Category: Minimalism

For the past few months, I’ve been feeling information overload from tons of emails, phone notifications, podcasts, blog posts, learning apps, books I haven’t read, as well as social media apps.

I realized that Facebook was adding stress to my life, each time I wanted to post something I was thinking twice about it and I was also spending lots of time in the app. So, I decided to clean my Facebook contact list as well as the Pages I liked. I removed around 250 contacts and kept around 170.

A while ago, I read about Dunbar’s number, which according to Wikipedia “Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships.^“

So, I guess 170 is closer to 150, and yes, I feel more relaxed after I cleaned my contact list.

These are some lessons I’ve learned, review your contact list and pages you follow and ask yourself these questions:

1. Is this person/page helping me be a better person?
2. How do I feel when I see the posts from this person/page?
3. Am I learning something from this person/page?
4. Is this person going to be happy for me if I share some accomplishment?
5. Is there a better way to be in contact with this person/follow this page? Maybe it’s better to be in contact with them with a phone call or through a messaging app, Twitter, Instagram or a blog post feed.

One thing I have learned is to not add coworkers to my Facebook account, that doesn’t mean I don’t have good friends that started as coworkers, but I have learned that it is better to add them after we no longer work together. Why is this?

1. You might find out that your coworkers got together and you were not invited. You could start stressing about why you were not invited.
2. You post something and someone might not like it and this creates problems at work.

For Pages, I used to follow lots of Pages about companies I like and Pages that post about travel ideas. I’ve seen that there are many good pages with good content, but I’m trying to minimize the pages I follow to only those where I’ve identified that I like the majority of the content, and to only those pages that are teaching me about a topic I’m currently learning about. I wish there was a way to like a Page but not follow it, and only enable the follow when I’m ready to learn about that topic. Maybe there is a way and I haven’t found it yet?

Your social networks can help you grow only if you make sure you are following the right people, and they can be a source of connection, support and learning.

 

 

 

A few days ago, while I was scrolling through my contacts list, I realized I had many contacts from companies or people I had met that I no longer was in contact with, or that I didn’t remember who they were. I realized that I needed to clean my contact list.

I deleted the following items:

1. Companies in cities where I no longer lived: restaurants, taxi companies, service companies (electricity, internet, laundromat, dry cleaning, car, etc.)
2. Contacts I couldn’t remember who they were: I meet a lot of people through work, and sometimes I forget to write notes on how/why I met them, or they were contacts I hadn’t written a full name.
3. People I was no longer in contact with: some people I had met in school, or people I had lost contact with because I moved to another city.

After cleaning my list, I ended up with around 250 contacts, they are of family, close friends, current coworkers, and service companies of the city where I live in.

During this activity I realized:

1. LinkedIn is a better platform to keep in touch with previous coworkers. Especially because many of the emails/phone numbers I had were from a company, and people change jobs all the time and those contacts might not be current.
2. Yelp (or some other platform) is better to keep track of service companies, since again, companies change phone numbers all the time. In Yelp, I create lists for each city I visit or where I have lived, and bookmark companies there.
3. Facebook is great to keep in touch with former classmates and close friends and family that live in another city.

I became a minimalist the day I moved to the US. I had lived in Aguascalientes, Mexico for 3 years when I got a job opportunity to move to the US. Once I got accepted for the position, I started selling the majority of my stuff. The process was long and tiring. I lived in a two-bedroom apartment and the process took a little more than a month. I sold all the furniture, sports equipment and my car. I donated many clothes that I knew I wouldn’t use anymore, especially because I was moving from Aguascalientes (a warm city) to Albany, NY where it is cold for about 6 months (or that’s the way it felt to me, coming from Mexico).

The plan was to sell my stuff, and whatever I wanted to keep I would take it to my parents’ house.

When that process was over and I finally settled down, I promised to myself that, going forward, I would be very mindful of the things I bought.

A while ago, even before the big move, I noticed that when I bought clothes, if for example I bought a new pair of jeans I ended up using the new jeans and not using my old ones as much. I noticed that I only used the old ones in case the new ones were dirty. So, ever since, I decided that if I wanted to buy something, I needed to be aware that most likely I would end up not using something else, and that made me think if I really needed it. So, the rule that I have now, is that if I bring new clothes home, is because my old ones need a change, and I need to get rid of them, otherwise I will end with a closet full of stuff I don’t use anymore.

My habits changed even more with that big move.

• Books: I buy the majority of my books as ebooks. I only buy physical books when it’s a book that I enjoy a lot and I want to re-read it.
• Clothes: all the clothes I have in my closet I use them regularly, if I identify there is something I’m not using it as much I donate it. I have also noticed that when I like something like a shirt, I buy the same shirt in different colors.
• Shoes: I wish I had less. I don’t think I have that many considering I have a pair of shoes for each specific type of occasion/event/sport activity: running shoes, hiking shoes, hiking boots, golf shoes, sport winter boots, formal winter boots, office shoes, formal evening party, casual sneakers, sandals, etc.

Minimalism is important to me because I’ve moved 3 more times in a matter of 4 years, it’s important that I keep only the essentials with me, things that I really value and use all the time.

One book that changed the way I feel about things is “Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing”. With her book I learnt that I should only keep things that bring me joy.

I enjoy watching YouTube channels on productivity and minimalism.

These are some of the YouTubers I follow on minimalism:

• Matt D’Avella
• Break the Twitch