Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Annabel Candy of Get In the Hot Spot.

Did you know that moving house can be one of the most stressful times in your life? It’s right up there with losing your job, divorce or the death of a loved one, as one of the biggest causes of stress.

I’ve been there. In 2007 my husband and I sold our house along with most of our belongings and moved from New Zealand to Panama with our three young kids. We ended up spending 18 months in Central America and lived in Costa Rica for over a year during which time we moved house three times.

Moving house was easier in Costa Rica, because by then we’d got rid of most of our possessions and had less to cart around with us. We got good at giving things away, selling them or just chucking out all that rubbish that clutters up our lives.

Moving out of our home in New Zealand was the big one. I certainly felt the stress could come but managed to change that pressure into a buzz so I could enjoy the excitement of change and new beginnings. In the end moving house and countries was a fun way to declutter our lives.

Tips for a stress free move:

1. Get organised in advance. If you leave everything until the last minute it will be stressful. We sold our house five months before we left and then rented it back from the new owner. That way we could relax with the cash in our bank account and not worry about how we were going to finance the move.

2. Start selling non-essential items three months before you leave. Clutter and things you don’t use much build up in any house, especially if you have kids. You’ll find that there are plenty of things you can off-load two or three months before your move. Stuff like toys, tools, kitchen equipment, many clothes and everything that’s broken, or that you never use but have been saving for a rainy day.

3. Organise your personal belongings and paperwork. Get a concertina folder for essential documents like passports, birth certificates, and other certificates and keep them all together. Sort out your personal photos – put them in albums and chuck out all the blurred and boring ones. Give all the kids a memory box – a shoe box will be about the right size for them to keep all their school reports, photos, pictures and keep sakes in. Keep the box small – they will fill it!

4. Maximise this opportunity to minimalise. There’s no point in keeping too much stuff if you’re making a big move. Sending it overseas may cost more than replacing it and this is the ideal time to become more minimalist and get rid of all the possessions that are compromising your freedom. Make a list of everything you want to sell but need to keep until you leave: furniture and big electrical items such as the fridge, washing machine, stereo and dryer.

Write an email with title, description and price. Just sell everything for half what you bought it for. Remember, you want to get rid of it. Now email this to all friends and colleagues who live nearby. I predict a feeding frenzy. Print out the email, ask people to commit to buying something and add their name by the item. Ask them to swing by on moving day and pick it up. Simple yet effective and your friends will be delighted.

5. Have a huge garage sale for smaller items. Think of it as being paid to clean out your house and declutter your life. Again, remember to sell everything for a low price because your main aim is to get rid of stuff. If you’re not comfortable making money from selling your old clothes, toys, crockery and books then mention in the garage sale ad that all proceeds will go to a worthy cause, like Guampedia or your favourite charity.

By now your house, cupboards and garage should be looking nice and empty which will make cleaning easier. Don’t pack or store any breakables unless they have sentimental value or are not replaceable. Things like crockery and glasses can be picked up when you get there.

6. Packing. You can start packing up things you’re taking early too. Buy a big roll of bubble wrap, masking tape, cardboard corners for pictures and some tea-chests from removal company then pack a few things each night or blitz the lot in one day.

Give the kids one small box each for toys they want to keep. This will focus them on not over-packing and on getting rid of everything they don’t need any more. Tell them you’ll use some of the proceeds from selling their old stuff to fund a great family outing from your new home.

7. Moving day. When your friends come round to collect all the stuff they bought offer them all the crockery and glasses you needed until the last moment. If they don’t want it ask them to drop it off at a charity shop for you. They’ll be so pleased with the great deals they got from you they’ll be happy to oblige. Finally have a good clean up or use some of your garage sale money to hire a cleaner.

Boom! You’re out of there.

With less clutter tying you down, the world is your oyster. Just imagine if you were really good and got rid of it all, you’d be free as a bird.

If you’re like me you’ll enjoy the process of clearing out and moving house. Plus, it’s great knowing that your friends will think of you every time they open that beautiful old trunk you spent weeks restoring.

So you thought moving would be stressful? No way. Just adopt these zen habits before making a move and debunk the myth that moving house is stressful forever.

Read more from Annabel Candy at her blog, Get In the Hot Spot, a virtual treasure trove of inspiration, information and idiosyncrasies for people who want to live their dream. Or make her day and keep yourself updated on the latest articles, by subscribing to the free RSS feed.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Karol Gajda of Ridiculously Extraordinary.

“Is that all your stuff?”

While embarking on my current 100+ day sojourn I’ve been asked that question almost daily. Most people take more stuff for a 3 day weekend break than I’ve taken on this long trip.

If you’ve struggled to pack what you need in a carry-on I will show you the light. It’s not difficult and you don’t have to do everything at once. Remember the old cliché, slow and steady wins the race.

1) The first step to minimalist travel is to use a smaller carry-on.

If you don’t have enough room to pack all your stuff you’ll be forced to eliminate the unnecessary.

Personally, I use a 32L backpack, the Deuter Futura 32. If you can’t grasp the small size of a 32 liter pack, it’s about the same volume as most school backpacks.

I also carry a small messenger bag just large enough to fit a paperback book, an iPod, a small bag of almonds, and my Asus Eee 1000HE, a 10″, 3 pound netbook PC.

I can actually fit all of my things in my backpack, but the messenger bag is great to take out while exploring during the day.

The biggest benefit of a backpack vs a rolling carry-on is a backpack is much easier to carry around.

2) No matter how long your trip, pack no more than 3 shirts in neutral colors so everything matches everything else.

This way you never have to think about what to wear. If your shirts, pants, and jacket always match you simply wear whatever is clean.

I have 2 black T shirts, 1 orange T shirt, and 1 pair of khaki colored convertible pants (which I obviously wear on the plane and everywhere else).

In case it gets cold, I also have a black long-sleeved shirt in addition to my black jacket.

As for shoes, 1 pair of black shoes to wear and 1 pair of flip flops (in my case, Vibram FiveFingers) to pack.

Dark colors are also better for visible cleanliness reasons. If you spill sauce on light colored clothing it stands out. Unfortunately I couldn’t find dark colored convertible pants that fit me (I’m 6′5″), so I had to settle on khaki.

3) Multi-use soap minimizes your liquids considerably.

Dr Bronner’s organic fair-trade liquid soap can be used to wash your body, shampoo your hair, brush your teeth, and clean your clothes. Buy it in large bottles and fill smaller 3 ounce airline-approved bottles to pack in your carry-on.

3 ounces of Dr Bronner’s soap lasts me about 4 weeks and yes, I use it for everything.

If Dr Bronner’s isn’t available in your area you have 2 options:

First, check out your local health food store and ask them if they carry organic vegetable based soap. This will be similar to Dr Bronner’s.

Second, every outdoor/camping store I’ve been to carries something called camper’s (or camping) soap. This soap is also a good alternative to Dr Bronner’s.

4) Wash clothes in the sink.

Limiting your clothing to just 3 T-shirts means you’ll have to do laundry every few days. Wash them in the bathroom sink (using Dr Bronner’s or similar soap) and hang them up to dry overnight with an elastic clothesline. A common elastic clothesline is the Rick Steves brand available on Amazon and at most outdoors stores.

Your clothes will be ready by morning. If anything is still slightly damp in the morning wear it anyway as it will dry quickly. Read more: Wash
your clothes in a bag like I do.

5) If worst comes to worst, buy it.

Pack the bare minimum, but be prepared to buy what you need if you forget or can’t pack something. Unless you’re heading to the middle of nowhere, you will be able to find whatever it is you’re looking for.

Travel is supposed to be fun. If you’re bogged down with luggage it can be a real drag. Who likes lugging suitcases up stairs, escalators, elevators, and around town?

Packing light makes travel simple, so you can focus on having a good time, and not on how you’re going to avoid paying airline checked baggage fees. :)

Karol Gajda blogs about Freedom, Health, Travel, and Life at RidiculouslyExtraordinary.com. To read more about his quest to help 100 people achieve Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you like this post, please Digg it!


—
Elsewhere:

• On mnmlist: The beauty of small and The 400-word promise

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

Great news for you Firefox minimalists: have you always wanted Minimalist Gmail in one click? There’s an extension for that.

After my post on creating a Minimalist Gmail experience using Greasemonkey scripts, programmer and artist Matt Constantine worked hard to create an amazing Firefox extension that did what I was looking for and a lot more: The Minimalist Gmail Firefox Extension.

You can install this extension and not worry about installing Greasemonkey or any of the many user scripts I detailed in my previous post.

This simple extension creates a barely-noticeable label in the top right corner that you click on to give you options to hide:

• The entire Gmail header, including all the links across the top, the Gmail logo, the search box, and other clutter at the top.
• The footer, which is a bunch of small links across the bottom of Gmail.
• All the ads that show up to the right of your email message — hiding ads gives wider screen space to your messages.
• Non-essential things in your sidebar, including the chat box and invite box. If you have other gadgets in your sidebar enabled, you can disable them in Gmail’s settings.
• Almost everything in the Inbox view, including the lines separating messages, buttons along the bottom, most buttons and links across the top.

You decide which elements to hide, but if you check all the options, the result is a very satisfying uncluttered Gmail. The best email program just got beautiful.

For those who normally use the buttons, Matt and I both recommend enabling the keyboard shortcuts and learning them. You can do all the things you do with the buttons, but faster, and it only takes a few minutes to learn them.

If you’re interested in reading more on how I use Gmail, the minimalist way, check out the steps I use at the bottom of my previous post.

I’d like to give a big “thank you” to Matt for creating this extension. Check out his site or follow him on Twitter.

If you liked this post, please bookmark it on Delicious. Thanks my friends.
—
Elsewhere:

• On mnmlist: On owning nothing

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

There’s a concept in programming called “feature creep” — when a software developer continually adds one feature after another because “wouldn’t it be nice” and “why not” and “isn’t it cool” and “some users asked for it”.

The end result is often a bloated program that tries to do everything but ends up being not very good at any of it — and hogs your system resources, crashes, and has a complicated interface.

Feature creep is a bad thing in programming, and it’s a bad thing in our personal lives as well.

We all have feature creep in our lives. It’s a part of the modern world.

Think about how life was like only 20 years ago — no one was using the Internet (basically), we didn’t have IM or email or Twitter or blogs or any of the other complications we have today. And 50 years ago, no one had personal computers, caller ID, cable TV, fax machines, washing machines, CD players. Go back 100 years, a thousand, and then ten thousand, and you’ll see how many features have been added into our lives.

Think about when you started out as an adult: you might have had basically nothing, including no debt (until you got that first student credit card, car loan and perhaps student loan), no furniture, no house full of stuff, no long to-do list. Now, this might not be the ideal life (you also might have had no means to do anything, or a solid career, or skills) … but you had a fresh slate. No features was a negative, but there was also no bloat.

Some of you might still be at that point — so let this be a cautionary tale.

Those of you who are 10 or 20 or more years beyond that point know that life isn’t that simple anymore — at least, not for most of us. Life tends to add features as we go along, and as they come out into the marketplace.

We now have all the Internet technology we mentioned above, but there’s more. There’s debt and all kinds of payments to make. There’s kids and all the things that come with that (an amazing array of features, good and bad). There’s more responsibilities and commitments and a more crowded schedule.

We’re not bored, and we have more means, and a career, likely. But these features bring much more: burdens, and an overloaded schedule, and conflicts that can lead to crashes. Headaches we don’t need.

The solution to feature creep in our lives:

1. Start from a blank slate.
2. Only add the features you really use and love.
3. Slowly implement the reduction in the code of your life.
4. Avoid future feature creep.

Let’s look at these steps.

Step 1. Start from a blank slate.
I’m not saying you should abandon your home and cars and family and job and go live in a cave. I’m saying take out a fresh sheet of paper (or a blank text file — but do NOT use Microsoft Word) and re-image your life. From a blank canvas.

Imagine your life had nothing in it. We’re going to be bolder than Microsoft and Adobe and do what they need to do: abandon software that has become bloated over a decade or two of feature creep, and start our code from scratch.

You might also make a list of everything you have in your life now: job, commitments, goals, activities, clubs, hobbies, meetings, relationships, technology, possessions. Anything that takes up your time and space and mental energy. These are the things we’re putting on the table. They are going to be tossed out if they don’t survive the next section.

Step 2. Only add the features you really use and love.
What do you want in your life? Focus on fewer features done well.

What is your ideal life? Your ideal day? What do you want to do, for work and play and love?

Look at the list you made in the first section — what do you want to keep? Don’t keep them because they’re nice, or have sentimental value. Keep them because they’re a part of the life you want.

Pick only a few things. This will allow you to have the space — time and physical space — to really enjoy them, to do them well.

Step 3. Slowly implement the reduction in the code of your life.
You probably can’t just toss out your old life and implement the newly re-imagined life. Unfortunately. It takes time to get out of commitments, to make the big changes that are required to get to this new life.

But it can be done, slowly, gradually, over time. Not overnight.

You can do some things right away: go through your home and toss out stuff you don’t want. You have control over that. You can also call or email people to get out of commitments, projects, meetings, jobs you don’t want and don’t absolutely need at the moment.

Other things can be done in the coming weeks. Slowly find ways to get out of tough commitments. Let others fade away.

Still others will take more time: changing houses, jobs, getting rid of cars, moving to a new place, getting out of debt. I’ve done all these, but it didn’t happen immediately. It takes a decision to make an eventual change, an awareness of opportunities as they arise, and the will to carry out the change.

Step 4. Avoid future feature creep.
Let’s say you simplify the features in your life in the next couple of weeks, and eventually get to a life of few but great features. What’s to stop feature creep from insinuating itself again?

Nothing except your awareness, and constant vigilance.

Being aware of feature creep is really the only way to combat it. Often these features come into our lives without much thought — we buy new things, agree to new projects, start using new technologies, one little thing at a time. But if we question everything, and are aware of what we’re adding and the big picture, we can say no.

Constant vigilance is simply saying no if it’s not a feature you absolutely need. Try out new features, and reject all but the best. And when you add new features, consider dropping old ones.

Revisit this issue every few months to see if you need to eliminate unnecessary code in your life.

—
Elsewhere:

• On mnmlist.com: You already have it all (or how to beat advertising)

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

The word “drama” has taken on an interesting meaning in recent years, beyond the performance form of fiction it’s traditionally signified: “making a big deal over something unnecessarily”.

It’s about making a big production of something, when you could simply get on with things.

Interestingly, the word “drama” comes from the Greek word for “action”, which in itself derives from a word that means “to do”. And doing turns out to be the answer for unnecessary “drama” (which, by the way, you would be wise to save for your mama or other such parental figure, according to popular television).

What’s the problem with drama? For one, as the urban definition implies, it’s unnecessary. There’s no need for histrionics when you can talk about and deal with things calmly. There’s no need to get overly emotional when you can breathe, release the tensions, and focus on being happy, now, in the moment.

It complicates things, makes a big deal of little things, and ignores the little things that should be a big deal: little things like simple pleasures, and gratitude, and the simple wonderful existence of life.

Drama makes life harder. If you lose your job, you can go into a depression (perhaps understandably) and lose your home and have a hard time finding a job again — often because of the depression. But if instead you stay calm, perhaps take the view that this is a fresh start and a way to pursue the dream you’ve never had the time to pursue, look at it as a way to learn new skills and reinvent yourself … things won’t be so hard.

If you have gotten fat, instead of making a big deal about it, go outside for a walk, and make it a simple daily habit (perhaps gradually turning it into a jog). And then just start eating fresher foods — fruits and veggies and beans and nuts — rather than unhealthy foods. Start cooking for yourself instead of eating fast food. The drama will only serve to get you depressed and fatter. Simply getting on with it will solve the problem, rather easily if you don’t make a big deal of it.

How to Stop the Drama
So when you feel yourself getting worked up about something — a coworker not pulling his weight, a spouse who isn’t living up to your expectations, a daughter who isn’t doing as well at school as you’d like — stop the drama.

Breathe. Let it go. Breathe in, taking in the peace of the world. Breathe out, and let the tensions and frustrations flow out of you. Repeat until the drama is gone.

And then simply be, in the moment, right now. When we get worked up about something, it’s usually about something that has already happened (in the past) or something that might happen, that’s coming up (in the future). Forget about all that right now (you can reflect on it later, when you’re calmer and dispassionate). Right now, focus on what you’re doing. This might be sitting in front of a computer, reading. Or walking. Or drinking a glass of water. Washing dishes. Driving. That’s what you’re doing, in the moment. That’s all you should think about. As you feel your mind returning to the past or the future, return it gently to what you’re doing right now. It takes practice.

Simply get on with it. Do what you need to do to calmly address the situation. Deal with it, in as simple a manner as possible. Forget all the complications — just do.

Overwhelmed with too much to do? Breathe, focus on what you are doing right now, and just focus on getting that done.

Tired of your horrible job? Breathe, focus on now, and do what needs to be done to deal with it.

Annoyed by someone? Let it go. Focus on what you’re doing, right now. And just get on with it.

If you start getting worked up again, start back at the first step.

Also, your mother probably doesn’t need your drama either, just fyi.
—
Elsewhere:

• On Zen Family Habits: How to Be a Minimalist with Kids
• On mnmlist.com: The art of brief emails

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint Exupery

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

Most productivity blogs and books will teach you how to do more, to get more done, to be more productive.

I want to teach you to do less, to get less done, to be less productive.

And while I’ve written about it before, I think it’s time we take a look at how this can really change your work life, and your life as a whole.

Doing less is not about being lazy (though being lazy is a good start) — it’s about focusing on quality rather than quantity. It’s about getting off the hamster wheel of productivity, so that you can create something great rather than just being busy.

Let’s take a few examples:

• A furniture maker can mass-produce a ton of cheap furniture that will fall apart within a year. Another craftsman might produce way fewer pieces of furniture, but make them beautifully and solidly, so that they’ll last for generations. If he makes them well enough, they might even be sought out and remembered for their great design.
• A programmer can write tens of thousands of lines of code, and produce a lot of software that works. A less productive coder can write a tenth of the lines, perhaps even editing down what she writes so that there’s less code, but they’re better written. This small program might be the most useful thing on many people’s computers, flawless code that just works.
• A writer can churn out lots of words (hundreds of thousands, if not millions), but have his work read by relatively few. Another writer can write a small but powerful blog post or ebook, and have the post be spread by thousands of people.

In each case, the person produced less, but focused on quality. The impact of the smaller work was higher, and thus the time worked was better spent.

I’d argue that by focusing on quality, you could work less and still have a higher impact. I’ve done this in my life — by cutting back on my work hours, I actually get less done but have a higher impact.

I should note: this takes courage, to do less. You have to shed all the old ideas of working harder and working more and being more productive. You have to forget about what others thing about your work habits, and instead think about the impact the work has on the world and your life. You have to change the way you do things, and that’s never easy.

But it’s worth the effort.

Here are some ways this philosophy can change your life and work:

1. Less hectic, busy schedule, less stress, more peace. Doing less leaves free to schedule less, leave more space in your schedule, work at a more human pace.
2. More ability to focus, to find Flow, to work in the moment. When you are doing too much, you are constantly switching from one task to another, constantly interrupted, constantly distracted. Do less, clear away distractions, single-task.
3. Work has more impact and spreads further and wider. When you do too much, your work is spread thinner, you have lower quality, and people won’t spread your work or give you awards for low-quality work.
4. More pride in your work, which feels good. Feels awesome, actually, to create something worth putting your name on.
5. People appreciate higher quality. Customers rave. Readers enthuse. Reviewers glow. Bosses promote.
6. More time for family and loved ones. Not a small benefit. Be sure that if you do less, you use the saved time for something important. Like quiet time for the ones you love.
7. More time for other things you enjoy. I use my time for exercise, or reading, and of course my family.
8. Free yourself up to create amazing things. Creating is hard to do when you’re busy and distracted. By doing less, you can create something great.

How to Do Less

I almost didn’t include this section, as to me it seems obvious: you just … do less. But I realize it’s not obvious to everyone, so I’ll share a few tips (many are familiar to long-time readers):

• Slowly cut back on non-essential commitments.
• Have fewer meetings.
• Say no to requests, as much as possible, so you can focus on doing something great.
• Cut out distractions, especially the Internet.
• Single-task and focus.
• Churn out a shitty first draft, then edit.
• Edit some more. Make it beautiful and minimal.
• Make it something you will be proud to claim credit for.
• When you find yourself doing busy-work, stop, put it off, find ways to cut that out of your life.
• Whatever blocks you from doing your great work, kill it.
• Set limits on how many things you do each day.
• Focus on the most important tasks first, before you get distracted.
• Set limits on your work hours.

It won’t happen overnight. Change gradually, but surely.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.” - E.F. Schumacker

—
In other news:

• As I announced on Twitter yesterday, I’m moving to San Francisco. Read about why.
• Three recent posts from mnmlist.com: Clutter is procrastination; Buying is not the solution; Revolt: get free from the tyranny of the news & the need to stay updated.
• My post on Write To Done: Create something new in the world.

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” - Pablo Picasso

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

Sometimes I lounge lazily in bed, in the middle of the day, with a couple of my kids and just abandon my worldly concerns, and just play.

Or I’ll sit and just watch them play, pretending they’re superheros or princesses or playing house or shooting each other with stick guns.

It never fails to leave me with a sense of wonder, of pure joy, of a return to innocence and a simpler time.

As grown ups, we’ve lost this childlike sense of life. And that’s actually a sad thing.

It’s not just about happiness and innocence either — being more childlike also helps us to be more creative, more imaginative, more innovative and open to worlds of possibilities.

Consider: as children, we are naturally imaginative, curious, able to play without a worry in our minds. Some qualities of young children that happen naturally:

• they live in the present
• they have no concerns about money, productivity, or being cool
• there are no limits to their imagination, except what they’ve been exposed to
• they play and lose themselves in play
• they create with abandon
• they are endlessly curious, and ask questions … without end
• they love showing off to their parents

We could learn a lot from children. Sure, they have qualities we might not want, but in my eyes, they are already perfect. We don’t need to mold them into people, we need to be more like them.

We lose this childlike nature, the nature we’re born with, because of society — it has certain institutions and systems in place that beat childishness out of us, so we can be more productive citizens and consumers. I think it’s unfortunate.

We shouldn’t abandon all responsibilities, but we can learn a lot from children and be more like them in some ways.

How to be childlike
We must first acknowledge that no change is instantaneous, that any change worth keeping takes time. But you can start today.

Start by deciding to abandon caution and to give this a try. Start by identifying the qualities of children you’d like to emulate: curiosity, play, living in the moment, abandoning worries, imagination, creativity, pure joy.

Observe children. Watch how they play, how they live, how they create, how they ask questions. Sure, sometimes they do dumb things like throw tantrums, but even in that you can see their pure abandonment of everything but what is happening to them right now. Watch and learn.

Play with children. If you have some of your own, great. If not, play with children of friends and family. Lose yourself in the play. Be a dinosaur, or a gorilla, or a villain. Have a joyous time. Make them squeal in delight, and feel free to do the same yourself.

Talk with children. Ask them questions. Answer theirs. Don’t talk down to them with baby talk, but don’t be too grownup either.

Play by yourself. Go outside and run around, jump, slide, kick a ball around, pretend. Forget about who might be watching.

Create like a child. Don’t be constrained with what people expect, what you’re used to. Be wild and have fun. Imagine that things can be different, that there are no limitations, and see what happens. Most of your childlike drawings will be tossed in the trash, but some might be put up on the fridge.

Be curious like a child. Look at things with a child’s eye, and ask questions you’ve never asked before, explore with a beginner’s mind. Don’t be afraid to ask why, and what if, and why not?

Live in the moment. Forget about all you have to do. Forget about what happened yesterday, or that conversation you had. Forget about that meeting that’s coming up, or those deadlines. Just do, and be.

See the world with new eyes. It is a wondrous place, a miracle happening every second, a source of immense fascination that can knock you on your ass if you let it. You are a miracle, and every moment you have is a gift. What will you do with that gift?

And last, if you have children, let them be childlike. Stop trying to make them grow up. Stop trying to shape them, criticize them, make them your own piece of clay, as Marvin Gaye said. Let them be, and enjoy the beautiful way they already are.

“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they’re looking for ideas.” - Paula Poundstone

“Simplicity, clarity, singleness: these are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy.” - Richard Halloway

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

Yes, I know it’s ironic it’s not just one page or one sentence … but I’ve just finished writing a new ebook I hope you’ll enjoy: The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life.

I could have made it a sentence – “Eliminate the unnecessary” – but I tried to make it useful, and include chapters on different problems that people will face on their journey to a more minimalist life.

What will this ebook will help you with:

* Clearing clutter and reducing your possessions
* Figuring out what’s necessary, and how to be content with less
* Simplifying your schedule, your work, and living a less stressful life
* Creating a minimalist workspace, home, computer, financial life, diet and fitness program
* How to go paperless and digitize your life

The ebook is $9.95, is Uncopyrighted, and proceeds (up to $5,000) will go to benefit the non-profit Guampedia.com (more on Guampedia).

Buy The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life here.

Here’s a listing of the chapters:

• A small irony
• Notes on using this book
• What is a minimalist life?
• Overall minimalist principles
• How to become a minimalist
• Contentedness
• Rethinking necessities
• Simplify what you do
• Clearing clutter
• Minimalist home
• Minimalist workspace
• Minimalist computer
• Going paperless, digitizing
• Minimalist travel
• Wardrobe and grooming
• Minimalist food
• Minimalist fitness
• Minimalist finances
• Finding simplicity with kids
• Dealing with non-minimalist loved ones
• Minimalism is the end of organizing
• Step lightly upon this world: on sustainability
• FAQs
• Other resources

And here’s a preview of the first few chapters, so you can see what the ebook is like. As you’ll notice, the pages are pretty sparse, so while 104 pages on minimalism might seem like a lot, the chapters are actually pretty short.

The ebook is in PDF format, is DRM-free, is $9.95 and again is Uncopyrighted. I don’t plan to offer it in different formats.

It’s my hope that this book will help you live a simpler, happier life!

Buy The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life here.

Other ebooks:

• Zen To Done
• The Essential Motivation Handbook
• Zen Habits Handbook for Life
• The Power of Less (print book)

Affiliate program
Bloggers: If you’re interested in selling this ebook on your blog, you can earn a 50% affiliate commission for each sale.

Here’s how:

1. Go to this e-junkie.com page, sign in or register for an account, and sign up as a Zen Habits affiliate.
2. Once you sign up, you’ll be able to get the affiliate code for any of my ebooks. Select the title of this ebook (or one of the others if you wish) and get the code.
3. Do post, review, or put an ad on your site. Be sure to use your affiliate link code when you link to the ebook.
4. If any of your readers click through your link and buy the ebook, it will be logged. I’ll pay your affiliate share by the end of the first week of the month following your sales.

You can also use this 125×125 ad image from Cory of Simple Marriage:

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” - Charles Mingus

Creativity is often made out to be a nebulous, messy, complicated, difficult thing, and it can be.

But it doesn’t have to be.

The judicious application of simplicity can help someone to create, whether that’s writing, creating art, designing, teaching, starting a small business, or in some other way making ideas take shape into reality.

People who want to create are hampered by complications — tools that are too complicated, projects that are too overwhelming, the distractions of the modern world, too many cooks, too many options, too busy.

Simplify, and many of these problems go away.

Let’s take a brief look at how simplicity can help solve some of the problems of creating:

1. Ideas. It’s hard to find ideas, right? Not necessarily. Simplify things: find vastly different ideas and combine them in a new way. This isn’t the only way to get ideas, but it’s simple and useful.

2. Ideas, again. Instead of finding ways to do more than everyone else, find ways to do less. If your competitor has a coffee shop with a wide array of beverages and food items, narrow it down: offer just one kind of coffee, but make it amazing. “We sell only one thing: the best cup of coffee you’ve ever tasted.” If you’re a blogger competing against writers who cover a vast variety of topics, cover just one, but do it better than anyone else.

3. Clear distractions. One of the biggest obstacles to anyone who wants to create these days is the distractions of the Internet, of email and IM, of meetings and people coming up to us to talk to us, of phone calls and Blackberries and iPhones. Clear these out of the way, so you can focus on creating.

4. Remove complications. Complications get in the way of creating. Find ways to simplify projects, simplify processes, remove barriers, narrow things down, remove choices, but increase focus.

5. Focus on one project till you’re done. This goes against how most people work, and in fact I have a hard time doing it sometimes, as I get excited about several projects at once. But it’s how I’ve been working recently and I can tell you, there’s no better way to create. Clear everything else off your schedule, at least for the moment, and focus on one project. Keep the focus small, so the project doesn’t take more than a week (if it does, break it into more than one project). Then just focus on that one project, until you’re done. It feels great. Now move on to the next.

6. Use one simple tool. For me, I just choose one text editor to write (usually either WriteRoom or TextEdit). The simpler the tool, the better, because full featured tools end up being distracting and you want to fiddle with all the options. A pen and pad are also great. If you must use more than one tool, keep them small and simple.

7. When you’re overwhelmed, focus on less. If the project is too big or complicated or just hard, narrow it down. If you must write a book, don’t focus on the whole book, or even a whole chapter. Just write a section — something you can do in a few hours or less. If you’re starting a new business, don’t worry about getting the whole thing up and running — what’s the smallest amount you can offer at first, the smallest unit you can create? Focus on that.

8. Do just a little each day. If you can write for 20-30 minutes a day, or take a few photos a day, it won’t be long before you’ve created something great. This tip is for those who think they don’t have time to create. It doesn’t have to take all day, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. Just clear 20 minutes and create — do nothing else during that time.

9. Be in the moment, let creativity flow through you. When you are creating, feel free to be messy and don’t worry about perfection and just get it out. The best way to do this is to forget about the past and future, and just focus on the moment. Pour yourself into creating, and let it flow.

10. Whittle. Once you’ve created that crappy first draft, and just let everything pour out, it’s time to edit and whittle. Get it down to simple. See if you can cut out everything extraneous.

11. Show up. The simple truth to creating. You just gotta show up. It might or might not happen, you might or might not create something great, but you sure won’t create a thing if you don’t show up.

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

I’ve been running a Minimalist Gmail setup lately, stripped of nearly everything but, you know, emails … and I’m in love with its simplicity.

There’s something pure about having nothing but the essentials.

Now, some of you will recall a couple of other posts I did, and let’s quickly review them for background:

1. Not long ago, I did a post on How to Make Gmail Your Ultimate Productivity Center. This was Gmail fully loaded, with gadgets for Google Calendar, Google Docs, delicious, Twitter, and much more. This was good, and I still recommend it to most people who want one place for everything they do.

2. Even less ago, I boldly announced I was Killing Email and ditching my inbox. A dramatic announcement, I know, from someone who has been such a Gmail fanboy for at least a few years.

So, two things: one, I haven’t completely killed email. I still use Gmail, though not as often. I have moved most of my communication to Twitter, Google Docs, a wiki, and Basecamp. But I still do email, a little. It’s a hard thing to kill, but maybe drastically reduced email usage is OK with me. It’s certainly less stressful.

Two, when I do use Gmail, lately, I am bothered by all the clutter. I removed all the gadgets, and still too much. Google is known for its simplicity, but I really wanted to strip out not only ads but chat and the navigation menus at the top and more. So I did.

I’ve used Greasemonkey for Firefox and some great user scripts, listed below, to achieve this. I thought of rewriting Gmail’s CSS, but user scripts are much easier. It didn’t take long — just Googled every little thing I wanted to do, and found others had already solved the problems, one at a time.

Here’s how I’ve made Gmail into a minimalist inbox:

1. Fire and Grease. First, be sure you’re running Firefox with Greasemonkey installed. I love the minimalism of Google Chrome — been running both the dev version and latest Chromium builds — but unfortunately it can’t do what Greasemonkey can, at the moment. So I mostly just use Firefox for Gmail now.

2. Remove gadgets. First thing I removed was gadgets — go to Settings, then Gadgets, and remove any you have installed. I had Twitter and Delicious. Then I went to Labs under Settings, and disabled “Multiple Inboxes” and the Google Docs and Google Calendar gadgets, as well as the option to move the Chat box to the right side of Gmail. Things were starting to get cleaned up!

3. Hide labels, chat, footer. I really wanted to remove chat but couldn’t figure it out. Also, the clutter in Gmail’s footer was bothering me. So I found this brilliant user script: Gmail 3: Hide Labels, Chat and Footer. Install it in a click, and voila! Lovely.

4. Remove ads. Ads on the right side of email messages also bothered me. Found a script to do this: Gmail Ad Remover. Added benefit of maximizing your screen space for messages.

5. Remove stars. It’s a minor thing, but the stars are unnecessary for me. I don’t use them for task management (did at one time), so what’s the point? Gmail Remove Stars to the rescue.

6. Gmail logo and searchbar. Found Gmail toggle searchbar area script. Cleans things up nicely. You can always toggle the search area back on if you need it, but most of the time when I’m processing email, responding, I don’t need this.

7. Menu navigation bar. This was the most annoying. I couldn’t figure out how to remove the navigation menus that run across the top of Gmail. Then found the Gmail Real Estate script. It actually toggles not only the navigation menus, but the search area too. This somewhat duplicates the logo and searchbar script’s function above, but I’ve found they actually work nicely together, allowing you to show just a minimal navigation bar if you like, or whatever you feel like showing at the moment. I normally have everything minimized.

Updated: 8. Clean up rows and remove the “inbox is empty” message! Matt Constantine responded to this post by writing two excellent Greasemonkey scripts. The first, called Gmail Clean Rows, removes the lines and other clutter from your inbox’s list of emails. The second is called Gmail Empty is Empty, and removed a small annoyance of mine — the message that shows up when your inbox is empty that says “No new mail! Want to read updates from your favorite sites? Try Google Reader”. Now the empty inbox is really empty, which is lovely lovely.

Updated: 9. Remove extraneous buttons. Matt Constantine took it a step further, at my request, and wrote Gmail Inbox with Less Buttons, removing all the buttons above and below the inbox, except archive, report spam and delete. This is perfect, because I don’t have a need for the move-to, label or more actions drop-down buttons, or the refresh link, or the Select links below all the buttons. Your needs may vary.

And that’s it. It might sound complicated, but basically it’s turning off some options in Gmail’s settings, and then installing a few user scripts. It should just take a few minutes. See the before and after pics below.

How I Use Gmail, the Minimalist Way
Now that everything is stripped down — no gadgets, no chat, no labels or stars — I just process and reply to email, and empty my inbox. Here’s how:

1. Use keyboard shortcuts. See this list if you don’t already know them. Pressing a key such as “c” or “r” or “a” to do email messages, or “j” or “k” or “x” or “y” to navigate and select and archive, is much faster than using the mouse. I can process very quickly using shortcuts.

2. Remove all unnecessary incoming email streams. Very important. Unsubscribe from all newsletters, all ads sent to you from businesses, all notifications from other services you use. Filter out messages from people who just forward jokes or chain mail. I no longer publish my email address, and give people other options for getting the info they want, so only my closest friends or business partners email me. Leaves the inbox relatively uncluttered.

3. Process quickly. Just run through your inbox, processing like lightning. Each email requires instant action: archive or trash, reply then archive, put on your task list (see next item) and archive. Or just do the task now, and archive. Those are the only options. Should take 10 minutes tops.

4. Tasks. I use a separate task list these days (Anxiety, a very simple Mac app) to make a quick note of any tasks, so that I can archive an email without needing it in the inbox as a reminder. Gmail Tasks is another good option — I don’t use it these days because I keep my email closed most of the time, and want my small task list open when I need it without having to open Gmail.

5. Short messages. Keep things short, and it doesn’t take long to reply. I try to do it in 3-5 sentences. I rarely go over this.

Before and After Pics
Took some screenshots to illustrate the changes. Click the thumbnails to see full images. Update: I’ve changed the “after” screenshot to illustrate the new scripts noted above by Matt Constantine.

Edit: The Firefox theme you see in the screenshots is Chromifox Basic, modeled after Google Chrome. I didn’t mention this above, but I removed most of the toolbars and icons from Firefox awhile back, to make Firefox as minimalist as I can. You can do this in the View->Toolbars menu, unselecting toolbars and removing icons as you please.

Before:

After:

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