Towards Minimalism

April 1, 2023

Introducing the Four Pillars

"Would you like to have a celebration drink on the 69th floor of the Marriott Lounge?"

Today was a momentuous occasion. I had just hit a fitness milestone by attending 500 HIIT classes at one of the studios I work out regularly. One of my friends there, a very successful businessman, invited me for a drink to celebrate. The conversation took an interesting turn and was a pivotal piece to lead me on the next series of steps of my life journey.

One conversation wasn't enough. It took a few more meetings and drinks to expan on the philosophy of what this businessman introduced me to and more of what he does for a living. Essentially it comes down to brand architecture. He also works with various investors and is very selective about the projects he takes on. As he explained: some deals you win, some you lose, but the wins make up for the losses. This actually made a ton of sense, it paralleled stock trading quite well. It took me a long time to understand all the business jargon, after all it's polar opposite to what I do for a living with teaching. Yet I was getting the hang of the principles.

This successful man had a lot of wisdom to impart. This was especially true when he talked about the concept of essentialism and recommended a book on it.

To illustrate the idea of what he was talking about, my friend lives out of various 5-star hotels and has been doing so for years. He travels when his work demands it. He explained that he trades money for time and carries around his belongings in several suitcases. Apparently he must have gotten rid of all his stuff a long time ago except for the minimum in order to pull this off. And now look at the freedom it gave him! Then I realized: if it worked for him, it could also work for me.

If he needs to move for whatever reason, he can do so in an instant. This arrangement came in especially handy during covid when he had to pivot locations in a hurry. This resonated with me well and I was quite highly intrigued. For the last several years during the pandemic I've been aspiring to declutter my stuff to achieve the same ends. Namely I want to avoid a repeat situation like 2020. We can't predict when and where the next geopolitical disaster will strike, but we need to be better prepared for emergencies. Minimalism is the way.

In the next several weeks after these chats, the four pillars of my developing minimalist philosophy started coming into a little more focus and were beginning to emerge from the back of my mind.

The pandemic and lockdown was really the catalyst that drove all this forward. When you're in that trapped state, your mind thinks of any and all ways to get out of this, and yet also thinks long term. Well at least that's how my brain works. To start with, it was pretty obvious what needed to be immediately: a massive amount of decluttering. That is exactly what I did during lockdown.

Once the lockdown ended, this later led to physical fitness transformation, financial ownership, and creative task management. And now, the upcoming cycle tour would be the groundwork to tie all of this together.

Compounded by all this, my father suddenly passed away and I was unable to travel and see him due to China's draconian covid restrictions. The zero covid policy is something I will never forgive and forget to this day, nor has the government apologized for it, nor will they. But in the interim, life had to move on and so it did.

The four pillars of minimalism had emerged:

1. Decluttering. A general inventory and reconsolidation of "stuff" to be digitized and then gotten off my hands so I can live with less. This is the meat and potatos of the whole philosophy.

2. Financial ownership: Taming the money beast and taking back control of my life through the development of a budget. Thankfully I am debt free, but like anyone else I have made some financial mistakes. This trip will aim to correct and hopefully reverse some of them. It is time to turn this ship around, and what better way than to learn from my late father's impeccable sense of money management and continue his legacy. This upcoming trip will definitely involve some financial breakthroughs so be sure to watch for those here.

3. Fit Body Transformation. Continuing the weight loss and fitness journey that had begun since covid and was set back during the lockdown. This really began to accelerate in 2023 with the re-opening of fitness HIIT studios and going full on back to group fitness. This also had enormous benefits to getting me in shape for the upcoming cycle tour. To be clear you don't need to be in shape for a cycle tour but it sure doesn't hurt.

4. Inductive Planning and Task management I hired a life coach to help with all this, as it's quite the bugaboo. This applies with tasks at work, life in general, and certainly planning complex cycle tours. Several breakthroughs happened. First was on the long flight to Canada earlier this year where I developed and packaged a mind-map oriented approach to getting tasks done in a more efficient way. I then built on this by adding a pre-planning or brainstorming stage with conversations and voice messages. The end goal of all this to free up more time and essentially work smarter not harder.

Those who run the rat race are merely working harder. We don't play by those rules around here.

It then occured to me that these four pillars of minimalism have a lot in common. They all require incremental progress over time to achieve remarkable and lasting results. Detailed steps and checklists to make the magic happen are the main wheelhouse of all this. I found the app ToDoist to be most essential for it all. Also the best selling book Atomic Habits had a lot of good practical ideas for how to put all this into practice.

Nobody just walks into this kind of lifestyle. Following the crowd is basically the inverse of all this. You merely have to do nothing and the results will be: a house full of clutter, a lifestyle of debt, sedentary living, and disorganized chaos. This is precisely what is wrong with my country: such a lifestyle is called 'normal'. People wander into this mess and don't even seem to care or realize this is a problem. But it is a problem indeed.

The aim of this minimalist philosophy is to view the problem in such a way that it can be tackled incrementally and solved over a long period of time. A midlife crisis doesn't just vanish overnight, but it can be chipped away.

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Andrea BrownI think I got into the habit of frugality so long ago that I don't even know how to spend too much without severe and immediate anxiety. I tried, with varying success, to instill financial competence into my kids, who have come a long way (and make a lot more money than I ever did). I keep my life as simple as possible, too, although that may look different than your minimalism. I pay my bills when they're due, don't charge anything to the credit card unless I know how it will paid for (emergencies excepted but I'd better have some kind of standby for those), don't eat out (at least here in the states where restaurant food is outrageous), and cultivate an attitude of undeserved abundance (and subsequent gratitude), because you and I have traveled enough to know that we live like kings, no matter how minimalist we are. Unlike much of the world, we have choices, the ultimate luxury goods.
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1 year ago

Fit SteveTo Andrea BrownThis is exactly correct what you say and can be tied into the minimalist philosophy. I'm really impressed that your kids were able to benefit from this financial competence. The bike trip is going to go into a lot more detail about how the spending works, both for the planning and what actually happens on the road. What I'm hoping for is to create a trip of abundance and illustrate how this comes from mindful spending
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1 year ago