“Minimalism is not a radical lifestyle: it is simply a way to bring balance to our lives.”
Inside Minimalism
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Letting Go of Fake Needs
Examining our needs and asking ourselves why they are so important
By Leo Babauta
Our lives are filled with things we need to do. Until we look a little more closely at those needs.
Think about what needs you might have: the need to check your email every 15 minutes, or empty your inbox, or read all your blogs, or keep something perfectly neat, or dress to work in the latest fashions. The need to constantly badger your kids about things, or control your co-workers, or meet with everyone who wants a meeting, or be wealthier and wealthier, or own a nice car.
Where do these types of needs come from? They’re completely made up.
Sometimes the needs are created by society: the industry you’re in requires you to work until 9 pm or dress in impeccable suits. Your neighborhood has certain standards and if you don’t have an impeccable lawn and two BMWs in the driveway, you’ll be judged. If you don’t have the latest iPhone, you won’t have your geek cred or status symbol, and you’ll be jealous of those who do.
Sometimes the needs are made up by ourselves: we feel the urge to check our emails or RSS feeds or news websites or text messages or Twitter accounts constantly, even though there is no negative societal or work consequences if we don’t keep up with them. We want a perfectly made up bed even if no one else cares. We want to create a list of goals in life or for the year and achieve every one of them, even if nothing bad will happen if we don’t achieve most of them.
Either of these types of made-up needs can be eliminated. All it takes is the willingness to let go.
Examine one of your made-up needs, and ask yourself why it’s such an important need. Ask what would happen if you dropped them. What good would it do? Would you have more free time and more space to concentrate and create, or less stress and fewer things to check off each day? What bad things would happen—or might happen? And how likely is it that these things would happen? And how could you counter-act them?
These needs are created by fears, and the more honest we are about these fears, the better. Face the fears, and give yourself a little trial period—allow yourself to let go of the need, but just for an hour, or a day. Just for a week. If nothing bad happens, extend the trial, and slowly in this manner you’ll find that the need wasn’t a need at all.
It can feel good to let go, and by letting go, you are freeing yourself.
Write for Yourself
Getting past the distractions, excuses, and self-doubt
By Deborah Deacon
I love to write. As a kid, I would wake up from a vivid dream and start writing a story about it. In high school, I wrote moody poems about feeling ignored by my siblings—classic middle child behavior. In college, I took classes and wrote essays on things that excited me. I quickly forgot everything I wrote on the Canterbury Tales and Jack the Ripper, but I always felt proud of myself for writing.
I still write a lot. I write for work and I volunteer my writing to a few organizations too. But I don’t often write just for the sake of it; just for myself.
Writing is really hard. When I think about other people seeing my personal writing, I feel anxious. It’s not easy to put your heart into something and send it out in the world to be judged. I think it’s the same with any creative process; it feels personal and vulnerable and nerve-wracking.
To make matters worse, my creative impulses to write are often buried under the pressure of self-promotion. I love to write but it’s too daunting to think about how to “brand” myself as a writer. “Do I have to start a blog? What if no one follows it? What if it's awful?” Pressure, self-doubt, fear, and endless distractions steadily wear away at the creative impulses I have, and I usually decide to try again another day.
Today is different—I am writing! It’s evening here, and I’ve got the “dark mode” of my writing platform switched on. I have 3 plain-text fonts to pick from, a word count (278 so far), and nothing else. It’s peaceful, clean, and free from distractions. I’ve started a few writing projects, just for myself, and I’m excited about them.
The platform I’m using is called Write.as. Founded by Matt Baer in 2015, this text-editor is essentially a place to be creative, away from ads, social media, and other distractions. It’s a minimalist writing and publishing platform that is primarily focused on privacy and personal expression.
Write.as helps you publish to the world, but it doesn’t push you to promote yourself to a target audience. There are no likes or comments or social features. Blogs are unlisted by default so people will only be able to read your writing if you share a link to it or choose to make it more public. Even better, you can write anonymously. It’s free to get started, although there are some helpful apps and features available that you may want to invest in.
The Write.as platform is helping me get past a lot of my barriers when it comes to writing. Its clean, minimalist design puts me in a good headspace to write and keeps me focused. The platform also puts me at ease when it comes to my online privacy. So much of our personal information and online activity can be collected and used in sly or downright nefarious ways. But Write.as doesn’t watch or track me or show me ads. When I write anonymously, my real name doesn’t show up on the article like it would on social media. In other words, I can write whatever I want because I’m the only person who will see it—unless I explicitly choose to share it.
Finally, Write.as removes the stress I feel about branding myself as a writer or having my work judged by others. Without that pressure of a target audience, I feel immediately more creative and at ease. I’m not worried about what anyone else will think of my work; I’m enjoying writing for writing’s sake.
This is a great tool for anyone who loves to write, but it’s perfect for those of us who keep finding reasons not to. I’m now finding that the pressure and distractions are not the problems they once were, and I’m rediscovering how wonderful it feels to express myself through writing. I haven’t written any new vivid-dream-stories or moody poems yet, but I feel the same sense of excitement and comfort with writing that I did when I was younger. And it’s all because I’m finally able to focus on the one person I really want to write for: myself.
A Little More of Less
A few other articles we think you might enjoy…
→ The Life-Enriching Opportunity of a Stop-Doing List by Joshua Becker
→ The 7-7-7 Exercise by Joshua Hook
→ Considering the Audience by Joshua Fields Millburn
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