Thread by @Camp4

➕by ➖: 4 things to remove from your life

Hear me out & this 🧵 may improve your life by 10%…

I talk a lot about minimalism. My 🛗 pitch is that it’s not what most people think. Minimalism isn’t about denying yourself & leading a monk-like existence...

👇

...it’s exactly the opposite!

It’s about removing things from your life that don’t bring true joy to make room for *more* of what does. It’s actually hedonistic (in a healthy way).

Someone recently asked me a great follow-up question:

🤔What should I remove?

Before I attempt to answer, let’s channel Steve Jobs for a moment. Jobs said innovation isn’t about saying yes to a good idea, it’s about saying no to 1000 good ideas to focus on making one idea *great*.

The same applies to life...

Contentment is saying no to 1000 things that are ok in order to savor a few things that are precious.

Every time you say yes to something you’re saying a small no to everything else in your life (the container doesn’t grow!).

Now back to the question: What should we say no to?

It’s a highly personal decision because we all find joy in different ways. But here are 4 categories to think about:

1️⃣ Physical possessions. This is the most obvious category—we’re all guilty of accumulating things we don’t need. @theminimalists recommend asking of each item you own, “Does this bring me joy”.

👉Remember, everything you own owns a little piece of you.

🚚Through rock climbing I know a lot of #vanlifers and most of them say that their forced downsizing was incredibly liberating—a feeling of lightness that has been lost in modern society. Less decisions to be made.

(Steve Jobs famously wore the same outfit every day, partially because that’s one less decision to make each morning.)

2️⃣ Relationships. It took me a long time to realize that relationships have a life span—for some it’s days, for some months, and for a few it’s years (or a lifetime).

👉We tend to hang on to relationships past their expiration date.

Recognize that it's ok to let go—there can be a healthy end to a relationship.

And then there’s the mildly unhealthy relationships we accumulate, each weighing us down a bit more. It's like death through 1000 cuts. We all know what I’m talking about.

Be super deliberate about your relationships—it’s life-changing! My guess is that @drgurner has a ton of insights on this (maybe this will inspire a 🧵).

3️⃣Time. It’s our most valuable possession yet we tend to give it away freely. All of us—rich or poor—have the same amount in our time bank. And as they say, ultimate wealth is control over your time.

A packed 🗓 is not a badge of honor, it’s a recipe for ineffectiveness & misery.

All the good stuff happens in open space.

👉Be ruthless with your time! If it’s not a "hell yes", it’s a "no".

4️⃣Money. I’m certainly not advocating that you minimize your wealth but beyond a surprising low threshold, more money won’t improve your life.

This is easy to say if you have money but even if you don’t you can free yourself from the rat race by adopting the right *mindset*.

We spend a massive chunk of our lives chasing money. Even billionaires continue to chase more. We convince ourselves that we “love our work” and in many cases that’s true but what are the boundaries for that?

How big a part of your life & your identity is the pursuit of money?

Surely we can all think of a higher calling (or something we’d rather do).

Maybe at some point we need to switch gears.

This is related to the idea of being multi-dimensional, which I wrote a whole 🧵 about 👇

https://twitter.com/Camp4/status/1370798715057942534

Thanks for reading! I hope this helps you ➕ more joy to your life by ➖ things that crowd it out.

This message is important to me so if you enjoyed this 🧵 I’d appreciate a RT.

🤙

(This 🧵 was inspired by a conversation with @BoulderJake)