Essentialism

Maybe 18 or 24 months ago a coworker mentioned Mindfulness as a mechanism he'd adopted to reduce work stress, and he briefly described his journey as he recommended it to me. Some of his personal progress reminded me of Deep Work that I'd read not long before, and earlier research into Happiness and I decided to give it some thought.

I read a book or two on Mindfulness (as is my usual approach with something new), and some of it seemed a little touchy-feely and nebulous from my perspective. However, one of the books mentioned minimalism, and this resonated more strongly. I pulled on that thread, which led to Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, which I enthusiastically embraced. Some of it overlapped much earlier thinking I'd had back in the BigStoneHeads days. 

Somewhere along with Mindfulness I decided to pick up Journaling, and I selected Evernote as a tool to facilitate that. I also started using Evernote for my on-again/off-again pseudo-blogging on various topics. 

With Essentialism, I formalized some loose earlier thinking on Best Life and Best Self, with incorporation of specific statements and Goals. All of this came together by early 2020, and despite distractions with COVID and elections I mostly maintained the general thinking and journaling throughout the year. As was the expectation from earlier Happiness thinking, the improved focus seems to be resulting in improved happiness with my life overall, and all the intentional changes seem to be proving out. Recall that one view of happiness is "making progress toward being the best version of the person you see yourself to be", so making deliberate steps to improve yourself should result in a happier life. 

As 2020 progressed, and I increasingly tried to use Evernote to capture notes and thinking about various topics, I noted a combination of strengths and shortcomings in the tool...it was easy to use, but it wasn't always easy to manage keywords rigorously, and finding and re-using previously captured notes was clunky and effort-consuming. I again revisited earlier thinking about having a Commonplace Book, and late in the year stumbled across the notion of Second Brain which takes a more voluminous and expansive view of the same concept, and then a friend gave an unsolicited recommendation for Roam Research. That brings us to late 2020, as I moved ALL my previous blogs, journals, and musings into Roam, and I think I finally have a digital Commonplace Book that will work for me. 

In summary, for my life focus efforts I'm pretty happy with the Essentialism journey, and my self-defined Best Life and Best Self principles, and with most of my deliberate Goals. Some items, like weight loss and exercise, didn't go as well as desired this year, but I don't think that's a fault of the tool or the overall approach. I still have more aspects of my life to reign in and align, including work (day job and Side Hustle), and maybe related concepts of Eudaimonia Machine and Flow. 

Most recently, I'm now reading Digital Minimalism, and from that I'm creating my own view of Digital Essentialism. This is one of those minor epiphanies where I suddenly see that while I'd been refocusing much of my life to be more purposeful, I'd left my on-line life untouched and it was sucking up too much of the time freed by my Essentialism progress. I fully intend to take control of this aspect of my life and set the bar higher for myself in 2021. I find it satisfying already to see the various topics of Big Stone Heads, Essentialism, Happiness, Deep Work and Commonplace Book all coming together in a harmonious gestalt, fitting together and mutually reinforcing. I feel strongly that I'm "getting it right", and I'm very interested to see what emergent behaviors manifest from this new system.

Key points:

• Less, but better 
• Be deliberate about how you spend your time -- your attention is the most valuable asset you have 
• Be explicit about what is important to you -- the "why" and major themes of your existence 
• Prune off aspects of your life that do not align, starting with ones that are negative or destructive, then those that are ineffective or distracting, and finally improving efficiency of those that clearly should remain. 
• There is as aspect of minimalism, but not minimalism for minimalism sake; instead, decluttering to provide space for essential focusing. 
• Life satisfaction, and then happiness, with a long-term goal of a "life well lived" is the intended result. Career success is perhaps a nice-to-have.

 

• Bibliography:
  • Mindfulness for Beginners
  • Essentialism: The displined pursuit of less
  • Declutter Your Life: Minimalism and Essentialism
  • Free to Focus: A Total Productive System to Achieve More by Doing Less
  • Indistractible: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
  • Deep Work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world
  • Digital Minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world