Lessons from a simpler life

 

I saw this quote that struck me recently

Some poor phoneless fool is probably sitting next to a waterfall somewhere totally unaware of how angry and scared he’s supposed to be.

Unknown

The quote origin is lost to me from the annals of the internet and is clearly made in gest. That said, I found it really spoke to some of the ways I’ve been applying simplicity in my life over the past year. I read the book “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” by John Mark Comer, then “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown. Both of these books advocate for simplifying your life for different reasons, the first, to better develop your relationship with God and the latter to be more productive in life. Since both of those things don’t sound so bad, I took the initiative to apply what I learned in those books for the better part of the past year.

For context, this past year hasn’t exactly been the easiest and quietest time. The coronavirus pandemic continues to rage on, and I, myself have contracted the virus. I’ve been in an exciting new relationship. Started a new job. Applied and was rejected from a school application. Moved cross-country twice! Nonetheless, I think applying the principles of simplicity have helped me personally manage the changes better that I would have left to my own devices.

To keep this post manageable, I’m just going to list some of the changes I did and later evaluate the results and lessons I learnt. Some of the more noteworthy actions included:

• Getting really familiar with Airplane mode on my phone
• Deactivating Facebook permanently and removing social media from my phone
• Owning less than 60 total articles of clothing
• Cutting down on news; first completely, then limiting to one site

Going through these things had some unexpected lessons for me. There are some obvious ones, but I’ll talk about the pros and cons. I recognize that this kind of life isn’t universally possible, so if some of these things seem extreme I’ll talk through how they worked for me and why most people wouldn’t live like this.

Airplane Phone

I started putting my phone on airplane mode for periods of time when I wasn’t using it. Then eventually would just set up an Automation script that removed put the phone in airplane mode whenever it was dozing. Obviously, the negative is that I’m not reachable 24/7 ,but, usually I’ve been able to just get back to someone after my hiatus without issue. A lot of my communication tools (Signal/Messages) are desktop based as well – so I was more productively reachable there. This really helped my focus, my privacy, my productivity, my phone battery life and probably my posture. A lot of the frustrations I had with my relationship with technology melted away, because this helped me prioritize my virtual world squarely below my physical one.

Social Media

Along the same lines of this is social media. I was once a social media addict, then swung into the thinking there was nothing redeemable about it. When thinking about some of my personal outcomes for posting on social media – they came off like vices: boasting, appearing more put together than I was, and prejudice. Who wants that!? Then I thought of some positives: reconnecting with an old friend, sending relevant information to someone who’s contact you don’t have and crowdsourcing community information. I started thinking about how I cut out the bad while keeping the good? That’s where I landed on keeping it hidden until it’s needed. My messages are re-routed to emails but the apps themselves are gone. This way I can prioritize messages over posts. This means that sometimes I miss some life events of distant friends and acquaintances. Although, in practice, all my closest friends have personally involved me in the major milestones of this past year when they’ve come up. My privacy and focus were the biggest beneficiaries of this move – likely also my sanity!

Owning Less

This is perhaps one of the more controversial moves this year. I donated a lot of my clothing and things. I’d always been a fan of the KonMari method of de-clutter but I took it to new heights this year. The pros for me was reduced stress, things were easier to find, cleaning took less time and less waste generated. I wont say less money spent but I’ll say less money spent in the long run. In order to have less things, I increased the quality of my paraphernalia, so that the few things I had were durable for the long term. The cons for this are obvious: less variety, and with less things, I need to share resources from my community (like tools or other one-use supplies). Ironically, in the clothes department I get many more frequent compliments for the few outfits I have. I guess with less variety I have less opportunity to mess up!

News

This was one of the last frontiers of simplifying my life and this had to come with a change in perspective. From understanding news as productive product to understanding news as an entertainment product. A friend put up this idea, so I tried no news for a week. To my surprise, the major headlines still reached me but I missed out on all the outrage think pieces that used to clutter my mind. I realized I was taking on the mental burden for issues around the world that I couldn’t impact. That said, a negative outcome is being generally uninformed could lead to being vulnerable to misinformation. I then set a limit of axios headlines and informational 20min podcasts for deep dives about issues I personally care about on equity, environmental justice and public health. This helped my mental health, increase my free time, and improve my focus.

I want to end with a question: What is the standard measurement of happiness? Is it the void of sadness/discomfort or more the presence of something to be joyful about.

This question is the reason I’m not just going off grid altogether. I’m not removing these distractions for the sake of having them gone or even of having less. It’s to keep the main thing the main thing. I recently listened to a sermon that asked the listener why they don’t have time for God. I remember realizing that I routinely used that excuse, but couldn’t pinpoint where all my time was going. That was just evidence of how complicated my life had gotten. To keep the main thing the main thing is to do both the removal of unhappiness as well the addition of contentment. That’s my lesson from this past year of simplicity; do both. Evaluate your life and your actions and then cut out the part that isn’t part of your vision and double down on the part that is.