Transcription
After five years of minimalism, these are 50 of my top lessons and hacks for a simple, clutter-free life. You definitely don't need to do them all, but just pick a few and implement them into your life.
The two-day rule: I originally learned this from somebody on Matt V's podcast, I think, like five years ago. The idea is to simply never skip two days in a row. I've kind of moved it to three days in a row because I only go to the gym three days a week, and like the math, anyways. But it's pretty much if you're trying to start a new habit, you're trying to be consistent, because that's where most growth comes from. Don't miss two days in a row. If you're trying to go to the gym five days a week, it's okay to miss one day. Just don't let that one day turn into two days, then three days, then four days, then five days. So just make sure that you don't miss twice. For me, I turn it into the three-day rule. If I go to the gym Monday, it's okay if I don't go again until like Thursday or whatever. It's okay to be a little bit flexible, but just don't let whatever habit you're trying to start, that could improve your life, fail because you miss multiple days in a row. Just set a limit where you're never going to miss more than two days or more than three days, and that's how you keep habits going for a long time.
The nightly reset: I hate this light, dude. This is one of my favorite habits of all time. Every night before you go to bed, get rid of all the dishes that are in the sink. Put them in the dishwasher, wash them, do whatever. If there's stuff on the counter, put stuff on the counter away. If there's stuff on the floor, put the stuff on the floor away. Literally taking five minutes and resetting your house, even if it's not the best cleaning job, it's just basic picking stuff up. It makes such a difference for the next morning and just not letting things get out of hand. We have two small kids now, so things can get crazy really fast. Just five-minute cleanups before bed every night, never letting the house be a complete wreck before you go to bed, really helps it not get out of hand. Then you start the day stress-free. It's like this whole thing, and you're cleaning first thing in the morning. It makes a really big difference.
The house on fire rule: Most people only use about 20% of their possessions 80% of the time. There have been tons of studies on this. It applies to almost everything in life, including your clothes, the time you spend at work that actually leads to making money. There are so many different ways that this 20% matters, but especially in minimalism. When you're going through your house, you're going to find that 20% of the things scattered throughout your house you use most of the time. If you just get rid of that 80%, or at least 50% of the 80%, you're probably not even going to notice that most of that stuff is gone. So especially when I was starting my journey, I was honestly looking for that 80% that I just hardly ever used and got rid of most of that stuff. That way, almost everything that I have I use, and it provides some type of service or value, or saves me time, or makes me happy, or makes my life easier. The rest of the stuff is just stuff. I let it go.
Use the 2020 rule: This pretty much just states that if you can replace something for under $20 in under 20 minutes, just let it go. Obviously, you don't want to be wasteful with that, but if you've got 27 mugs and you haven't used most of them in like six months or a year, but every once in a while you have 27 people come over and you need every one of those mugs, it's okay. Just let it go. It makes a lot of decisions a lot easier when you're decluttering to just let it go. I don't even know 27 people. I literally don't think I know 27 people.
The box: This is one of my favorite things ever. I've been doing it for years. I just have a box right here pretty much constantly. As we go through our house and we find something that applies to some of these other rules and we want to get rid of it, we want it out of our house, but we're not decluttering right now, it just goes into the box. Then once a month, once every couple of weeks, whatever it is, take the box, donate the box, and restart the cycle. That keeps a constant flow of stuff we don't use going out of our house and keeps our house from getting cluttered and us having just a bunch of crap around that we don't use.
Invest differently: This is the worst frame shot I've ever had in my life. We're going to go with it. Since getting into minimalism and really trying to focus and find the things that actually matter, which is not very much, we've stopped investing in stuff, especially for birthdays, Christmas, all that type of things. Instead, we've started investing in freedom and also experiences. We take our money instead of spending it on stuff. We try to buy ourselves freedom by investing that money or buying ourselves memories and experiences, like traveling. A lot of times, you can do that really cheaply. You don't need to spend a lot to have that, or going to the park, or going for a walk, or doing things outside instead of going shopping or spending money on stuff. A lot of times, the free option or the cheap option or the experience option is almost always going to beat out buying somebody clothes. We do that with Christmas too. Instead of buying people stuff, we generally try to buy an experience where we'll either all go do something together or we'll give them a gift card to actually do something, as opposed to just random crap that they're going to get rid of in a couple of months.
Have a home rule: This one is actually pretty simple. That's simply stating that everything in your house should have a home. Now, that sounds really easy, except that a lot of times there's stuff that doesn't have a home, and it just ends up sitting around. There are actually two boxes we have right now where we're like, "I don't know what to do with this stuff, but we need to store it." I don't know what to do with it, but I'm going to figure it out because I have this rule in my house that everything has to have a home. The coffee cup has a home where it goes so that it doesn't get left on the counter or on bookshelves. My keys, my wallet, the kids' toys, everything has a place where it belongs so that stuff just doesn't get left around. A lot of times, I noticed that I was just leaving crap around because I didn't know what to do with it. If that's you, take some time to actually make a home for everything that you own, and things will just magically stop getting left around because you can put them back.
Work smarter, not harder: When I started actually automating as many things in my life as possible and learning how to use tools to save me time, I started saving an insane amount of time. I always used to think that working harder would solve all my problems. That's totally not true. It turns out about 20% of the efforts lead to about 80% of the results. The 80/20 rule again, right there, and it's very true. There are also a ton of things that just completely waste our time. So I automated all my bills, I automated as many things with work as I possibly could, and I learned how to use tools like AI as they come out. I try to stay on top of them because a lot of them can save you an insane amount of time with your work. Especially if you do work for yourself or have some type of business, the important thing is that stuff gets done, not that it gets done in this perfect ABCD exg. As long as we get to G, it doesn't matter how you got there. That's been something I'm focusing on: finding ways to save as much time as possible on things that just don't matter at all. I don't want to have to think about it. I don't want to have to do it. I'm not just going to do it because this is the way I've always done it.
Choices and trade-offs: There is one thing that really stuck with me for a long time, and that was that every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. If you say yes to eating a banana, you could be saying no to eating peanut butter. But sometimes we just grab whatever is in front of us; we just do what is presented to us. I've been really consciously working on being very selective with what I say yes to because I know that if I say yes to going to a conference, I'm saying no to being home with my family. That's a huge decision. It's not just the decision that you see; it's the opportunities that you're missing elsewhere. So being very careful with every decision that you make, making sure that it aligns with you and your goals, is important. Because not only are you saying yes to something, you're saying no to something else. Whether it's in diet, whether it's in work, whether it's how you spend your time, you're saying yes to scrolling on your phone, you're saying no to interacting with the people around you. That's a huge decision. I'm trying to really make sure that I'm living with intentionality and not just letting things happen to me.
That's why sometimes I become unavailable. If you don't do this, you definitely should. It's either just blocking certain times or even certain days where you are just unavailable. There are times throughout the day where my phone just does not work. It goes on airplane mode, I put it on do not disturb, I put it in a cookie jar, I do whatever. Or even with my family, sometimes I need to be unavailable for two hours so that I can get four hours' worth of work done in two hours. I will actually go somewhere; I'll go to my office and work there because I know that I can be super productive there and nobody's going to bother me. If you can have times of being unavailable where you're off your phone, you're not getting interrupted by people, and you can get meaningful work done, whether that meaningful work is exercise, whether it's just thinking and letting your mind declutter, whether it's getting something done, scheduling times to become unavailable is life-changing.
One thing: multitasking can reduce productivity by up to 40%. This doesn't only apply to trying to do multiple things at once, but also having multiple goals that you're trying to do at the same time. Generally, I've realized that in order to make real progress, you need to have a lack of balance. Instead of trying to accomplish a goal in fitness, a goal in relationships, a goal in business, a goal in lifestyle, a goal in my hobbies, I will purposely find the one goal that will make all of the other ones a little bit better and put all of my energy on that, or most of my energy on that. After I hit that goal, I can shift to the next one. That's where I've found I've actually made progress instead of just treading water in a bunch of different things. You need to actually become slightly unbalanced in order to make real progress, and that's just finding the one thing that is more important and will make everything else better. There is also a book called "The One Thing." I highly recommend it; it literally changed my life.
Avoid decision fatigue: We make decisions from the second we wake up to the second we go to bed, and that's why I have set up my life to make as few decisions as humanly possible. I don't like to make them. When I do make them, I want to make them important decisions. So like before bed, I lay out my clothes from the night before. Even when I'm picking the clothes I wear, I wear all black all the time, and I don't have to worry about it. I just close my eyes, pick something, and that's what I'm going to wear. That's like one less decision I have to make for the rest of my life. If you can find one decision that will make a thousand decisions, it's like a thousand decisions less that you have to make. If you can do that with a bunch of things by kind of routining your life and setting things up that way, you can avoid decision fatigue, which actually makes the quality of your decisions worse. That way, the things that are important will have the mental energy to spend on those things that are important. You're not just exhausted by making 500 decisions before you even go to work, like, "Oh, should I do this today? Should I do that?" Everything for me is as routine as possible, and I just like the simplicity of having very routined things that make me feel better.
Sunk cost bias: I've noticed this in my own life. Whenever I am decluttering something, or even sometimes when I'm doing an activity, it's because I already invested time or money into that thing. It's not actually because I want to do that thing, or even, you know, it's not because I actually like the clothes. It's because I spent money on it, so I feel this need to keep it. I feel this need to use it. But you've got to ask yourself better questions: Does this thing actually add value to my life? Do I actually enjoy this thing? Would I spend money again in order to buy this thing, or do I just have it because I have it and I spent money on it in the past? This can be very freeing to do. Just because you spent money on it, or just because you bought it, the money's already gone. That's already happened. What you do afterwards can save you an insane amount of mental space or just time or energy back in your life.
Win stacking: This is the idea of voting for the person that you want to become by stacking wins and kind of proving to yourself that you are that person. I became somebody who is healthy and into fitness and goes to the gym by taking a certain time out of my life. For me, it was like multiple months of consistently going to the gym almost every day, but at least five times a week at the beginning. Every time I went and did that small thing of just stepping through the door, I worked out for like half an hour and then I left. I was voting to become a healthy person. I was voting to become a fit person. Eventually, after a couple of months, I looked back and I was like, "Oh, okay, I am that person that I was voting for." Every time I'm just putting in that effort, I'm putting in that little win to continually stack on top of each other, and then that just becomes an identity for yourself. So whether it's the gym, whether it's eating correctly, whether it's someone who keeps a clean home, just doing small things consistently can actually change who you are as a person. It can make you a better person because of the track record of the things that you've done.
Exploration: Why do I still have these? I originally heard this from the book "Essentialism," which is another amazing book. He was talking about trying things to find what you are passionate about. Looking back over my life, I have tried so many different things, and it was because of that exploration that a lot of good things happened in my life. I tried a bunch of businesses before I found one that I was good at and enjoyed. YouTube, I tried a bunch of clothes before I found out that I just like wearing all black in a certain style. Exploration and looking at life as exploring and constantly being open to trying new things and finding better ways to do stuff, and not just sticking with what you've done in the past, is a great way to add excitement to life. It also helps you find new things that you might like or enjoy or that might make your life easier or better in some way, just by having an open mind and being open to new ideas and trying new things.
Perform the great reset: The great reset, shout out Ryan. For me, every couple of months, I have to reset a bunch of areas in my life because I suck as a minimalist just in general. Just keeping my life the way I want it to be, I'm not very good at that. Sometimes I need to reset things. I'll take a month and do a no-spend month. We generally do that a couple of times a year, but we will spend on nothing but absolute necessities: no clothes, no anything online, nothing but food, electricity, and all that type of stuff, which also saves you money. There you go. But sometimes I also need to take a break from technology. Sometimes I need to take a break from activities that I'm doing, from working too much. I need to reset an entire room or my entire house. I actually just came off doing that for like a month, and I even kind of documented some of the process and wrote down some of the things that I did. I made a 30-day reset challenge that you guys can do if you want to follow along the process and reset your life and get it back the way you want it. Totally free; I'll leave the link down below. If you haven't reset a bunch of areas in your life recently, not only is it fun to do, but you just feel so much lighter afterward.
I feel like we have this fear of being alone, of not listening to music or a podcast or texting with a friend, that we're missing out on something. But once you start to actually embrace time alone, maybe not too much and being lonely, but actually being okay with quiet time, with alone time, when I've started doing this, it's actually allowed my brain to kind of decompress and released a lot of stress in my life, which leads into limiting social media. If you're lonely or anxious, limiting social media can be an absolute game changer. There’s even some research about this. If I ever find that I'm on socials too much, I try to do a little bit of a reset with that as well, and I have never regretted it. If you get rid of Instagram for a week, you will not miss anything. But if it's not social media and it's just screens in general, try scheduling screen time. Whether that's only allowing your TV to be on at a certain time of the day or not allowing phones in certain rooms or on at certain times, this can boost your productivity and overall happiness without really taking much work.
Engage in high-quality leisure activities: I recently gave up video games and pretty much all TV, and I've replaced that time with more exercise, working out, hanging out with friends, building things. Although sometimes it's harder to actually start those things, I always feel better than I would have if I just sat for an hour on the couch doing absolutely nothing. It's still fine to do that occasionally, but if that's a daily habit where you're spending three hours a day on the couch, try replacing that with learning a new language or guitar or building something. It's so much more fun.
Manage your attention, not just your time: The 90% rule. This rule pretty much changed my life. It's kind of like the most extreme version of the 80/20 rule. I think I heard this from "Essentialism," and it's pretty much if something is not a 90 or above, I'm not going to say yes to it. If it's not a heck yes, then it's a no. Whether it's a commitment I'm going to do, clothes I'm going to buy, even the food, pretty much anything I can apply this to. If it's not a 90 or above, I'm going to get rid of it or I'm not going to bring it into my life.
Everything popular is wrong: I generally just assume that if I see a bunch of ads for something or it's a trend to buy something, or even things like Black Friday, if everybody's going out shopping, whatever most people are doing, I don't want to do. Most Americans, especially, are overweight, they're depressed, they're lonely, they have health issues, they have no money. If you follow the path that everybody else is going, eventually that will probably be you. So I just kind of assume that whatever everybody else is doing is probably not the best thing to do for me in my life. I'm just going to assume it's not and look for a different path. Sometimes there's not one there, but a lot of times there is one that's actually easier.
Wide is the gate: Upgradelessness. We're in this era right now where everybody is constantly upgrading. When a new phone comes out, they get the new phone just because it's a newer phone than the older phone that's now like a year and a half old but works totally fine. Even though that same money could reduce their stress or buy them some freedom, for me, if something is not broken and actually worn out, I will not upgrade. I will not replace until I actually need to.
Enjoying work as a minimalist: I try to make sure that my life is designed for me, and I'm actually living it by design and not by default. That's actually why I got out of my cleaning job. I kind of defaulted into this job; it was my dad's company. I grew up cleaning office buildings, and that was something that I kind of fell into. However, it did not make me happy. It was not fulfilling. It had a low ceiling on how much I could make, and therefore I took time on the nights and weekends to try other opportunities so I could eventually move out with that and not just stay there for the next 20 years because that's what I fell into as a kid. I think if you don't enjoy your work, you should ask if this is something that just kind of happened or is this what you chose to do to enjoy the rest of your life? These hundreds and thousands of hours that you're going to spend there, are you actually enjoying them, or is it just something that happened to you?
Value fullness: For me, this means spending my money on things that actually bring me value and asking, "Would I rather have $10 of free or this hamburger?" If I'm hungry, it's going to be the hamburger. If maybe a hamburger is not a good analogy, would I rather have $1,000, which can compound over time and buy me freedom, or would I rather have a newer phone? When you understand compound interest and how $1,000 invested can be insane money later on, it starts making a lot of decisions for you. I value my life and my freedom way more than stuff, so spend value.
Healthfulness: This pretty much just means that I am going to always invest money, time, energy, and focus into my health. For me, that means buying grass-fed meat from a farm up the road because my entire family, we can literally feel better after we eat that than we do when we buy stuff at the store. We are willing to invest more money and time into making ourselves feel better and be healthier because that is something that is really important to us: feeling the best we possibly can, even if it means spending a little more money. That's worth it for our healthfulness.
Being intentional: This just means being very intentional with how you spend your time and how you spend your money. Making sure every time you spend either of them is aligned with one of your goals. A shocking amount of time, we actually spend our time and money on things that we know physically and mentally hurt us. You only have so much life; you only have so much money. Be intentional with it.
And then, of course, you need to be selfish. This was something that was hard for me, but you also have to realize, much like being on an airplane where you're supposed to put your own air mask on before you do other people, if you're not mentally in a great spot, it's hard to be the best partner, the best parent, or whatever that you can be. The best employee, if your health is trash because you're not taking care of yourself and you have low energy and brain fog, it's going to be hard to be the best version of yourself for others. So if you want to take care of other people, sometimes you have to start with yourself. You have to be a little bit selfish. Make sure that you're in a good space so that you can help other people.
If it's clutter-free, it's for me: Hopefully, this is hard because clutter tends to just come up out of nowhere. It just spawns. It's super annoying. If you feel stressed out in your house, you probably just have too much stuff, and sometimes it's hard to know what that is. So here's a couple of things you can do: One, go through ruthlessly. Grab a bunch of crap, put it in a box, put that box in your garage or your attic, and then set a reminder on your phone to check that in like six months. If you don't need to go back in that box for the next six months, don't even open it up. Just put it in the back of your car and donate it. That's literally the easiest way to trick yourself into decluttering. Not that I have to do that regularly because even as a five-year minimalist, I still have a hard time decluttering, but it really, really works.
The other thing you can do: ask a friend to come over. If you have a friend who's pretty clean and has no attachment to your crap, invite them to come over and help you declutter for an afternoon, for a day, for an hour. Sometimes you just need somebody to tell you that that fuzzy blanket that you didn't even know you had because it was at the bottom of a barrel, but you are so attached to it because somebody gave it to you for Christmas eight years ago, you don't need it. Sometimes you just need a friend to lovingly slap you across the face.
Quality over quantity: Less but better, especially when applied to clothes. I generally have like two pairs of shoes, one winter jacket, a very minimal amount of pants and shirts, but everything I do have is generally a little bit more expensive, a little bit higher quality. I noticed that when I was buying cheaper stuff constantly, not only would it just be uncomfortable every day, but it was also not actually cheaper because I had to keep cycling through stuff. The stuff would wear out, the seams would come apart, even like appliances and stuff would break or just not work when they were cheaper. Sometimes it's better to buy once and have it last for like five to ten years than it is to just continually buy the cheap stuff that's on sale and hope that it works and it's okay and it fits all right.
Quality over quantity: Embrace boredom. Yeah, I know most people don't like being bored, but it turns out it's not such a bad thing. In fact, I think we need to be bored more often. We need to have nothing to do and not feel guilty about having nothing to do for half an hour. We don't need to fill that with some type of noise or doing something. We just need space. It's okay to be bored. It's okay to let your mind wander. It's okay to daydream every once in a while and do the things that you did when you were a kid. In fact, it's some of the most fun that I have.
Separate work and life: If you're somebody who works from home or you bring your work home with you a little bit, try to be really conscious and leave your work in your office or at your desk or on your laptop or on your phone or whatever, and not bring it with you into the rest of the house. It can be a huge mental relief. Honestly, this is something I've been trying to do for a while. I really struggle with this, so this point's really for me. It's something I'm focusing on right now because it's so easy to just think about work 24/7 when you have your own business, but I know it's not mentally good for me.
Digitally declutter: Look at that! Literally, like last week, this entire thing was completely covered with random crap. Since I took like half a day and decluttered my online and firmware digital clutter and got tons of apps off my phone, it was great. It's been so much less stressful. I work more productively, I can find things better, I built organization folders and stuff. If you haven't digitally decluttered in a while, you really need to. Since I turned off notifications, like all notifications besides from family members on my phone, I've been on my phone so much less. I get distracted less, I'm more productive with work, I'm more present in conversations with people. There are just so many benefits to not having any notifications on unless it's a family member, so that if they're dying, they can get in touch with you. Nobody else really can, and then you just schedule times where you get back to people. You don't get your phone buzzing in the middle of a conversation, it doesn't buzz in your pocket while you're driving or while you're working. You can just focus on life and not constantly be brought back out of it.
Explore the two-minute rule and use it regularly: If you're not familiar with this, you can use it in two different ways. One, if you're trying to start a new habit, just commit to the first two minutes of the habit, nothing else. So that's reading one page of a book, going and sitting in the car, going, you know, driving to the gym and then being okay with backing out. Or two, if you have a project that needs to get done and you've been thinking about doing it, and it's just been like six months and you haven't gotten stuff done, like little things you can do in two minutes or less, just do it immediately. Wash the dishes right now, hang that picture on the wall, clean up that thing that's been in the hall forever. If you can get it done in two minutes or less, just get it taken care of and reduce your stress.
Don't chase the numbers: When it comes to minimalism, a lot of times you can get caught up following other people or trying to get down to a certain number of possessions or trying to get rid of a certain number of possessions. There are all these trends and stuff. If that's something that you're feeling guilty about and you're struggling with, like, "Oh, well, this person's house looks so nice," or, "Oh, I have 2,000 items and this person only has 150 items. Man, I'm doing it wrong," like something's wrong with me. If you're struggling with any of that, just totally let it go.
The 90/90 rule: This one's a great hack to declutter, and that's simply saying if you haven't used it in the last 90 days and you don't expect to use it in the next 90 days, then you're okay just getting rid of that item. It makes decluttering super simple.
The one-in-one-out rule: This one's very simple. If one thing comes into your life, make sure one thing goes out of your life. This will keep your house from building up clutter. It might also stop you from bringing stuff in because it's kind of a chore to actually get rid of something, but it's a good one to set in place. If you want to go extreme, make it the 21 rule: everything that comes in, two things go out.
If you enjoyed this video, you will love this video right here on 50 ways to save money and improve your finances. It's actually very good. Plus, if you want to reset your life, you can check out the free course down below. See you next week!