Written by Christopher Kelly
Sept. 22, 2016
[0:00:00]
Chris: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Podcast. My name is Christopher Kenny. And today, I’m joined by Joshua Fields Millburn. Hi Joshua, thank you very much for joining me today!
Joshua: Hey thanks Chris! Really appreciate it!
Chris: I’m so happy to have you. You are one-half of the minimalist and I feel it very privileged to have you because this is the guy that has done the Ted-Ex Talk so I suspect that you’re a really busy guy that might went, and I realized I probably asked you to be at my Podcast that exactly the right moment.
Joshua: You know, I think BUSY is the worst 4 letter word that we use in the English language.
Chris: I’ve gone wrong already with this interview.
Joshua: I prefer… Henry David Thro who said, it’s not enough to be busy but the question is, what are you busy about. And if I were to append that question, I would ask, what are you focused on? And for me, I spent most of my 20s, I’m 35 now. And I spent most of my 20s being very busy. And the problem with being busy just for the sake of being busy, is it becomes a status symbol.
And so we need to… the only way to improve upon it is to be busier and busier and busier. And so I found myself working literally 80 hours a week, 362 days a year. So I worked in retail. I was a director of operations for 150 retail stores back in the Mid-West in Dayton, OH.
And I realized that I was so busy all the time but I wasn’t necessarily productive. I was sort of aping the productivity right? Because I was incessantly checking email. Or my personal life, I was channel surfing when I have a free hour at night or something, I turn on the TV and of course pop my laptop on my lap and try to respond to emails and multi-tasking which I don’t know if there is anything more insidious that the idea of multi-tasking which really does degrades the… whatever you’re trying to do, it degrades the quality of both tasks or all three tasks whatever you’re trying to do.
And so I found myself in this weird place where I was ostensibly successful right? I had this supposedly impressive job title, which get you by for a really long time because when you meet someone new, Chris, what’s the first thing you ask them?
Chris: What do you do?
Joshua: What do you do? Oh my God! Life’s most dangerous question right? Because really, it’s a broad question when you think about it extensive. What do I do? I drink water. I go to concerts. I spend time with my 3-year old. But really, what we’re saying is, where do you work? What’s your job-title? How much money do you earn? So I can compare you to me on this socio-economic ladder.
Although we don’t oppose on the question that way because it would seem like a little jerk if I were to ask you that. I seem like an insane person if you just met me and ask how much money you make and where do you stand on the ladder next to me?
And so instead we say, what do you do? And the problem with that is I had an impressive job title but it wasn’t necessarily fulfilling me. There’s nothing wrong with working in 9-5 I think we all need to pay the bills. The problem with my life was I was doing something that didn’t really aligned with my values and beliefs or even my interests or desires. But it fulfilled me in a very narrow sense, I made good money.
But the problem is, there were voids in other areas of my life. And so I attempted to fill those voids. The way that pretty much any good American does with stuff right? We’re in this Western world of consumption = happiness and we’re constantly chasing this thing called happiness or at least I was.
And so, one of the ways that I tried to show my so-called success, was via the accumulation of trinkets. And of course, when that didn’t fill the void, I would then try to fill it with more stuff. And it was this endless cycle of consuming and always spending towards the next paycheck. So I got to age 27. I was the youngest director in my company’s 140-year history. And I had a massive amount of debt. I made really good money but spend even better money.
And my goodness, that equation just doesn’t work. And I also just didn’t feel… very fulfilled by my life. And then two events happen to me when I was 28 years old. My mother died and my marriage ended both in the same month. And yeah, those 2 events forced me to look around and start to question what have become my life’s focus.
And I realized I was so focused on so-called success and achievement and especially, I was focused on the accumulation of stuff. And although I was living the supposed American Dream, it wasn’t my dream. And it sort of took getting everything I thought I wanted to realize that everything I ever wanted wasn’t actually what I wanted at all.
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[0:05:06]
And so I got to that point and I’m like “Man, I need to re-prioritize.” And that’s where this thing called Minimalism entered my life. I stumbled across a block a guy named Colin Wright. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Colin.
Chris: No, no. But I’ll find that website and I’ll link to it in the show notes.
Joshua: Yeah he’s great. He runs a blog called Exile Lifestyle. Now he lives this really interesting life where he travels to a new country every 4 months and everything he owns fits in his backpack. And, well that was admirable to me. I didn’t resonate with that kind of lifestyle. I didn’t want to be a para-pathetic writer who… in fact, he doesn’t even pick where he’s going. His audience on his blog votes to what his next country is going to be.
And so, and then he writes books about his experiences. I think he’s maybe 32 years old. He was 24 years old at that time. He’s maybe 31, 32 now. And he’s written probably 35 books. And that’s how he earns a living. He’s basically a travel writer. And not really a travel writer, a travelling writer. He writes about all kinds of different things on his journeys.
And that was cool, but I didn’t aspire to live that lifestyle. I didn’t want his life, but he said he was a minimalist. And this thing called minimalism, allowed him to pursue what he is passionate about. And for him that was travel. I’m not particularly fond of excessive amount of travel.
But then I stumbled down that rabbit hole a bit farther as you do with the internet. And I found all these other minimalists living appreciate different lives. There are minimalist families like there’s a guy named Leo Balata who lives in your neck of the woods in the Northern California.
Chris: Yes I’ve actually interviewed Leo quite a long time ago now. I know Leo.
Joshua: Okay great. Yeah. He’s in our documentary now. He has 6 kids as you know, right? And he is like, but he is an over minimalist. Somehow he’s very Zen-like. I mean his website is called Zen Habits. And he had changed his life using this thing called minimalism and there are other people like Courtney Carver, Joshua Becker, and all this different flavor of minimalism.
And I realized that my life, didn’t necessarily looked like their lives but they all used this thing called minimalism to live a more deliberate life, a more intentional life. They built a life around their values as supposed to trying to conform their values towards a specific template. And what I learned is that “Wow, there are all these different recipes. I’m going to have to create my own recipe of minimalism”.
And so the twee and ingredient from each one of these individuals and some other folks here and make my own recipe for living a more intentional life. And so I started getting rid of some stuff shortly after those 2 events happened to me. And man, I realized that by letting go, it was very difficult at first because you know, the average American Household has more than 300,000 items in it. g
I was in the UK last year. We were doing a tour over there. We did 12 different cities in UK and Ireland. And they were shocked by the number because everything is much smaller in the UK as you know. And 300,000 items in your average American household. But of course, most of us aren’t hoarders. We’re not candidates for the television show. But we own a lot of stuff. We hold on to a lifetime of collective memories and I know that’s what I had done.
In fact, I was a sort of, well-organized hoarder. I did a good job. I had an ordinal system of bins and boxes and entire basement full of stuff.
Chris: What’s that store called that container store? That like that was one of the first things I noticed when I moved to San Francisco. Like, they’re everywhere. And it’s like, it’s so appealing isn’t it, to go in there and just buy all of this stuff to store your stuff.
Joshua: Yeah. Well I, you know, I think we are… I think organizing things is well-planned hoarding. It’s sort of, a systematic hoarding. And the people who actually get this really well, I’ve spoken to a group of professional organizers, it’s the National Association of Professional Organizers head us out last year to do a keynote talk. And I don’t pretend to be a professional organizer. I don’t play one on the internet. I think the easiest way to organize your stuff is to just get rid of most of it.
And then it becomes much easier to deal with right, once you’ve let go of that which is superfluous, you can focus on the things that you do have. And that’s been the weird paradox of minimalism for me. Once I started letting go of stuff and started feeling freer, happier and lighter, I also realized that by letting go of the excess stuff, I got formal value from the few things that I own. Then if I would have watered them down with like hundreds of thousands of items right?
And so now, as a minimalist, everything I own serves a purpose or brings me joy and everything else is out of the way. But the cool thing about that is as our lives change, the things that I value in my life today, they may not add value tomorrow. Right?
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[0:10:11]
And so I need to keep asking the question of myself and of my stuff. And then of all the things as well. And that question is, does this add value to my life? And as I ask that question over that course of 8 months, I was letting go of my stuff. I got rid of about 90% of my stuff. And you mentioned my Ted-Ex talk that we just did. You know, I sort of talked about in that Ted-Ex talk by letting go of 90% of my stuff, it doesn’t mean you come to my house today and you walk in and say “Oh my God, this guy is a minimalist”.
Chris: That was going to be my question. Are you some hipster, bachelor living in his 200 square foot apartment with white walls and you just sit on the floor, no furniture and stare on the floor and that’s your life now?
Joshua: Sounds like Steve Jobs. I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures of him from like the 70s or 80s where he’s like in his living-room where it’s just like a lamp and some paper. For me no, you come to my house and it’s like, you wouldn’t say “Oh my God, this guys is a minimalist”. You walk in and say “Wow, they’re pretty tidy”. And it’s because I don’t own much, but everything I do own has some sort of function. It’s my car, my clothes or my kitchenware or my furniture. Everything has a function or it’s going to bring me some sort of a static joy or static pleasure where that’s music or artwork or something like that.
But I’m still constantly asking that question, does this add value to my life? Because my life has changed considerably even since I’ve embraced minimalism. Yeah, you’ve met my partner, Kris Becker. She’s awesome, but she also has a 3-year old daughter. So I’ve become a parent by proxy in the last few years. So I have, in a way, inherited a 3-year old daughter and never anticipated the minimalism would lead me down this path toward parenthood.
But I found that to be even more important now right? Because I’m focused on what is important to me. It’s not just about getting rid of the stuff. I mean, I think anyone who’s listening to this, could go rent a dumpster, throw all your stuff in it and be utterly miserable right? You could just come home to an empty house and saw after moving all your passive flyers. And that’s not the point of simplifying your life.
The point is, getting rid of what’s in the way, so we can make room for what’s important in our lives. And for me, that was focusing on my values. Ryan and I, wrote about this in our first book. It’s a book called Minimalism: Live a meaningful life. And sort of identified the 5 values of what it meant to live a more meaningful life. And for me, that was health, relationship, creativity, growth and contribution.
And it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be perfect in any of those areas. In fact, the reason you and I met is because we were working together in some of my health issues right now. My micro-biome is a mess after taking a bunch of antibiotics for way too long.
And so… but minimalism has allowed me to re-organize those areas of my life and then reprioritize those areas of my life. Because if I get back to the very first thing that we talked about in this conversation I was very busy all the time. But I was busy just for the sake of being busy. The United Nations has a list of their 163 priorities. If you have 163 priorities that just tells me you don’t have priorities at all.
It’s kind of my life, you know. I was constantly just putting out fires. I had my 163 supposed priorities. But that word, until… it wasn’t until the 20th century that word was even used as a plural. Priority was what’s most important. Then you know, we as western cultures said “Hey, we can have priorities”. And so, well it may be true that we have more than one priority in our life but I think it’s important to focus on as few as possible and get the most out of those areas.
Chris: So how’d you know if an object is bringing value to your life? So for me, I know exactly what you’re talking about and I’m looking at the shed at the end of my garden and it’s full of boxes of all bicycle parts and I think I’ve got every bicycle part I’ve ever used since I started riding bicycle right? It’s kind of fair, to throw this… you know, it cost me $200 earlier but it’s all worn out now, yes it’s worn out. I’m like “Oh maybe I’ll need this one day”.
And so I have boxes full of stuff like that. I just can’t let go. So how would you know if an object is bringing value to your life?
Joshua: You hold on to a lot of things just in case right?
Chris: Just in case! I may need this!
Joshua: Yeah, the three most dangerous words in the English language, JUST IN CASE. And because yeah, I might need this someday and some non-existent hypothetical future that I’ve conjured up in my mind but haven’t really come to fruition. So you ask, how do I know whether or not, something adds value to my life, it’s pretty simple for me. Does it serve a purpose? Am I actually using it? And I can put some steadfast sort of draconian rules around it and if I want I could talk about some of those.
[0:15:07]
Or does it bring me joy. Like a truly static joy or pleasure in some way. And objects can certainly do that. They can augment your experience of life. My experience in happiness doesn’t depend on those things. And I certainly don’t need to give meanings to those things. In fact, I find that very troublesome.
I used to give a lot of meaning to a lot of things. This meant something about me. This was a badge or trophy that I can show off to the world. And even with my book collection for example. I used to own 2000 books.
Chris: Wow. That’s a lot of books. Did you read them all?
Joshua: Well some of them I read. And that was the thing, but of course, you came over to my house back then, I had this nice bookshelf full of a couple of thousand books. And it made me look smart. I was trying to project an image onto the world of how smart I am and because I never went to college right so I didn’t have a college degree or anything like that.
But could project this image of, look how leaning I am. I’m reading this culturally relevant things. But I wasn’t really getting pleasure from them. They didn’t actually serve much of a purpose. And so I did, overtime, I’ve implemented some rules in my life. One is… especially for this just in case items, because if you have like I did, tens of thousands of just in case items. I had a basement full of just in case items that I wasn’t actually using.
The very large basement. And it looks like I maze because like I said, I wasn’t very well organized. And I had a… I was very intimately familiar with the container store. Christopher, I had so many containers and they so well organized. But I was a maze, a system of things that to… a way to hold on to all of these just in case items.
And so, few years ago, actually about 5 years ago now, Ryan and I, it was a year after we had started the minimalist.com, we went out on our first book tour for that reference book that we wrote. And it was fun and we got down to Florida, I’m from Dayton, OH originally. And we got down to Florida and started this book tour. And we opened up our trunk, and there were 2 suitcases. There’s a garment bag, 2 laptop bags and like this carryon bag just for the 2 of us. And we’re going to be gone for 6 days.
I was the first leg of very small tour, four stops this time around. And we had all the stuffs in the trunk and we’ve kind of look at each other and “Wait a minute, we’re supposed to be THE minimalist, we’re such fraud, what are we going to do? We have this trunk full of stuff?”
But then I realized, we have packed all these just in case stuffs. I’m going to be in Florida, I better pack 2 extra pairs of swimming trunks just in case I need them. And I better pack this just in case, and that just in case. And so, throughout the rest of that tour which last up over the course of a year, we went to 33 cities or so in the United States and Canada and went on these little small legs once a month. And we resolve to never pack anymore, just in case items.
And it was an experiment, because we came with this rule we called the 20-20 rule. We assumed that anything that we got rid that we didn’t bring just in case or got rid of… it was a just in case item, we could replace for less than $20 in less than 20 minutes from where we were. And at first, you might think that sounds like a rule for really privileged people right? Because yeah, of course, you’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in place of these just in case items.
But the truth is, once we implemented that rule, we never had to use it. In fact over the course of the last 5 years between Ryan and myself, we’ve used that rule 5 times over 5 years. And it gave us permission to let go of tens of thousands of just in case items, because I knew that, A- I had the security and the certainty of knowing I could replace this if I truly needed it. But the truth is, I’m not going to need well over 99% of those items.
Now I’ll tell you, I think that rule probably works 99% of the time. I’m sure there are exceptions that proves the rule but for me it’s been a great rule to allow me to get rid of all those things that I was clinging to just in case. One of my favorite quotes is from David Foster Wallace, he said “Everything I’ve let go of has cold marks on it”.
And that just resonated with me, because we will fight to not let go of something that is actually getting in the way of living a better life or being a better version of ourselves.
Chris: And did all your friends wet their pants laughing when your daughter came into your life if you can know, let’s see how you handle this one Joshua. This should be hard. How did that go down, I mean I’ve got a 2 and a half-year old daughter myself and I know what potentially can happen so tell me about how that went down.
[0:20:04]
Joshua: Yeah sure. So the interesting thing about Ela is, you’ll learn this about kids early on, it’s an old bromine basically. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do. And you’re kids are always watching right? And so this minimalist journey or I don’t think Ela would ever tell you I’m a minimalist obviously. But she sees and then emulates whatever you do, good, bad or indifferent.
The habits that I have implemented in my life, the mannerisms, whatever I’m doing she’s going to mimic. And so I’ve learned that my actions better be congruent with my values. In fact, I really think that’s what they key to success for me is, what are my values, what’s the life that I aspire to live and how do I align my short term actions with that. g
And of course, that whole is true with having kids as well and as for the people in my life, you know, it was always funny. And even with readers that we have or audience in our podcasts or whatever, people at first will be like “Well, that’s great. That’s easy for a couple of single guys in their late 20s to become minimalists you know. It’s called being a bachelor.”
And it’s easy for me to agree with that in one sense. The reason that minimalists look so appealing to me is I saw it implemented with so many families. And so that it was actually more difficult with a family. But because it was difficult, that’s precisely why it’s so much more important because those things were distracting those families from the things they want to do to actually focus on.
Yeah for me, minimalism is the thing that gets past the things that we can focus on life’s most important things which actually aren’t things at all right? It allows us to improve those relationships and even reprioritize those relationships. Because back in my lower preceding 20s when I was so focused on the corporate world, I had good relationships but I forsook the people closest to me so I could spend, I could allocate my time toward the influential people in the corporate ladder.
So, spending time with executives and networking buddies and there’s nothing inherently wrong with these people. Many of them were fantastic people. But the price was that my marriage ended because of it. And most of my closest relationships dissipated because I hadn’t allocated the time. I hadn’t made them the true priority in my life, I always figured. Although I understand, I’m off being successful and this is just what successful people do. But maybe I wasn’t really successful at all.
Chris: Well I hate to track you back at this but I got to ask, do you have things like strollers and all of that stuff that turns out in your life when you have a baby?
Joshua: Yes absolutely. And that’s the thing, I’m constantly asking that question. What helps me was… does this add value to my life? And what helped me years ago, I did an experiment. I needed to write about it and say “Okay, we’re the minimalist now. But shortly after we start our website” so for this is about 5 years ago as well. I started this experiment when I decided I’m not going to buy anything for a year except for food and hygiene products basically. Consumables. And I’m not going to buy any material possessions for a year.
And then you’ll learn some important lessons about yourself and this impulse to buy stuff once you’ve said out to not buy anything for that period of time. And at first I’d find myself you know, the grocery store, something to buy an item. When I’m still back at the corporate world back then and so I managed a bunch of retail stores and I was quickly finding out that that didn’t align with the person I wanted to be either.
But during that time, I’m walking through the malls because many of my stores were in shopping malls. And I would get this twitch to purchase this new shiny object or whatever. And over the course of the first 4 months of that I found this profound shift in myself where I would look at an item and say “You know, I really want to consume that. I’m going to buy it”. And then I’ll remember “Oh yeah, I’m doing this experiment. I can’t buy it”.
And then over time that went from, “Oh I really like that item. Oh yeah, I can’t buy it”. And then eventually about 4 months more, this switch flipped for me from going from that place that, I really like it and I like to buy it to I really like that. That was just appreciating the thing for what it was and no really bringing it to buying.
[0:25:00]
And so I was constantly asking that question, does this add value, does this add value? Does this add value? And I asked it so many times it became less of an intellectual exercise. It became more of this emotional feeling that I had. And that is still the case today. Whenever I bring something new into my life, I’m not against consumption. I don’t think consumption is the problem. I think compulsory consumption is the problem where we might call compulsive for consumption.
But I figured except further where compulsory consumption you know, back to 2008 where we had the stock market crash where we’re of course told to go out and stimulate the economy which is such a weird thing like that’s the problem that got us there. It was all overspending and over leveraging ourselves and how we’re going to fix the problem is the problem. And it seems like we’re trying to fix a broken mirror with a hammer. And that just doesn’t work you know, you’re just smashing it even more.
And so, for me I break some new stuff into my life now but I will ask… I’ll ask that question, does it add value to my life. And if it’s a big purchase, I’ll tend to wait 30 days before I make the big purchase. And if it’s something that I have to have and my partner and, we will… we’ll talk about making the purchase. And ask, is this going to add value to my life?
But the same goes for the things I’m holding on to, just because I bring it in to my life doesn’t mean I don’t need to find a new home in the future. Because why stop getting value for it and I promise, I’m just holding on to it for the sake of someday. Then I need to maybe find a new home because someone else can get benefit from it if I let it go.
Chris: And what about gifts? Especially with babies? Do you get a lot of stuffs and feel like “Oh god, what am I going to do with this?” How do you…?
Joshua: Yes. Oh my goodness yeah. I think the best thing to do around gift giving is setting good expectations and setting them way and advanced. So we’re talking right now, it is September 2016 and it’s probably too late right now to start talking about Christmas for a lot of people.
And here’s why I said it. You want to start talking about Christmas in February. Because what you do is you want to plan these seeds of what your expectations are. You don’t want to jump and say “Look at me. I’m a minimalist, I’m going to project a lifestyle into everyone else as well.” That doesn’t work! That’s off hoarding.
And so, instead of telling people what not to get me, I tell them what I do really enjoy. Can you give me some of your time? Because the best present is presence, and being truly present with me. I would prefer that and maybe to do so, we can get an experience. We can go to a concert together or a movie. Or do something really cliché but awesome like watch the sunset.
I know with Becca and I, we’ll go out and have these little a 2-3 weekends. We live in Montana. But we’ll go out to the middle of nowhere Montana where we’ll rent a cabin for a weekend or stay in a container house a couple of months ago. Just sort out in the middle of nowhere and just spend this 2 days together being present with each other.
That to me is so much meaningful than buying someone a pair of cufflinks or necktie or whatever the newest obligatory gift is. And I found that to be true with Ela as well. Her 3rd birthday recently and you know what I got her for her birthday? Some people would say this is child in neglect but she had the best birthday of any 3-year old I’ve seen.
I got her a pineapple, and wrap it up in a bunch of wrapping paper, and I got her probably a hundred balloons. And when she woke up, I mean we have this video of her just freaking out, the excitement on her face with balloons is unbelievable. And she loved those balloons more than… I’ve gotten her a physical trinket and all these little toys that a lot of the time she could care less about and you know. And then all of a sudden, she get excited over this balloon or a piece of flaws that she pretends as a snake. And the truth is that they find the experience with their parents or with other kids or just other people in the community are a lot more meaningful, I don’t know what word 3-year olds are going to use but there’s so much joy in the experience that… here’s a $500 widget I bought you.
Chris: Yeah.
Joshua: I hope you’re happy.
Chris: Cool. It’s the same with my daughter. She just wants whatever I’m doing. She just wants my presence and if I’m working at the computer then she’s going to climb up and she’s going to want to touch the mouse and keyboard and the screen and all that. And this has nothing to do with the physical object, it’s to do with whatever I’m doing at that time. And if I were to get down and walk through the living room and start playing with the dollhouse, she wants the dollhouse right? The kids just want your presence not your things.
[0:30:00]
Joshua: Yeah and so the question then with the material things is does this augment the experience or does it get in the way or is it even neutral? And if it gets in the way or if it’s neutral, then it doesn’t really add any value. But you mentioned a stroller earlier that certainly augments the experience you know, especially when Ela was 2, you don’t want to carry her around in your back everywhere. It makes sense to have a stroller that works well.
And by the way, having nice things there’s nothing wrong with that. And by having much fewer things, you’re like… it’s having fewer but better things in my life. Better in terms of better quality. Maybe a more sustainably created or created in a way that I feel better about just as a human being you know? Make sure it’s the things that you purchase like clothes that aren’t made in a sweat shop somewhere or even the gadgets we have to… the tools that we have to have to live our everyday life.
How do I limit that footprint? And instead, allocate more of my resources towards experiences you know? I’m not against spending money obviously. It’s just no longer the primary driver for whatever I do in my life.
Chris: We did actually dodge this. This stroller bullet. I kind of figure it out early on. It was something that you want into using, it was stuck with you like automatic and so we got rid of it and I haven’t got very good at walking. And it was painful in the beginning you know. She would like to be carried and you’d be carrying this 49 pound kid in your shoulders for hours and all that. But yeah, I got bigger shoulders and then she started walking and now it’s not an issue and I’m really grateful for that that we don’t have a stroller to drag around everywhere.
Joshua: Wow. Minimalist?
Chris: Yeah, I know. I do recognize so much of what you’re talking about. It’s not just busy people you know. I think people use things to fill voids I their life and that void might not be busy right? So for me, I definitely used to buy more stuff when I was bored. So when I was working for hedge front, sat in the back or somewhere, and I don’t know what to do, and I’ll but stuff online you know?
I don’t even know like, sometimes it arrives and I don’t even know what I’ve ordered. Now it makes it so easy to buy stuffs.
Joshua: Oh my god, have you seen this… they’ve done this… and part of it to me is just truly impressed by this because if we are all… what’s the economic term… homo-economics or whatever like it would be the perfect setup by they have this buttons now what you can place around your house to like, wherever your paper towels are you can literally… you know, one click order but instead now this button where your paper towels are “Oh I’m low, I’ll just have more paper towels show up in 2 days.”
Now the amount of waste that’s produced there is also troublesome. But also again, I think it would be great if we weren’t also very impulsive creatures as well. And yeah, advertising this is really effective on us you know? There are many a people who get paid hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars a year, demographers and statisticians to aggregate our eyeballs onto their widget.
Chris: Have we taught you about minimalism online? So, there’s a couple of things I think are interesting here and the first is that your own website, the minimalist.com is completely beautiful and part of the reason it’s so beautiful was it’s so simple. The web design is so simple. And it also makes it easier to use well by the way.
Joshua: Thanks.
Chris: Is that deliberate? Did you know what you’re doing? And how do you manage to resist a website for everybody that’s listing that said that manage-1 will know this? Like you know, there’s this one more button that you need to put on right. There’s this extra widget I just have to have in order to make my website completely. And it becomes the same deal over again any now or online or buying in the physical space and before you know it, your website is this freaking head full of buttons right?
So how… is that your intention and how did you do it?
Joshua: Yeah, I believe in creative limitations. And that can mean a whole bunch of things to different people. But yeah, so when I wrote fiction… this is going to be a secured answer, sorry but I think it will get us there, it will give some context for why it’s so simple. I wrote fictions throughout my 20s. That’s the thing I was really passionate about and never really thought anything about non-fiction or writing a memoir or certainly starting a blog. I didn’t even know what a blog was honestly. I thought a blog was where 83-year old women catalog, pictures of their cats. And it turns out, those are really just the successful blogs.
But I wrote fiction throughout most of my 20s. And then when I started simplifying my life and letting go of the stuff people that work started noticing that I was… they’re just coming to me and say “You seem like stressed. You seem so calm. What is wrong with you? You seem so much freaking nicer?”
[0:35:08]
And then Ryan my best friend whom I’ve known since we were like 10 years old. We grew up in the same town and he came to me and said “What the hell are you so happy? You know, your mom died. Your marriage ended just a few months ago and you seemed happier that you were once before?”
And that really opened the door for me to talk to him about minimalism. He’s like a type-A, American guy. So he started letting go of just a lot of his stuffs and he became a minimalist very quickly. Just because he can follow a recipe and get it done pretty quickly.
In fact he did this really interesting thing. Our very first Ted-Ex talk was about this thing called the packing party. You can find that over our website, it is theminimalist.com/ted-ex. Or if you want to throw in the keynotes…
Chris: Sorry I watched it but tell us about it.
Joshua: Yeah. Yeah so he did this thing called packing party where he said “You spend 8 months of your life letting go? Like, I want to be a minimalist now, what can I do to get results immediately?” He gets really alpha-male, type-A kind of guy. And so, one of the times you really have to deal with your possessions. And anyone who’s moved knows this when you’re moving right?
When you are forced to literally box all everything that you own. Everything that you’ve accumulated over the years. You have to pack in the boxes. So Ryan pretended he was moving. So he boxed up his… he had this 2000 square foot condo with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and even had 2 living rooms. And he’s a single guy with 2 living rooms.
And so he boxed up everything, pretended like he was moving. Over the course of the next 21 days he hadn’t packed only the items he needed. And man, at the end of those 21 days, 80% of his stuff are still on boxes. And that was a sort of light bulb moment for him because he realized that all of these things were supposed to make him happy but they weren’t doing their job right? Because they weren’t making him happy. In fact, he couldn’t even remember what was in most of the boxes.
Chris: Right.
Joshua: And so he worked so hard to accumulate all these things, to live this particular lifestyle that wasn’t serving its purpose. And so he decided to let go of all… just about all of them. 99 plus percent of that stuff. He kept a few seasonal things but he let go of it. And about a month after that he came to me and he said “I’ve got a lot of value from this experiment, we’re still both in the corporate world.”
He said “You’ve written for a long time this fiction stuff, how about we start a website?” Again we didn’t know it was called a blog at that time. Just trying to share this packing party journey that I did and if you need some insights about your journey, we’ll put it up on the web. And so I said okay.
And I saw the first month, I tried to learn how to code. I didn’t know what word-press was. I didn’t know… I just tried to do like html coding. And I called Ryan up one day and I’m like “screw this man I can’t do it. This is miserable”. And then finally we figured out how to cobble a website together. And that was honestly the reason why it’s so simple.
First, it was statically simple because I couldn’t do anything that was anything more complex and it’s only changed slightly overtime. We’ve intentionally kept this limitations in place because it forces us to be creative within those limitations. And so yeah, if you go to the website it’s 500 pixels wide. So we don’t have a sidebar or we can’t put any advertisement. Yeah, I’m sure you know who Derek Severs is right?
Chris: Of course, I haven’t mentioned it earlier because there’s 2 interviews on the Team varies podcast which is unbelievable. I really enjoyed that so I might link them in the show notes and he was talking about how he bought his kids a box full of toys and discover against the minimalist things permanent to please the kid and I can’t imagine how much that pleasure that brought his kid. But sorry I was just thinking about that earlier, but go on. I know who Derek Sander is.
Joshua: Well right, he says he as a book. Which by the way I buy this book in the case which handed out. It’s called Anything You Want. It is 88 pages, you can read it in an hour. And it’s sort of a business book but it’s also… there are great life lessons there as well. If you’re an entrepreneur or business person, get the audio book or the book. You’ll be glad you did it. It’s one of the few books that I buy.
I buy pieces of particular books and hand them out to people. And that is one of them. And I don’t know him personally or anything so it’s not like an endorsement but one of the things he said in there, the stuff with me, you don’t want to put a coke machine in the monastery. And man, it perfectly encompassed exactly what I wanted to do. Like we don’t have any advertisements on our site or on our podcasts and that has cost us a lot of money because we get a lot of traffic and a lot of listeners. But it also allowed me to be my most authentic self.
[0:40:07]
And so we make up for it and I think we have far more people who turn to us for that message because we get to be who we want to be and we don’t have to conform to anyone else’s method or standards or expectations either. Also realizing that our website isn’t going to be for everyone. There are some people who were perfectly content being multi-millionaires with Lamborghinis and Ferraris and mansions and I’m not judging that. I’m not proselytizing. I don’t want to convert anyone to minimalism.
I simply want to share a recipe that worked well for me and thankfully it’s… you know, since we’ve been able to help a lot of people being on tours with our website and documentary and our books. We’ve been able to help. A lot of people with this message, it’s a recipe that’s worked for them as well or at least ingredients from the recipe have worked really well for those people.
And so our website is simple, our books are simple because my life is simple and I think quite often we confuse simple with easy and we conflate the 2. I think, I think easy is often the adverse side of the coin. Simple is curated and well-crafted in attention to details. Easy is going with the flow. And we all know what happens when you go long enough alright?
I live out here in Montana and we go floating the river every summer. You keep going to the flow too long, you end up at the rapids. And then you’re not prepared for that. You’re in for a world of hurt. And so I avoid the easy life and I certainly don’t have a perfect life but it’s definitely a simple one.
Chris: What do you think about the internet on a larger scale or the web perhaps I would say? You know, there’s so many tools and gadgets and social media platforms and notifications and you know, every time you go to a website you get covered over the head with this pop-up box that wants you to sign up for the newsletter.
And then the newsletter starts coming and then you know, all these emails to worry about and I’m absolutely part of this problem because it becomes the front page of my website and we’ll get clobbered over the head with one of these boxes. What do you think about these things? Are they like anti-minimalist? Are they contributing to the problem?
Joshua: Yeah, I think tools are only as good or as bad as the person who’s using them. I think you can take a chainsaw for example and you can cut down the rotting tree that’s in your backyard and that will prevent it from maybe impaling your neighbor’s house right? Or you could use that chainsaw to hurt your neighbor right, to chop him out to tiny little pieces.
And it’s all about how we use those tools. And the same goes for technology. It’s basically… it’s a tool right? If we use Twitter or Instagram or website to our natural lives, and to enrich the lives of other out obviously. We can do that, we can communicate and use it as a communication tool that allows this, and enable me to communicate in ways we never could have before. And I think that’s outstanding.
Or we can also get stuck in that social media Bermuda triangle right? I found myself of doing this all the time. Craning from Facebook to Instagram to YouTube. YouTube is my crack. I mean, I just get lost in the meaningless globe of my screen and…
Chris: The suggest hover is so good now. It makes the multitasking thing a real problem. Like I’ll sit watching a presentation and I just can’t keep my eyes off the YouTube suggest thing you know, like it’s making it impossible to watch anything and it’s so good.
Joshua: Yeah, I totally agree and so I think it’s the same with the website or with our smartphones right? You can use that to photograph a gorgeous landscape or to message the people you love or to map out directions today. Which is very useful for me. I mean, I think back to times when I don’t know how to use the road maps and how we ever got by without GPS.
Chris: Well you have to use your brain to like, think of stuffs. And navigate without the need of a voice.
Joshua: Absolutely, yeah. And it’s funny because I’ve spent a good part of a year down in St. Petersburg, FL and it was right before GPS was usable. We were still using, sort of, a map quest. To map things out turning out map directions but I know that city like that back of my hand because I was forced to think about where I’m going. And you know, it’s funny, if I go to Los Angeles now, or I go to San Francisco bay, it’s so easy to get around there because I have the GPS and Uber and whatever. And those are great tools.
The question is how… am I using this toll effectively or am I using that same device to just twitch right, to incessantly check my emails. And thumb through and endless stream of status updates and the post of active selfies and basically just partaking in any of these non-value adding activities. While I’m also ignoring the entire world of what’s going on around me. I’m so busy.
[0:45:39]
Chris: I always think about that. Like it makes you so guilty that this moment you have with you daughter is like… I mean it’s vanishingly small right? In 10 years’ time, she’s going to be growing up and you’ll just spend 13 seconds of it looking at Instagram. What kind of harmless bastards are you?
Joshua: Right I mean well the founder of Instagram called it visual cracks so I mean it’s pretty clear what the intentions are very aggregating our eyeballs to their platform to monetize that. And again, there’s nothing wrong with money. I don’t want to seem like… I’m not an acidic or a lot, I find value in these things. I don’t think the technology is the problem. And I don’t think that money is the problem. I think we’re the problem in a way. And the only way we can fix that is to fix ourselves.
Chris: Talk to me about the documentaries. I watched the documentaries recently with my wife. And we’ve really, really enjoyed it. In fact it’s now a card on our boards. So people who listens to our podcasts regularly will know that we use this can-ban board project to manage our clients’ health plan I supposed you could call it. And we have this standard deck of cards that we play on. And it helps create some consistency between plans you know?
And I watch the documentary, it became one of the cards on the board. And I played it a few times. I always feel a little bit guilty like I’m accusing a person of having a cluttered life. But I don’t think that’s true. No we, really, really genuinely enjoy the documentary and it’s beautiful to look at. The photography is amazing, the music score is phenomenal. In the past, I’ve had some problems with supplement called Prognelanone over converting to hormone called Progesterone.
And when that happens to a greater extent men tend to find it a little bit weepy or like everything. I’ve read a children’s book and I become a little bit weepy and Progesterone has that kind of effect on both men and women I think when I watched your movie, I think I needed to get my Progesterone levels checked because I was definitely gag a little bit. Lump in the throat there.
So it’s a fantastic piece of work and I really, really enjoyed it and it’s funny, you can for me… like I watched that video and I get it straight away. And I was really motivated to do something. In a way that I would from reading a book. So talk about the documentary and what motivated you to create it.
Joshua: Well thank you. You articulate it exactly what we want to communicate there. Ryan and I have been doing this whole minimalist thing for 6 years now and we spent the last 3 years working on the documentary. And we set off to answer questions for other people. How might your life be better with less? And I think that question is so important because it identifies the purpose of minimalists.
Not just the how-to side. I mean I think we all know intrinsically how to deciliter our… you’ll never see me and Ryan right above the 67 ways to clean out your kitchen pantries. Maybe because it’s fairly banal and stupid. But I have found that the “WHY” is different for different people. g
For me, it’s to start with the financial side of things. I made a really good money in the corporate world but spent even better money. And so I had 6 figures worth of debt. And I was constantly chasing this lifestyle so I need to re-control my finances. Then I started uncovering these other benefits too. I regain control of my time and then my relationships and I started regaining control of my health.
You know I used to talk about this, I used to weigh 80lbs more that I weigh now. And I’m not really a thin guy now and I have gotten the vast majority of my health in order at this point but it has been quite the struggle, a bigger struggle of my life is really focus on the things on you know, my diet is pristine and really reclaiming that health and re-allocating time for this. That was a huge benefit for me. It was… I mean I was going down a path.
I had a co-worker who had his first heart-attack at age 30 and I found all these guys who I aspire to be like back then. The closer I got climbing that corporate ladder, I didn’t want to be like them. They were kind of miserable. And we always tell the story like, I’ll be different.
[0:50:11]
But if I follow the same exact recipe, I’m going to get the same outcome. And I realized that as I got closer to them. So basically, how your life might be better with less, helps you identify what the benefits are for you and it may not be finances, it may not be more time to have with your family or could be experiences or travel or could be creativity or working on the passion project or just having more time with your hobbies or contributing beyond yourself in a meaningful way and growing as an individual.
So there are all different once you identify with that purposes then the how-to side becomes a whole lot easier. And so I think that that’s what you’re saying there and you get it because you’re more inspired by that than you are the book that tells you how to clean up your house and which organizing bins to purchase.
And don’t get me wrong, sometimes the how-to tips and tactics can be helpful. But if you don’t know the why-to, if you don’t know the purpose of what you’re doing, you don’t have the leverage to keep going long term I don’t think.
And so we set off to answer that question but for the last 6 years it’s just been the Josh and Ryan show, I was going to write books, I want to be an author. That’s one of the things I want to do and it started out with the fiction. I published my first novel and then I’m like “okay, I want to write non-fiction books now and maybe communicate in that way and also the blog.”
And so I became vehicle agnostic over the years because I learned something. And so… I don’t know if you know the stat but 55% of adult males in United States don’t read even one book in a year. And so instantly, it means half the population has no shot of being reached at all with writing a book.
And so, I’ve become vehicle agnostic over the years. We started a podcast last year and we’ve done a blog within a book, we used social media to communicate with people. Finding different ways to add value and we wanted to get this documentary out there and to the world. So we’ve partnered up with this amazing director. His name is Matt Guiavella.
We’ve actually worked with him on a small project, a book trailer for our 2nd book called- Everything that Remains. I was just really impressed by him. So we stayed in touch and we decided to go out and not just be the Josh and Ryan show. I mean we’re the sort of the true line of the documentary. But we wanted to show people how minimalism was possible.
So we went out and interviewed all these different minimalists from all different walks of life. Minimalists, architects, and tiny-house enthusiasts.
Chris: The tiny houses. That’s so cool. You know what I mean?
Joshua: Yeah they’re really interesting. That’s not something that’s from me necessarily. I find that they are aspiring and they’re pretty awesome. But I like having more spaces in that. And even if it’s empty space, there’s something about space that I enjoy. I don’t have a huge house or anything like that but we live in a fairly small home. It’s probably about 900 or 1000 square feet.
But the one at the tiny house people, has something like 183 square foot. And saying, even like there’s a guy named Grant Hill in there who has a 420 square foot apartment who you recall saying because it sleeps I think 7 people and you could have dinner for up to 12 people because it converts just like a transformer apartment. You’re really getting the functionality of a 2000 square foot home inside a 400 square feet because every inch of it is deliberately planned. And I really liked that especially if you’re sharing more resources in a city. It makes a whole lot of sense.
So we basically went out and we got this whole lot of perspectives, minimalist entrepreneurs and minimalist musicians and artists and writers and all of these folks. But also we wanted to add the data behind us. So we went out there and we got neuroscientist and neuropsychologists and journalists, economic professors and trying to provide a balanced perspective of minimalism, realizing that we’re biased.
I mean obviously, I think that minimalism has a better life for me but I don’t know whether or not it’s a better life for you. I want to present these facts for you about the $22 billion storage industry and the levels of discontent in our society. And provide you with one potential or several potential solutions all around these concepts of living a simpler life.
And so that’s what we set off to do. You’ve mentioned music. One of my favorite bands is a fairly obscured band from Utah called Parlor Hawk. And their producer is a guy named Nate Piper and the lead singer from that band is a guy named Andrew Clifford Carpenter. And he and Nate, they formed a band just for this film because I beg them for about 6 months.
[0:55:13]
Chris: Alright.
Joshua: So please, please make the music for it. Because I knew that would make it so much meaningful and yeah the first time that I saw the finished product that we had there with the music in it. I mean it just changed everything. I mean I felt that same swelling up emotion. Even I didn’t see the film a dozen of times before that obviously. But when you add the music to it, it adds other layer of beauty.
And so they put this band together to make a soundtrack film and they didn’t outstand the job. So we’re really careful about every aspect of this project and I’ll tell you, I think the most accessible thing we’ve ever done other than maybe the 2 Ted-Ex talks we did. But it makes minimalism accessible. It shows you that for me, minimalism isn’t this radical lifestyle.
Here, minimalism you think radical, but it’s really a practical. It’s the most practical lifestyle from many people.
Chris: minimalistfilm.com. I will of course link to that in the show notes so that people will at least watch the trailer. Even the trailer is absolutely incredible. And it’s available to buy on Vimeo right now.
Joshua: Yeah it’s uh- so yeah minimalismfilm.com and you’ll also be able to get it starting September 30th on iTunes and Amazon. You can preorder on those platforms now. We get a little exclusive deal with Vimeo. We also had theaters for about 3 months over the summer. I went out and brought it into a bunch of cities and we did a live version of our podcast out there. But it’s playing over about 400 cities in United States, Canada, UK and Australia.
And now it’s available worldwide. We have people on 110 countries who have watched the film now. And I’m just really grateful the messages are getting out there to all different types of people and they’re sharing it and if you find some value in it, then I’m really grateful.
Chris: I know that you said that we have to understand why before we get into the how. But if you could give me just one thing that I could start doing right. So I’ve already given you some clues. I’ve got sheds full of old bicycle parts and kite boarding equipment I haven’t used for 10 years. What would you say? Would you give me some practical, I mean some obvious things but can you give me, some like practical and general advice that can be used to get started with minimalism?
Joshua: Yeah let’s do 3 of them real quick. So first off, the 20-20 role which I already mentioned. If you’re holding on to anything just in case, find one just in case item “can I replace this for less than $20 in less than 20 minutes?” And then the next rule, will help you get rid of that as well. Something I call the 90-90 rule. “Have I used this in the last 90 days? And am I going to use this in the next 90?” So either one of those. And if the answer is no to both, then give yourself permission to let go.
And the 3rd thing is I think the cluttering is kind of boring. And so Ryan and I found a way to make it a little bit more fun with something we called a 30-day minimalism games. They don’t have to go out and do a packing party. Yeah I think that’s a little bit extreme for some people. Although we have a lot of readers who have done the packing party and I think it’s great if you want to just jump in head first.
But 30-day minimalism game lets you get the momentum you need to start letting go. Here’s how it works, because the cluttering is boring, you partner up with someone and jacks some friendly competition to make it fun. You start off at the beginning of the month. So on day 1, you each get rid of one item. Day 2, two items. Day 3, three items. So it starts off really easy, it gives you that momentum that you need.
But it gets more difficult by the middle of the month right? Because on the 15th day of the month, you’re getting rid of 15 items. In 20th day of the month, 20 items. So forth and so on. Whoever goes the longest throughout the month wins. You can bet whatever you want. The first time I did it, Ryan and I bet a dollar. And if you both make it to the end of the month, you both one because you both gotten rid of about 500 items. So it’s a pretty good start.
Chris: Can I get rid of other people’s items? Can I get rid of my daughter’s stuff or Julie’s stuff? Does that count?
Joshua: It’s so much easier to get rid of other people’s stuff right? I remember when Ryan went to that packing party, oh my goodness, I went to his house. He was finally getting rid of the stuff. And I just had this trash bag. I was sweeping items into it. He said “Wait I’m going to need. Wait- wait- come on!” And so, yeah if you really want to inject some fun in the game, maybe let the other person get rid of your stuff and you get rid of their stuff but although you may need a marriage counselor and the process.
So no, I wouldn’t recommend that. Get rid of your stuff. And play along with friends, family-member, co-worker, I think you’ll find a lot of value and you can find there are tens of thousands of people who finally played this game, you can see photos and stuffs online. Just go to theminimalist.com/game.
[1:00:06]
Chris: Okay.
Joshua: And you can find the hashtags there, it’s… min’s game. MINS games. And there’s so many people who posts the photos and the stuff they’re letting go off. It’s really inspiring because having the other person with you kind of helps hold you accountable as well.
Chris: I think that’s really important. I think that’s the point of the matter now. It’s not like that I don’t know I don’t need that stuff. And I’m not really hoarding it. I just don’t want to be bothered with getting rid of it you know? Like it sounds like a terrible way to spend my free time going through a really hot-shed and pulling out old puffy kites and some stuffs. That sounds terrible. So yeah I definitely need something to make it more fun.
Joshua: Yeah well one of the things that you can do, I just thought about… my friend Collin who I mentioned earlier, he had a yard-sale room before he was getting ready to move and you can have a yard-sale shed or anyone else’s listing couch. And what he did was, it wasn’t an actual yard sale, he invited his friends over. “So if there’s anything in here and that you can truly get value from, take it out, and I don’t want to see it leave. I just want you to take it, and go.” And he got rid of so many items and found those things a new home where people actually did benefit from them.
Chris: Well Joshua, this has been brilliant. Thank you very much for your time. I really, really appreciate you.
Joshua: Oh Cristopher you’re awesome. Thanks so much man, I appreciate it.
Chris: Thank you.
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