Minimamilism: The Minimalists

Last time I talked about Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying and today I'm going to talk about Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields Millburn who together form The Minimalists. I first heard of them through their doco Minimalism, which became a really big wake up call for me and had me thinking “yes this all makes sense”.

photo via their facebook page 

The film introduces us to Ryan and Josh and talks about their steps into minimalism, interspersed with footage from their book tour. In between their story they have interviews with people from all walks of life, covering a bunch of different topics, from tiny homes to fashion, meditation, advertising and family life. A big takeaway for me was the act of consumption and how often we do it merely as a compulsion because that's what we're been told will bring us fulfillment.

I remember after watching the film, I hunted them down online, followed their facebook page and glanced (briefly) at their website but honestly, I didn't gain too much value doing so. Value is word the pair repeat often and it was only through discovering their podcast that I started to engage more with their message. I'm currently up to episode 12 of their podcast with many more hours to adsorb but I wanted to do this blog entry in case it's helpful to others. It's also interesting to hear how Ryan and Josh differ but as they say there is no one perfect template or one set of rules to follow instead they encourage you to find different recipes, tweeze out the ingredients that work for you and then create your own recipe for living a minimalist/intentional/deliberate/simple/essential life!

The podcast not only has great insights, it also has a lot of practical advice of things you can do and questions to ask yourself. Like the question above or, "Can I afford this?".  They go on to remind you not to just simply consider the financial costs but time costs (just as important) attention + space in home and mind. I personally have seen great changes in my day-to-day productivity by implementing some of their more simple advice, such as turning off the notifications on your phone or unsubscribing from mailing lists to spend less time at your inbox.

Throughout their podcast they refer to essays they have on their website (which I totally overlooked the first time) and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading and have gained lots of value from.  One of my favourites was Josh's alone time essay, refreshing to see someone being happy and content and spending 90% of their time alone :)  On another podcast episode they mentioned to check out George Carlin's stand-up routine about 'stuff' which I'll post below because it gave me a good smile.

I jotted down some other notes whilst listening to the podcast, such as 'we overvalue things', 'you are what you focus on' and  how "just in case" are the 3 most dangerous words. I could expand on these but honestly Josh and Ryan do a much better job and I encourage you to give their podcast a listen to, you won't be disappointed :)