I’ve beenr really inspired by Leo BaBauta’s blog Zen Habits (http://zenhabits.net) lately. There’s a handful of books and the like that have moved me over the years, such as Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Buckminster Fuller’s Critical Path, that have profoundly moved me. Leo’s writings are also having a big impact on me. His main thesis is that one of the main causes of stress and unhappiness in our life is complexity – our lives are full of too much stuff and too many activities. Even if these things are very nice taken one at a time, our plates are too full, and the mere act of simplifying our lives by itself will make us much happier. He suggests that by focusing on a few things, and really appreciating them, we will get more out of life than by cursorily glancing at a lot of stuff.
For example, if you move to a smaller house, you have less debt, which already reduces stress. Since you also have less room, you will have to get rid of some of your junk. Then you’ll have less stuff to maintain. Soon everything becomes a whole lot easier and more worry free. Fact is, for most of us, when we were young we didn’t have all that stuff, and life was good, but as we get older we accumulate mountains of stuff. And it’s not just physical possessions. It’s also activities, habits, lifestyle choices. It piles up higher and higher. Sift through it and ditch what isn’t totally necessary. The more you do it, the lighter life becomes.
I’ve been thinking how I can use technology to declutter one important part of my life. If I digitize my music and store it on hard disk, and move books more to the kindle model, soon I don’t need piles of book shelves. Then I also don’t need rooms with wall space for the book shelves. In fact the collection becomes portable. I can copy the music disks and run a copy when I’m in Shanghai. My world becomes virtualized – and the space requirements drastically reduced. Really the thing to do is to evaluate all aspects of our life from this perspective.
