The 25 hour day - a utopia?

I bet you have heard someone say "If only a day had 25 hours!" many times in your life. Or even more pessimistic under the disguise of being realist:

"A day does not have 25 hours. Period."

The truth is it doesn't even matter. Do these people really think that their life would be better if the earth spinned around a little slower? The only parameter that really makes a difference is how long you live. What intervals you divide that time into does not mean a thing. If you can't figure out how to get daily tasks done within 24 hours, it just means you can't figure out how to get your life task done in a life time.

More time is no solution for this problem. Clarity is. Set priorities and find out what you want to do with your life. Start now - because every step you take without a sense of mission might be a step in the wrong direction. Period.

Expect good things to happen

Yesterday a friend whom I hadn't seen for a long time called me. He just returned from his world trip and told me he was around for two days. I was excited but my schedule was already jam-packed and I first hesitated to invite him to my place. From experience I had learned that trying to do too many things at a time makes it impossible to truly enjoy them. Yet I didn't want to miss the chance and we met for breakfast this morning. As expected I couldn't help looking at the clock frequently, since we had so much to talk about but only limited time.

What lesson can I learn from this? Should I say no the next time? Certainly not! That conversation was one of the most inspiring incidents over the last while. We discussed cultural perculiarities of Europe and Asia, and how the word communication has an entirely different meaning depending on where you are. In the western hemisphere to communicate is to talk in terms of sending a message, while in eastern countries emphasis is being put on listening closely. I could sense the impact that the journey had on him - he was more grounded and calmer than before. I am very grateful for this encounter and glad that I made use of the opportunity.

If saying yes was a good decision, what then can I do better next time? The answer is to expect good things to happen. To not cram full my schedule. To leave space for spontaneity and be flexible. Optimism is the foundation of minimalist time management. It is that childlike attitude of joyfully anticipating what the next day might bring.

From the inside out

The secret to minimalist living in terms of letting go of one's desires lies in orientation towards inner freedom rather than financial freedom. So instead of asking "can I afford this?", which is bound to monetary resources, you should ask "can I afford to live without this?". This paradigm shift frees you from depending on external circumstances to feel good and leads you to true happiness.

By the way, this mindset enables you to get off the consumption treadmill for good. So if your goal still is to become wealthy - adopting a minimalist attitude is first the step in any case.

Wantless and happy

Before the Wirtschaftswunder after World War II it never even occurred to people that fulfilling wishes might have a downside. First they were working hard to survive, then they were working hard to make their dreams come true. Nowadays almost all needs are being met in the western world and still we haven't stopped working hard. Instead we actively search for wishes to fulfill. Advertisements make us believe to purchase a certain product is our deepest desire, when in fact we haven't even heard of the product before seeing the ad. Funnily enough the German translation for perfectly happy is "happy without a wish" or "wantless happy". Taking this literally can open our eyes to a new way of consumption.

The first and only step is to view desires not as a mean to happiness, but as a burden. This may sound hard at first, since satisfying a wish makes you happy for a while. When it comes to material wishes, though, the temporary joy is diminished by the amount of work, time, money and space required to handle the increasing number of items in your household. This discomfort can be a fingerpost to letting go of your desires. From this perspective wishes are truly a mean to happiness - not when you fulfill them, but when you drop them.

Of inspiration and transpiration

I'm very glad to announce that I just ran out of fennel tea! That's amazing! Daily readers know why. And I am really looking forward to buying a different kind of tea. There are so many benefits of the decision to reduce my selection: Firstly, when I buy some new I know I am going to drink it. Secondly, I enjoy comparing different sorts of tea in a shop and choosing a fancy one much more now that it is a special occasion. Thirdly, I find it enormously satisfying to have a routine and be able to tweak it once in a while as opposed to (a) randomly hoarding tons of products or (b) tie myself down to just a few of them.

Writing this reminds me of some further thoughts I had on the post about traveling. I am a person who is really fascinated by routines and daily rituals. When listening to the audio book of the same name I could hardly stop and finished it within days. But then again, why am I so keen on traveling? I clearly remember being on a 3 month trip through Costa Rica and text messaging a friend that I missed the possibility to plan my days. He was certainly bewildered when he read that I'd love to trade my surfing lessons for a week at home with a fix schedule. Back home again, of course, I missed the surfing lessons.

So what is it that makes you want to break free from your 9 to 5 routine but then draws you back to a certain orderliness? In my opinion it is human nature to march forward in a definite direction but from time to time take a bird's eye view over the path you're on. Like a hiker stops an amazing outlook. The stop is not what hiking is about. And yet it is.

The hunger goes on

During today's meditation I realized that the reason why it is so difficult to stay alert and focused is that the brain constantly seeks stimulation. I've read about this before but it never appealed to me as strikingly as it did this morning. When I started bringing my attention to the distractive nature of my mind, it began to vanish. I became extremely calm and moved deeply into the now. There wasn't a spark of boredom - not in terms of dullness, but agitation.

There are three needs which the flow of attention depends upon according to Rick Hanson's fantastic book "Buddha's Brain" (view excerpt). He states that the brain balances "keeping information in mind, changing the contents of awareness, and finding the right amount of stimulation", which I had understood rationally before, but today for first time have been able to directly observe.

Thinking about it later, Maslow's hierarchy of needs came to my mind and how a hungry person can hardly understand first world problems. In fact the hunger never ends. Once you have eaten your fill, it is the mind that continues to agitate. To a certain extent this is legitimate when providing for risks or building up stocks. But in a world of stress and shortage of time, it is wise to critically reconsider what we strive for. Is it a true necessity or merely a chimera of the brain?

A virtual information buffet

We all know the buffet situation: There is much more to try than we can possibly eat, let alone does it all fit onto the plate. In a restaurant we would never order "a little bit of everything", but with all those delicacies right before our eyes it is hard to chose. We end up feeling ill because we couldn't refrain from at least tasting everything.

It is somewhat similar to bookmarking pages on the internet. Your computer is a plate and the web is an information buffet. But just because you have got enough disk space, it does not mean all problems are solved. When are you going deal with all the articles you stumbled upon, but didn't have time to read immediately? I personally faced the same difficulty when I found out that Seth Godin offers a lot of his ebooks for free. First I had the intention to download them all right away, although I knew that I wouldn't read them before finishing the books I already started with. Eventually I decided to wait. It is possible - yet very unlikely - that I will not be able to access those PDFs for free in the future. But otherwise I'd gradually accumulate more books than I can ever engage in.

Useless gathering and hoarding is part of a scarcity mindset as opposed to an "abundance mentality". When you pay close attention to its motives, you will discover a fear of missing out on something and foregoing opportunities. In the worst case this may distract us from landing a truly big shot when it is time to.