Be Simple
Last night I realized that my life is very simple. That’s not by chance, but by conscious effort. Life becomes complex all by itself if you do nothing about it.
One day you’ll wake up and you have a mortgage, 10 on-demand subscriptions, 20 insurances, 1000 open browser tabs, a demanding job and a dog. And when you realize it, you wonder how you got there.
I keep my life simple because I know my time is limited. Time and health are my best proxies for happiness.
Simple Doesn’t Mean Boring
Quite the contrary: give me enough time and I find ways to entertain myself. My friends might disagree, but I consider myself to be an introvert. I like to spend time on my own to explore and learn. There hasn’t been a boring moment in a long time.
If life was more complex, that would take away my time, but time is the resource I can’t replenish, so I protect it. How? Mostly by saying NO.
- No streaming subscriptions. No Disney+, no Netflix. I rarely watch TV anyway.
- No gym memberships. Just run in the park.
- No Instagram or TikTok, but part of that is getting older.
- My shoes are 6 years old. So is my wardrobe.
- No meetings if possible. I’m the guy who sits at his desk for 8 hours straight, only getting up for bathroom breaks twice.
- No property; I’m a happy tenant.
- No commute; I work remotely.
Great home cinema setup you have there. Thanks for inviting me over! At home, I don’t even have external speakers.
You’re planning a trip to the Bahamas? Enjoy! Send me a photo.
Regarding technology, that means:
- Even though I’m a programmer, I only have a single screen.
- I evaluate tools, but I keep the number of tools limited.
- My editor doesn’t have a debugger.
- No Notion or Obsidian if a text file + git is enough.
- I limit the number of browser tabs with an extension.
Simple Doesn’t Mean Minimalistic
My goal is not to have as few possessions as possible – I own a lot – but to lead a simple life. I’ll happily buy things if they make my life simpler. The last big life improvements were a robot vacuum cleaner (four years ago) and an automated cat litter box (two years ago). If I decide to buy something, I make sure it’s the absolute best I can afford. (My rule is actually “don’t buy crap”.) For example, I spent a ridiculous amount on the best laptop I could buy. It’s my daily driver that I spend most of my time with, so it needs to be an absolute workhorse. My work is also compute-intensive, so I saw the purchase as justified.
I always pay the price in full. No lease, no monthly payments. I have to use services for work, but I prefer monthly payments over yearly subscriptions, even if they are 30% more expensive. The fact that I can cancel at any time is more important to me.
I know that when I buy something, it demands my attention. Maintenance is not fun. Even though I like the idea of owning something, I probably don’t truly own it. That makes me the worst consumer possible. I keep things in my Amazon basket forever. From time to time I look at the items, and when I enjoy seeing them in my basket… I keep them there. The rest, I just delete. This way, I get the “feeling” of owning things without spending any money.
Simple Doesn’t Mean Convenient
To live with such a person is not easy. We have regular discussions about “investing” money into things that I’m skeptical about. It takes me ages to reach a conclusion. Vacation planning is definitely one of my weaknesses. I am very well aware that my approach is not perfect at times. I am okay with making these sacrifices for protecting my time and therefore my happiness.
Recently, I got a few emails from people telling me that my newsletter subscription is broken. I’m aware of that. My newsletter provider shut down. I won’t fix it. It turns out that people find other ways to follow me; either on Mastodon or via RSS. I also don’t have a comment section – Reddit or HN work just fine. Even though there are a few folks on my old newsletter list, I never got around to sending many emails. I don’t particularly enjoy writing a newsletter, so it might be best that it finally broke. I will probably remove the signup box. It would be nice to have it “just work”, but the next best thing is to not have it at all.
Simple Means Letting Go
Perhaps another way to explain it is the midwit theme:
I try to stay on the left side of this curve as much as I can.
I’m aware that there are “smarter” ways to do things, but I don’t want to dedicate time to learning about them. I only dedicate time to things that matter to me and that I want to go really deep into.
The meme shows simple approaches on both ends, with a complicated phase in between. Getting to the right side of the spectrum takes lots of effort, and I’ve only made that journey a few times in my life. For the rest, knowing there’s an awkward complicated phase in between keeps me happily on the simple side. It’s fine.
Simple Means Focused
Greatness comes from dedicating time to the things that matter. The most productive people I know are focused. Yes, there’s a creative process and they allow themselves to be creative, but they do so in a very constrained environment: their office. While others chase trends, they do the thing they’re always doing. They put in the hours.
It’s way easier to be focused when life is simple. When there’s no room for distractions and complexity. I find that constraints help as well. Technology is one major source of distraction. Some of the best stories were written with a typewriter. In itself, it’s a very limited environment, but it takes away all the distractions and lets you focus on the task at hand. I find that inspiring, liberating. That’s why I like constraints. When I give presentations, I wonder what I’d write if I could only have 5 slides with 5 words each, or I could only use two colors, or only show images. It keeps me focused on the message. It’s simple. Simple is beautiful. Simple makes me happy.
Thanks for reading! I mostly write about Rust and my (open-source) projects. If you would like to receive future posts automatically, you can subscribe via RSS.