underwear and not much else
like a Kindle and a couple of electrical things to plug everything in, a very, very minimal
amount of stuff and I’m able to survive with that.
It’s really not that difficult.
What it really makes me realize is that you don’t need that much stuff.
My quality of life has not reduced so much.
I mean I’ll be happy when I get back home and get to my own office and have some of
the stuff that I have there, but in reality I can live out of a backpack for 3 months.
You just might think about that yourself is what do you actually need?
What is the minimal set of things that you could live with and be happy and then you
might say, “Well, John, that’s great, sure, I can live out of a backpack but who
wants to live out of a backpack?”
I agree with you.
It’s not exactly fun living out of a backpack, but here’s the thing.
You might say, “John, well, why would I do this?
It doesn’t make sense?
Why be uncomfortable?”
Here’s the reasoning.
A strange thing happened.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it.
If you’re a minimalist or if you’ve experimented with it then you know this feeling but basically
all this stuff that you have it creates a mental burden on yourself.
Basically what I’m saying here is that the more stuff that you have, the stuff that’s
sitting in your closet that you got for Christmas that you oh someday would like to utilize
or that DVD collection that you have and those movie sets, oh, you should watch that movie
again or whatever it is, all this junk that you have or this clothes in your closet that
oh, I haven’t worn that in a while, maybe I should wear that, all that stuff it creates
this mental burden in your head and you carry this around with you.
It’s really interesting.
If you go into your house and you start getting rid of stuff that you don’t need all of
a sudden this mental burden—you feel it then, right?
This mental burden will be lifted and you’ll have less stress in your life.
It’s freeing almost.
If you have all of your stuff like my dream now being a minimalist would be to have the
minimal amount of stuff possible just to have everything that I need that just fits in a
backpack and I’m good to go.
I sort of have done that with traveling Europe but the beauty of that is that you can just
get up and go.
You can go somewhere.
You’re not attached.
You suddenly have all this freedom that you didn’t have before.
You’re not bound by your stuff.
You actually start to become a slave to your stuff the more stuff that you have.
It’s really freeing to have less stuff or to have more compact stuff to get rid of as
much as that as possible.
Another way to equate that is if you have an inbox full of email, right?
When you go to zero inbox, when you’ve got it all cleared out you have less mental burden,
you feel free or you feel better, it’s the same thing with life.
It’s the same thing with your stuff.
Anyway, I thought I would just share that with you.
It’s something that I’ve discovered along the way.
You should try it out, try to get rid of stuff.
I could talk about this all day because there’s so much to this, but I will say one other
thing about this is you don’t need all this stuff and you’re not going to miss it.
You can also buy it back.
This is one of the key things is it’s like at one point I was collecting DVDs and videogames
and then I was like, “Well, wait a minute there’s services like Netflix.
I can buy a used DVD off of Amazon for extremely cheap.
I could use GameFly or was it GameFly where you can rent videogames like get 2 a month
or something?
Anyway, there’s all these ways to get stuff if you need it again so why hold on to it?
You don’t need to archive it.
You don’t need to have every single CD and have this big hard drive terabytes full of
music that you might someday listen to.
You can just go to iTunes and purchase it as you want it or you could just basically
subscribe to Spotify ort something like that and get whatever music you want.
It’s silly to try and hold on to all this stuff and try to archive it, same with books.
Man, I got rid of all my physical books.
I’ll tell you it feels so much better to just have a Kindle.
I got rid of some books that I was like, “Oh, maybe I’ll read again.”
Well, I’ll just buy the Kindle version.
What’s it like?
10 dollars?
Come on.
Chances are you’re never going to reread something or rewatch a movie.
Anyway, that’s what I have to say about that.
Just like if you really are honest with yourself and realize that it’s—in today’s age
you can get anything that you need.
There’s eBay, there’s Amazon, there’s all kinds of ways to get stuff back so you
don’t need to hold on to stuff just in case.
If you’re in any doubt just get rid of it.
Get rid of it.
It’s freeing.
Then you can always get it back.
Anyway, that’s it for this week.
I will be back in the States next week.
I’m leaving—I’m recording this on a Monday.
I’ll be leaving on Saturday.
You’re probably watching this or listening to this on Friday.
I’ll be taking a quick stop in New York City and then back to the ground.
I have some exciting things planned for Simple Programmer.
I’ve been chomping at the bit as I’ve been traveling to get back to work and do
some cool stuff, but I’ve got a lot of awesome stuff planned so keep your eyes and ears peeled
for that and don’t forget to subscribe to—if you’re watching on YouTube subscribe to
YouTube channel.
I’ve got a bunch of back videos you can check out and if you’re listening to the
podcast definitely click that and subscribe on iTunes and you’ll get more from me every
week.
All right, take care, see you next time.