Too much of anything is bad

You love ice cream. So much so that you thought you don’t mind eating it every day and having it after every meal. Before you know it, your weight increases and start to develop sickness deep inside of you. If you continued down that path, the sickness will only worsen. Heart disease, diabetes, and various other issues will crop up.

It’s the same thing as everything you do in life.

In my case, there’s something I did that affected my writing although you may not see it given that I’ve published something almost every day. But deep down, I know something’s not right.

There isn’t much inspirations or ideas floating around in my head to write about these days. I had to sit at my desk doing a whole bunch of other stuff before I can settle down to write something. Even when I do start, the topic elude me until much later during the writing process. Instead of entering into the zone or flow state, there’s a lot of writing and editing on the fly. Lucky for me, I’ve honed my writing muscles far enough that I could do both without obvious slow down.

But it’s something that need to be fixed. So I did a quick audit of what’s going on in my life.

Turns out, I’ve spent too much time consuming content. Again. By that, it could mean watching videos, listening to music or playing video games. And the latter is the one that’s main cause.

Ever since I got Nintendo Switch, it would be in my hand at least once a day for a couple of hours. Because of the amount of time I’ve spent playing first-person shooter on it, specifically Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, I’ve gotten pretty good at shooting enemies despite the weird placement of joysticks (compared to the Xbox). I am able to have the crosshair follow enemies as they moved while another finger is on the trigger button. When I first started, I’ve a real hard time doing even basic shooting.

Sound great? Yeah, it’s good that I gotten a new skill. But it came at the expense of having ideas for writing.

And do you know why playing so much games created this sickness of not having ideas to write about?

Playing games, most of the time, is actually pretty mindless. Especially if it’s a shooter game where all you need to do is kill enemies, reach objectives. Rinse, rise, and repeat. So where’s the thinking in that?

But not all is lost.

The moment you realise something is wrong, you can take control back. The one thing you could do is to cut back on the amount of time you spend doing that one thing. Yes, it’s painful when you have to cut back because you have been getting all those dopamine coursing through your mind. But it has to be done in order to achieve something you want in your life.

With that, I end off with something any minimalist would say, “Less is more.”

Pfft… I am not minimalistic enough!

Minimalism is a lifestyle and never a one time deal. Over time, your values will change and then you realise what you have now no longer bring you joy or give you any value. Then, probably, you will be like me and start to wonder whether you are minimalistic enough.

I have been into minimalism for about a year and a half and reached this point where despite my best effort, I’m find that I am not minimalistic enough. I still got a lot of stuff and get stressed by them. It is especially when I need to pack them up.

Clothes

Clothes are one of the few things that most people will accumulate a lot over the years if they aren’t careful and especially so these days due to fast fashion. Therefore, it is highly logical for someone who want to adopt a minimalistic lifestyle to target clothes as the first step during the decluttering process.

I got rid of a lot of flannels, t-shirts, pants and polo shirts until I could easily move my hanging clothes left and right of the wardrobe.

And recently, I came to realise I didn’t declutter sufficiently. I had to pack up my clothes into giant bags because of an upcoming renovation and my current fixed wardrobe will be taken down to make way for new one. The packing process actually pissed me off more than it should because of the sheer amount of clothes I still have. More than 20% of my clothes haven’t been worn for months or even years and they had been sitting there collecting dust. It even make my skin itch when I pick them up.

So I pulled out a bunch of clothes that I know for sure I won’t wear them ever again and toss them into the bin. Even after doing that, I still got like maybe 80 clothes (pants, shorts, underwear, etc.) and I’m sure another quarter of those I probably won’t wear ever again.

Technology and Electronics

If you are someone who love technology and electronics, it is inevitable that you have old processors, motherboards, rams, phones, adapters and cables lying around that you no longer use because you have gotten new ones to play with.

During my minimalism journey, I had targeted these items to declutter and got rid a lot of them. Hell, I even got rid of my gaming desktop because I no longer find value in it and prefer to just stick to one computer for my daily needs.

Yet, recently when I was going through those boxes that I have to store these technology items, I found myself extremely frustrated when I tried to repack those items back. It turns out, there were a whole bunch of stuff that I really don’t use anymore but didn’t get rid of. I was cursing and swearing at those items as I put them back into the boxes. It took a while before I could close those lids.

And I don’t have the time to clear these items because I got other more important things to do.

Paper-based items

I don’t know about where you live, but in Singapore, chances are you will receive a ton of letters from the government for every little notifications or updates as well as statements for your taxes and CPF account. And if you are Singapore guy and need to serve the military, you will also get a ton of reservist call-up letters and whatever updates the military wants “disturb” you with.

Yeah, I never liked the military. Still hate it. But I digress.

And let’s not forget about receipts. Now, normally you don’t need to keep those if you aren’t running a business where you need to file taxes. However, if you are someone who buys a lot of technology products, you need to keep those receipts for warranty purpose. And I have a ton of those lying around.

You would think that I’m done. No. Because of my interest in writing since secondary school days, I actually have a ton of folders and notebooks containing a bunch of old writings.

And oh, printed lecture notes, tutorials and laboratory instructions from my diploma and degree days. Those are still lying around in my cabinets.

So during my cleaning up process over the past two days, I realised that I hadn’t really put a lot of effort into decluttering paper-based items in my room.

By my estimation, I actually have about 80 over letters and that’s not including the envelopes used to contain those letters, five folders containing my old writings, countless pieces of papers accumulated during my studies.

Now, I managed to reduce the letter collection down to about 30 physical letters by shredding a lot of them and digitalising the important letters.

As for the old writings, I decided they aren’t worth keeping and so I discarded all of them. The school stuff on the other hand, I simply don’t have the time to clear them yet since there are a ton of things to do too.

All the above definitely prove that I’m not minimalistic enough. And it’s a journey of trial and error.

So what’s next?

Going forward, I need to work harder. I still want to meet my goal of having all that I own in just two boxes the size of 1 x 1 x 1 meter. It would make my life easier when I need to move house or something.

Why I use Apple products as a minimalist

As a minimalist, it’s all about living your life according to a certain set of values.

One of my values is quality. The things I output or consume has to have a certain quality. In most cases, I buy higher quality stuff, spending more money in the process, to replace the lower quality stuff that I have to get rid of.

Most of the metrics I use to define quality are subjective while some are qualitative. It is usually the subjective ones that make me happy, bring me joy or reduce stress whereas the qualitative ones primarily reduce stress.

This is why I am more than willing to spend the kind of money I do getting Apple products, becoming a fan in the process. Their products have really good build quality, provided convenience due to the tight integration across the products, and simplicity.

Majority of Apple products are well built and well designed. The attention to details given to each product by the Apple’s design and engineering teams is rarely found in other products from other company. The solid feel, simple and clean aesthetic of the exterior, and being highly functional combined bring me joy. With their products, I don’t feel like I’m carrying with me a cheap piece of item that I get from a discount store.

The highly functional aspect of their products bring about convenience for me.

You see, inconvenience is a major stressor for me. All I want to do is to solve more pressing problems with the tools I got and not wanting to deal with the hassles before I even get started on solving those problems. Going through multiple steps to enable an option in a piece of software, the need to install and update device drivers that has no guarantee that they will work 100% of the time, the software not doing what you expect it to do, or it takes a while for you to even understand how to use a piece of software or application are such inconveniences. They stress me out.

And I’m sure everyone knows what stress does to one’s creative process, how stress prevent one from doing their very best.

Unlike Microsoft products, Apple products mostly just works out of the box. I don’t really have to deal with all the hassles I described earlier. Their products are also intuitive and simple to use. With that, the tools get out of my way and I can focus on solving the more important problems. When tools get out of my way, my time is saved, allowing me to do more things within the same 24 hours everyone else has. Time saved is the qualitative metric that I use to judge the quality of something. How much inconvenienced I am is the subjective metric I use to judge the quality.

Other than quality, the other value that is equally important is security. I feel safe when my data is well-protected and private enough. If my data is not well-protected and private enough, it means criminals and the government can use my data against me if they do get their hands on it.

That strips away my security, which increases my stress and unhappiness, which is not what being a minimalist is about. At least in my view.

Now, before bashing me about the naivety of my subsequent statements, I will state up front that I recognize Apple may change their privacy and security model that completely expose the user and make them less safe and private, and get to keep a plaintext copy of whatever your store or send but that’s another topic for another day. When that day do come, then I will re-evaluate again.

At least for now, I do feel safe with storing personal data on Apple devices and their cloud storage and trust that my data is not readable by anyone. Their devices like Apple Watch and iPhones come with built-in encryption that protects your data, including your fingerprints and credit card information. The MacBooks and iMacs with latest Mac OS support encryption through APFS and/or FileVault. Their software services like iCloud uses end-to-end encryption with keys that only you own for the data you choose to store there, preventing unauthorized access or views.

So this is why buying stuff and using stuff from a company such as Apple as a minimalist isn’t wrong. It is not wrong either to be fan. If it helps you to live in accordance to your values, then you shouldn’t feel guilty about the whole thing. You just have to be very intentional about it.