“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” - Steve Jobs
I want you to imagine your closet. Think about how big it might be and how much is in it. Is it organized, or overflowing with garments? Now, visualize specific items. Do you have a pair of pants you haven’t worn in a while, or a shirt that’s just a little small so you keep it in the back? How about that old sweater that’s ugly as sin but you keep it because your grandmother gave it to you on a holiday? Or those pair of shoes you keep even though the right sole is about to fall off. Most of us have thought about these questions but rarely say them aloud, much less consider answering them.
This is how our lives get cluttered. We put off getting rid of a shirt here, a pair of pants there while still buying new things to replace the old stuff--the stuff we were supposed to get rid of. Sooner or later, our closets are one clothing item away from exploding all over the place.
And it’s just not limited to clothes. We often have too many things in general, whether they be books, CDs, DVDs, gadgets, toys (if we have children), cars, and just junk! We have become a society where we have so much stuff that we pay people to house our excess stuff for us, in the form of “self-storage.” Even though we have all this stuff, we don’t seem to be getting any happier or feel more content with our lot in life. In fact, the deluge of possessions often gives us anxiety and uncertainty about our purpose in life.
There’s also a lot of non-physical things that get in our way, from extra work commitments and constant social media updates to unnecessary credit card bills and unhealthy relationships. We take on so many things that the most important of them get lost in the shuffle. I know this is how it was for me (and still is to a certain extent), but I’ve learned about a philosophy of life that has completely reshaped my thinking about what it means to live well. It’s a lifestyle focused less on the amount of things, tasks, and relationships we accrue and more on the quality and intentionality of things, tasks, and relationships we bring into our lives. In short, it’s about finding what is essential for you to be the best version of yourself that you can be.
To share this story fully, I have to take you back. Two years ago, I was at a real low point in my life. I was over 300 pounds, dealing with newly-formed health problems, and unhappy with my professional and personal lives. I felt like my mind was spinning in a million directions. I always seemed to be busy, but not really getting anything done. Additionally, I seemed to keep acquiring more things, but I wasn’t really happier as a result of them.
It was then that I discovered a book that would transformed how I viewed my life and what I wanted. The book was called Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by business thinker Greg McKeown. McKeown argues that in order to make your “highest possible contribution,” you need to eliminate the nonessentials in your life. This means saying no to some requests you get, potential projects you’re considering, and things you could buy. More importantly, it means deeply and thoughtfully considering everything you say yes to, thereby living a more intentional life.
In the book, he tells the story of the legendary designer Dieter Rams. Rams worked for Braun and was designing a new style of turntable. Before Rams, most record players were enormous machines built into wood--more like furniture in the home rather than an intentional piece of sonic equipment. He had a revolutionary idea that changed record players forever. Instead of using ornate wood and clunky equipment, he stripped the turntable down to its essentials, designing a unit with a white base, an acrylic cover, and wood paneling on the sides. It was known as the SK55, and it upended how turntables were traditionally designed. Within a decade or two, most if not all turntables looked like it.
Rams’s core philosophy could be summed up in one phrase in German, “weniger aber besser.” In English, it translates to “less, but better.” This hit me like a ton of bricks. It was then that I realized that I didn’t live with much intentionality. I would wear whatever was handy, buy books I wouldn’t read or DVDs I wouldn’t watch, and eat whatever made me feel good rather than what improved my well-being. I would say yes to almost every opportunity or project in front of me. I was impulsive, not reflective. As a result, I was doing so much more but of less quality and with less meaning to my life.
So after weeks of planning and discussions with my wife, therapist, and family, in May of 2018 I decided to do what I called a “life declutter.” A life declutter is exactly what it sounds like: you get rid of the unnecessary things and commitments in your life and strip your existence down to its essentials. First, I quit secular activism. I resigned from my website, Reason Revolution, and quit involving myself in online discussions, podcasts, and blogs. I had devoted so much of my free time to these pursuits but wasn’t really making a meaningful contribution. There’s a million twenty-something white guys on the internet talking about atheism, so my absence didn’t mean anything.
Next, I worked on my health. I started to cut out foods and habits that hurt my body and my mind. The first and most important of these was cutting out caffeine. As someone who has lived with anxiety for years, I never realized how much caffeine had exacerbated my level of stress and physical harm. I also ingested most of my caffeine in the form of soda, specifically Coke. I would have two or three 12-ounce cans of coke every single day. I knew I couldn’t do this anymore, so I committed to getting off caffeine for good. I used a tally app in my phone to track the amount of days without caffeine, to make sure I stayed on track. I’ve been caffeine free now for over a year and it has helped me tremendously. I no longer get the awful headaches and stomach pains, I save so much money on not drinking caffeinated sodas, and I’ve lost over 75 pounds. These first steps towards finding the essentials in my life profoundly shaped everything that I would do afterward.
At this point in my journey, I had eliminated unnecessary projects, commitments, and dietary habits. What was next? It was my excess STUFF! I had so much stuff. I had lots of clothes I didn’t wear, books I would never read, trinkets that just took up space, and junk out in our storage. My wife, Kalie, also got interested in decluttering our space around this time. We had moved into a smaller apartment to save money and realized we just had way too much stuff. So last summer and fall became the great decluttering of our home. I got rid of bookcases-worth of books, the vast majority of my wardrobe, and nearly all my DVDs. I also got rid of the random junk: posters I’d never put up again, little toys and knick-knacks I didn’t like anymore, and paper. So. Much. Paper!
Decluttering is as much of an art as it is a skill, so there’s many different ways of doing it. First, there’s the KonMari method, developed by world-renowned “tidying expert,” Marie Kondo. Has anyone here seen her show on Netflix? It’s amazing. In each episode, she works with a family to declutter their home, helps them become better organizers, and brings a new-found purpose into their lives. The KonMari method is simple, but very effective. Kondo thinks that tackling declutter bit by bit doesn’t work. For her, the best way is put everything of a certain type (clothes, books, paper, and misc) into a huge pile on your bed or the floor. Then, you go through each item, touching it and examining it while asking a single question: Does this item spark joy? If it does, keep it. If it doesn’t, say “thank you” to the item and put it in the discard pile. I mostly used this method when I was decluttering our paper storage and my clothes. It’s perfect for items that can be easily piled up and examined.
Another method of decluttering comes from two guys, Joshua Fields-Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, who call themselves the Minimalists. Their approach involves boxes. You put everything you own into cardboard boxes, like you’re moving. Then, when you need something, you pull it out from its respective box. You do this for a month. At the end of the month, whatever you haven't removed from a box goes right out the door and to the thrift store. Now, this might be more extreme than you’re willing to go (especially when it comes to boxed-up winter clothes you won’t use if you’re decluttering in the summer, and vice versa), but it provides a deep lesson. So much of what we own is completely superfluous to our everyday lives. If we got rid of it, most if not all of it would be forgotten over time.
While Kondo has a point about doing things bit by bit, Kalie and I used a method that combined her approach with our own. We did a “room by room” method, where we went through each room in our apartment and went through everything in it. We would ask each other what we needed to keep and what we could get rid of. Certain rooms were tackled together while others were done individually. Specifically, books are my main vice while clothes and shoes are Kalie’s. With my books (and early on my DVDs), I would get rid of books that I’d read but don’t intend to read again, ones I knew I’d never read, and ones I wasn’t sure how they ended up there in the first place. I would take tote after tote to Half Price Books, getting money for my stuff that I would use towards books I really wanted or other expenses. Using this method I turned nearly seven bookcases into four. I know, four is still a lot. But these items do bring me joy (in Kondo’s view) as well as allow me to make my best possible contribution (in McKeown’s view). In other words, essentialism isn’t about getting rid of everything; it’s about getting rid of the unfulfilling and unnecessary to make room for the most important things to your life.
Beyond just the stuff you have in your life, you also need to consider what is essential in your social and family lives. I used to always say “yes” to friends and family with whatever request they asked of me. Over time, this began to backfire exponentially. People who I thought were friends weren’t exactly the kind of people who represented my values. Over the course of two years, I began to cut them out of my life and focused on the most essential relationships. First and foremost was my marriage. Kalie’s love and support is the most essential aspect of my personal life. I couldn’t be who I am without her. However, when I brought nonessential people into my life, it harmed my essential relationship with her. Removing the nonessential people reinvigorated our marriage and friendship. This reconfiguration also improved my connections with family, who I had kept more distant from me as I took on more nonessential responsibilities and relationships. When it comes to relationships, there is no perfect number-- it may be 5 or 500. Just deeply consider who the most essential people you need in your life and cultivate those relationships with the care and love you do for your most prized possessions.
So, that’s the essentialist part of this equation. Let’s move on to the humanism part. I am a Secular Humanist, which roughly means that I live without a rooting in religion or a belief in god. I consider ethical, social, scientific, and political questions with skepticism, critical thinking, and openness to new ideas and experiences. For me, belief in God is a nonessential; I live a fulfilling and moral life without that belief. However, Gods or spiritual beliefs may be essential to you. If that’s the case, I am not here to tell you you’re wrong. As Thomas Jefferson said, “. . . it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” I just ask for one indispensable thing from each person, and it’s something I constantly ask of myself. Regardless of your beliefs, there should be some collective, essential moral values not tied to any specific faith tradition or philosophical system that we should dedicate ourselves to. So long as your beliefs do not harm my capacity to live my life and do not harm our society, we can agree where it matters most and disagree on the margins where it doesn’t.
So, what are these essential moral values we should all share? It would take another lecture to fully articulate them, but I will give some of my ideas here. First is a commitment to human rights for all individuals, regardless of race, color, class, creed, sexual orientation, or gender identity. These include freedom of speech, worship, and association, protection from those who would do them harm, and basic needs for their survival. Second is a commitment to an open, democratic society where all people can flourish and live in peace. We should build bridges that connect us together, not walls that drive us apart. Third is a commitment to free and open inquiry of ideas, which ensures the flourishing of a democratic society. This means not demonizing science or a scientific consensus when it goes against your own biases, or ignoring viewpoints that challenge your own. We should have open and honest conversations about what matters to us most.
Finally, we should encourage solidarity and empathy, not selfishness and greed. Our world has been marred for far too long by politicians, businesspeople, and intellectuals who think that caring about others through a social framework is tyranny, that a healthy democracy spells death for individual initiative. This is complete balderdash. Some of the most healthy and flourishing societies are earth (Scandinavia, the Netherlands) are ones that are secular, pluralistic, and socially democratic. You don’t see them falling apart. In reality, the societies that are the most selfish and non-democratic produce poorer outcomes for their people. This is why an ethic of compassion for others should be paramount to all who seek to live better lives.
These are the values that are essential for the future of humanity. These will allow us to make the highest possible contribution, both individually and societally. I started this essay reflecting on the nonessential things that piles up around us, the things that get in the way of living our best lives. I want you to reconsider that scenario. Essentialism is as much about what you keep as it is about what you get rid of. Therefore, with every essential piece of clothing you own, with every essential book or photograph that brings you joy, with every essential relationship you cherish, and with every essential value you fight for, you accumulate a life of purpose, meaning, and love. When living essentially, things don’t pile up. They build towards something great. I know what essential to me. What’s essential to you?