January 2012
3 posts
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as one, two, three...”
– Henry David Thoreau (via mnmal)
The Overjustification Effect →
Shopping: Who's in charge?
http://theviviennefiles.blogspot.com/2012/01/shopping-whos-in-charge.html#comment-form
Shopping: Who’s in charge?
There are two schools of shopping… Style #1 - the self-chosen few After careful consideration, shopper #1 decides that she needs two new tops - either blouses, sweaters or tee shirts. Her carefully curated and deliberated...
October 2011
1 post
The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having...
September 2011
1 post
20 New Ways to Judge Others | Becoming Minimalist →
February 2011
1 post
How To Stop Worrying →
January 2011
1 post
The tyranny of choice: You choose | The Economist →
November 2010
1 post
Documenting Accumulation and Its Discontents →
October 2010
5 posts
Never mind the hour, we have lost track of what... →
Cheer up – affluence made us miserable
Feeling the pinch? Cheer up – affluence made us miserable
Published on 15 Aug 2010/The Scotland Herald
Oliver James
Last week a friend told me she had received more than 200 applications for a junior job in an audio-visual unit in an advertising agency, salary £12,000, location: London.
With graduates spewing out of universities in unprecedented numbers and with unprecedented levels of debt,...
national siesta championship →
Pumping Up the Self-Control in the Age of... →
September 2010
1 post
August 2010
2 posts
Let go of the need to stay updated | Focus... →
mnmal:
We are info junkies in some way: we watch TV news all the time, or entertainment news, or keep up with lots of blogs, or our RSS feed reader, or Twitter, or Digg or Delicious, or email, or one of the many news aggregator sites. It consumes much of our day, and creates a kind of anxiety we’re barely aware of, this need to keep up. What is this need based on? Why can’t we get free of it?...
But will It Make You Happy? →
June 2010
7 posts
Paul Graham - how to do what you love →
disorder of self regulation →
“You not only enlighten yourself, but you nourish... →
“HERE ARE FIVE THINGS THAT YOU CAN ELIMINATE TO SAVE HUGE CHUNKS OF MONEY.
1....”
– Everett Bogue, Minimalist Business: How to Live and Work Anywhere. (via becomingminimalist)
Do you know how many dollars your spare room is... →
“Half of being able to afford what you want is to spend your money on what you...”
– So 2010… from “How to Afford Anything” (via perhakansson)
The Freegan Establishment →
May 2010
11 posts
Minimalist Lifestyle: Want vs. Need →
We all know these two enemies: Want and Need. There are plenty of media outlets and advertisements telling us what we “need,” but I’m going to let you in on a little secret… THESE ARE NOT NEEDS.
Almost anything that you see advertised on television, the Internet, through radio commercials,…
Stroke of insight: Jill Bolte Taylor on TED.com →
The Joy of Less | New York Times →
simplyminded:
(via mnmal)
What no television? →
zenhabits:
Stripping away unnecessary furniture and clutter from your home is all well and good. But television’s phenomenal power over us is so subtle I think most people don’t even think of a television set as a piece of furniture. In fact, even <em>I</em> buy into the idea that those super-slim, wall-hung plasma screens are like art on your...
Wheel of Worry, Andrew Kuo →
hang your washing; it's good for the earth and... →
savings calculator →
Q&A with Matt Getze, Wheelchair Adventurer →
It’s Complicated: Making Sense of Complexity
April 30, 2010
By DAVID SEGAL/NYT
Ladies and gentlemen, the state of our union is stumped.
The Great Recession and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, arguably the toughest problems we’ve confronted in decades, are nothing if not spectacularly complicated. Trying to size up these puzzles is like gaping at a homemade contraption that has mysteriously evolved into something even its designers can...
The Zeitgeist Movement →
teeny hotel rooms/small is getting big →
April 2010
27 posts
Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice →
Per Håkansson: Per on Convenience →
The problem I have with convenience is that it favors personal resources (time, energy and attention) and frustration over quality. It’s more convenient to pick up a ready-made dinner at the local store than cooking something yourself, despite the latter being much more healthy and economical.
It’s convenient for us to take the car to the grocery store but not very good for the environment or...
please remove your shoes
lessisless:
(photo: Jeffrey Friedl)
i’ve been asking guests to remove their shoes upon entering my genkan, or entryway, for years. it’s common in many countries like japan but less common here in the u.s.
i love practicing this because:
it keeps my home and office (a la Mad Men) cleaner
it cuts down on interior wear and tear
it’s relaxing — leaving the outside, outside
it’s quieter on...
Happiness in this World Reflections of a Buddhist... →
How to achieve balance
Converting a Seattle Garage Into a Tiny Home
April 21, 2010
By ANDREA CODRINGTON LIPPKE/NYT
SEATTLE
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/04/21/garden/20100422-garage-slideshow_index.html?ref=garden
SITTING on the couch in her 250-square-foot house — a garage she has transformed into her version of a dream home — Michelle de la Vega, a visual and performance artist, held a pillow in her arms. Three more pillows hung in shadowboxes on the...
The Dandelion King
APRIL 20, 2010, 8:39 PM
By ROBERT WRIGHT/New York Times
Robert Wright on culture, politics and world affairs.
As I’ve told my neighbors, I feel bad about lowering the value of their property. I mean, it isn’t my goal to have a front yard that, by standard reckoning, is unattractive. The unkept look of my lawn is just a byproduct of a conclusion I reached a few years ago: the war on weeds, though...
little homestead in the city →
Embracing a Life of Solitude
April 14, 2010
New York Times/By SARAH MASLIN NIR
FOR the last 16 years, Nick Fahey has been living on an island in the San Juan archipelago north of Puget Sound, in Washington state, where his only full-time companion is a 26-year-old quarter horse called Ig. Mr. Fahey, 67, lives in a cabin on 100 wooded acres that has been in his family since 1930; it has no refrigerator, but there is...
the anatomy of determination
September 2009/by Paul Graham
Like all investors, we spend a lot of time trying to learn how to predict which startups will succeed. We probably spend more time thinking about it than most, because we invest the earliest. Prediction is usually all we have to rely on.
We learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination. At first we thought it might be intelligence....
living without money
From The Times/November 24, 2009
Former teacher Heidemarie Schwermer has lived without money in Germany for 13 years. Our writer finds out how she does it.
Twenty-two years ago Heidemarie Schwermer, a middle-aged secondary school teacher just emerging from a difficult marriage, moved with her two children from the village of Lueneburg to the city of Dortmund, in the Ruhr area of Germany, whose...
a place to mellow out, without losing your edge
December 13, 2008/New York Times By CARA BUCKLEY Punk is not dead, though these days on the Bowery it’s a whole lot quieter. Silent, even.
Every week, dozens of people, usually young and artfully scruffy, climb three creaky flights of stairs off this formerly gritty stretch of downtown Manhattan, a block from where CBGB, the hallowed hall of punk, once stood. Often shrouded in hoodies, inked...
a walk around britain →
cut the strings
The rise of pushy helicopter parents is holding children back, says Carl Honoré Carl Honoré /New Humanist Magazine Recently, at a top British university, a student went to see his tutor about switching courses. When the pair reached a stalemate, the 19-year-old whipped out his phone, hit Speed Dial and handed it over with the words: “Why don’t you sort this out with my mum?” ...
questions for JD Trout
February 1, 2009 Questions for J.D. Trout Dr. Feel It Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON/New York Times Your latest book, “The Empathy Gap,” is in sync with the new administration in Washington and our new president, who is hoping to use social policy to narrow the gap between rich and poor. As you argue, empathy alone is not enough. I hope we can look forward to a period of more empathic policies....
what is slow parenting?
April 8, 2009, by Lisa Belkin/NYT
A running theme on Motherlode is that life simply goes by too fast. Carl Honoré thinks he has the solution. He is the author of “The Power of Slow: Finding Balance and Fulfillment Beyond the Cult of Speed,” and, more recently, “Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting,” which is being re-released in paperback in the United States...