Chapter 13: Minimalism
- Nathan Hoehne
- Jun 15
- 2 min read
Snowy Forest - Bronwyn Beley
One of my longest standing interests since 'coming online' in high school is minimalism (primarily facilitated by Matt D’Avella). The two proponents of this ideology that have most resounded with me are:
Declutter your possessions to make room for the things that are most important to you.
Consumerism and the cult of home ownership are optional.
The goal isn’t stoicism and a monk-like discipline. It’s simply to remove the things in life that don’t directly contribute to your happiness so that you can double down in the areas that do. It’s about rejecting the cookie cutter life that you’re supposed to live, not because it’s evil, but so that you can make a conscious decision about what kind of life YOU want to live.
This philosophy has really important applications in other areas as well.
For example, my finance guru, Ramit Sethi talks extensively about this concept as it relates to personal finance. One of his core messages is to cut spending mercilessly in areas you don’t care about so that you can spend extravagantly in areas that you do. He also talks how ‘your rich life’ may or may not include home ownership and that you shouldn’t just buy a house because it’s what you’re supposed to do.
Lastly, minimalism has huge support in the career and entrepreneurship world. Steve Job’s approach to the signal vs noise problem essentially maps to minimalism 1 for 1. Instead of getting bogged down in all the tasks that you’re ‘supposed’ to do (noise), each day focus on doing the one thing that will actually move the needle (signal).
Concrete step #13: Focus on the most important task each day.
Before leaving for my holidays, I was getting into a bad pattern where I would try to juggle a couple tickets at the same time. I’d shoot off a handful of agents to hack away at these tickets. This system actually works really well sometimes but most of the time it only gave the perception of productivity when in reality, I would have been twice as productive if I had taken the signal vs noise approach.
Join me this week as I try to focus on the most important task each day at work and on my side hustle. This approach also makes the work so much more fun.