3106: Busyness is a Kind of Debt by David Cain of Raptitude on Minimalism, Mental Clarity & Stress Reduction

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[00:01:00] This is optimal living Living Daily Episode 3106, Bizziness, Music Kind of Debt,

[00:01:06] by David Kane of Raptitude.com,

[00:01:09] name or narrator just a molic reading you blogs every single day of the year,

[00:01:13] including holidays.

[00:01:14] Without further ado, let's get right to it as we optimize your life.

[00:01:19] Bizziness, Music Kind of Debt, David Kane of Raptitude.com.

[00:01:29] My friend Kate and I have been exchanging zeros.

[00:01:32] I posted a screenshot of my newly empty Gmail inbox and challenged her to do the same, and

[00:01:38] she did.

[00:01:39] Now we're competing to get to zero as often as possible.

[00:01:43] Email has become almost a breeze for me after struggling with it for years due to a discovery

[00:01:48] I made during my extreme decluttering campaign.

[00:01:51] Having zero clutter is an entirely different experience than having a little clutter.

[00:01:56] The psychological effect of reducing any type of mess to zero is profound.

[00:02:01] It feels like a noisy fan has shut off.

[00:02:04] Now I love the feeling of being at zero and I never want to be far from it. Every neglected

[00:02:09] possession, unanswered email, or open browser tab is like a little hook in your brain. There

[00:02:15] isn't a huge difference in how it feels to have six of these hooks in your brain versus

[00:02:19] having 80, but there is a vast difference between having some and having zero. The decluttering post was an international mega-hit 12,000 Facebook likes in county,

[00:02:30] which surprised me initially because it seemed so pedestrian, arranging items and containers

[00:02:34] and tossing ugly clothes.

[00:02:36] But I think most people realize that it's not really about beautifying your shelves.

[00:02:41] It's about turning your home into a better habitat for the mind, one that minimizes the

[00:02:46] abandon, the unfinished, and the out of place, and creating a lifestyle with fewer mental

[00:02:51] fish hooks, snagging your attention.

[00:02:55] Whatever is normal to us becomes invisible, no matter how counterproductive, and we've

[00:02:59] simply become accustomed to tracking too many ongoing concerns in our heads.

[00:03:05] Living in the Red

[00:03:06] We use the word minimalism to describe a conscious effort to reduce physical and mental clutter

[00:03:11] by owning fewer things.

[00:03:13] But maybe minimalism isn't so much a trendy subculture as it is a return to the kind of

[00:03:18] environment our minds are best suited for.

[00:03:21] Imagine explaining to most of our history's human beings that minimalist are those unusual people who have reduced their possessions to a few

[00:03:27] hundred and their time commitments to a few dozen. As information and

[00:03:32] entertainment become more abundant, mental clarity becomes a more unusual

[00:03:36] experience. To get it back, we need to become unusually stingy with our time and

[00:03:42] attention commitments by either finally fulfilling

[00:03:45] them or finally dropping them instead of letting them pile up unresolved.

[00:03:50] These unresolved commitments are what David Allen called open loops in his zillion-selling

[00:03:55] productivity Bible, getting things done.

[00:03:58] And he says open loops are exactly what stress is made of.

[00:04:02] Part of us might realize this, but it's still fairly normal

[00:04:05] to drift miles from zero in several areas of clutter at once. And our over-committed,

[00:04:11] under-focused culture is normal for one's attention to be overextended. Another way

[00:04:16] to think about it is this. If attention is a kind of currency, our culture has a habit

[00:04:22] of living in debt. We're trying to buy too much with

[00:04:26] what we have, and it creates problems, stress, distraction, inefficiency that outweigh the

[00:04:31] benefits of all those purchases. Just as consumer debt is the consequence of buying more than

[00:04:36] our means can cover, our overflowing inboxes and unread bookmarks are evidence that we

[00:04:42] are chronically overspending in the attention

[00:04:45] department.

[00:04:46] Just like money, attention is limited, and by spreading it around too freely, we accumulate

[00:04:51] too many expenses, bear needless debts, and pay too much interest in the form of stress

[00:04:57] and extra work.

[00:04:59] Anytime you can cut loose an attention draining commitment, it's like cutting a household

[00:05:03] expense.

[00:05:04] Cutting out your weekday morning Reddit Surf might be like canceling cable. You think it's a solemn sacrifice until you do it,

[00:05:10] then you wouldn't go back to it even if it were free. Paying it off. There are commitments you

[00:05:16] can't or don't want to cut though, such as email, your primary work duties, and household tidying.

[00:05:22] Anytime you get one of these going concerns to zero,

[00:05:25] namely by putting all your possessions away

[00:05:27] or processing everything in your inbox,

[00:05:30] it's like paying the balance off your credit card.

[00:05:33] Most people can understand the absurdity

[00:05:34] of letting a credit card bill go unpaid for no reason.

[00:05:38] The bill never shrinks with time, it only grows,

[00:05:41] while the value of what you bought with it remains the same

[00:05:44] regardless of what you end up paying.

[00:05:45] Yet we don't have the same efficiency with our attention.

[00:05:49] We often let the house get messy enough that it takes a whole weekend to get it back to

[00:05:52] zero or let the email pile up until you need to prefix every reply with an apology.

[00:05:58] It seems like keeping your inboxes and household clutter, which is essentially a different form

[00:06:02] of inbox, close to zero, is way too much work for most people to manage, but it is always less work.

[00:06:10] After all, the work either has to be done eventually anyway, and the sooner you do it,

[00:06:13] the less there is of it, or it doesn't have to be done at all.

[00:06:18] Of course, you can't always be at zero.

[00:06:20] You may have gotten a new email while hearing this, but there is something to be said for

[00:06:24] always living close to it. I'd rather stay up till midnight getting everything

[00:06:29] to absolute zero at least once a week than just get close enough occasionally, never

[00:06:34] achieving the clarity and confidence that only appears at zero.

[00:06:38] To live near zero, however, you have to get there in the first place, just as you have

[00:06:42] to pay off your debt before you can attempt to live debt free.

[00:06:46] For households clutter, this means doing gomari or some other structured decluttering.

[00:06:50] And for email, it means sitting down with a pot of coffee and going through it all until

[00:06:54] you see the empty box.

[00:06:56] The idea of attending to our commitments sooner rather than later obviously isn't a new one,

[00:07:01] but framing it as getting to zero has made my routine work much more attractive.

[00:07:06] After years of hating email and tidying, I'm actually enjoying them both, because the

[00:07:10] sweet bless of reaching zero is always so close.

[00:07:15] Of course, smart people have been enjoying the number zero for longer than I have.

[00:07:19] Kate Flanders realized that while she bookmarked websites all the time, she never looked at

[00:07:23] her bookmarks so she deleted them all and never looked back.

[00:07:27] Derek Sivers had enough of superfluous commitments and decided he's done saying yes to requests

[00:07:32] on his time.

[00:07:33] It's either no or yeah.

[00:07:36] I had a conversation with Jonathan Verechia a few weeks ago about managing time and attention

[00:07:40] better and he introduced me to the beauty of the number zero as a value

[00:07:45] to live by. He's aiming for all sorts of zeros, zero phone notifications, zero unbacked-up

[00:07:51] files, zero desktop clutter, as well as keeping his home looking Airbnb-ready. Procrastinatory

[00:07:58] habits have a certain comfort, but they can't compete with the liberating feeling of zero.

[00:08:04] effort, but they can't compete with the liberating feeling of zero. I'm happily in love with zero, and I would crawl over hot coals to stay close to it.

[00:08:10] Doing the better, healthier thing always seems to come down to for going short-term

[00:08:15] rewards for bigger, longer-term rewards.

[00:08:18] But what's so brilliant about the staying near zero approach is that it's driven by

[00:08:22] its powerful short-term reward.

[00:08:25] What is within reach is too good to pass up.

[00:08:28] Cleaning up a big mess is much more of a grind than cleaning up an equivalent quantity of

[00:08:33] small messes.

[00:08:35] Putting away the first few of a hundred out-of-place books, garments, and papers is never very

[00:08:40] fun, but doing the last few is always glorious.

[00:08:44] The solution seems so obvious now.

[00:08:48] Always be doing the last few.

[00:08:54] You just listened to the post titled, Busyness is a kind of debt by David Kane of Raptitude.com

[00:09:00] and I'll be right back with my commentary.

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[00:10:47] Thank you to David. You mentioned an article towards the end there, a favorite among some

[00:10:53] listeners of this podcast. Man, a bunch of authors I've read have referred to it. The

[00:10:58] article is titled, No More Yes, It's Either yeah or no by Derek Sivers.

[00:11:05] I narrated that one way back in episode 44,

[00:11:08] so you can check that out.

[00:11:10] Now personally, I love getting to inbox zero.

[00:11:13] It just feels so nice to have everything in there cleaned up.

[00:11:17] I think he's right.

[00:11:18] Maybe there are other places in life

[00:11:20] where we can do that same thing

[00:11:22] and have that same feeling.

[00:11:24] Or as he says, paying the

[00:11:26] balance off.

[00:11:27] And maybe there are systems you can put into place that help keep you closer to zero.

[00:11:33] Like he mentioned, his friend who is aiming for lots of zeros, including zero unbacked

[00:11:39] up files and zero phone notifications, well, on'd argue you can simply turn phone notifications off

[00:11:46] for most apps because they're completely unnecessary

[00:11:50] and they just take your attention away.

[00:11:53] Or for backing up files, you can use a service

[00:11:55] that backs up files for you automatically.

[00:11:58] And that's what I do, actually.

[00:12:00] So why not make your job that much easier?

[00:12:03] Just a little recommendation, but in any case, hopefully this one inspired you to get to

[00:12:08] zero with something in your own life.

[00:12:10] But I should do it for today.

[00:12:11] Thank you for being here and getting this podcast to zero by listening to this episode.

[00:12:16] Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow, where you're optimal life.

[00:12:20] Oh, wait.