Untitled Minimalism

The Secret To Experience Gifts, Valentine’s Day Edition

Robert — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:36:14 +0000

Valentine’s day is tomorrow. Of course you knew that, since it’s been promoted in every store you’ve visited since about 12:01 AM on December 26th. Depending on who you are you’ve already bought a gift for someone, don’t plan to buy a gift for someone, or were just reminded (by that first sentence) that you need to buy a gift for someone. If you’re in the third camp, hang out for five minutes and read this post – it might help you with a gift idea!

The “official” minimalist position seems to be “give experience gifts”. By “experience gifts” of course we’re talking about dinner at a restaurant, tickets to a good movie, play, or concert, a gift certificate to a spa of some sort, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course.

That being said, gifts also need to be responsive to the other person’s desires. If somebody hates movies, plays, concerts, and getting their hair done, a box of their favorite chocolate may not be an experience – but it will give them more happiness than the alternatives.

If we want to give truly great gifts though, there’s only one thing we really need to know:

The gift needs to create a memory.

That’s it. That’s the sum total of great gift giving. If you give your wife a teddy bear for Valentine’s Day, odds are it’ll be forgotten. If you dress up as a teddy bear and sing her Elvis songs (including, obviously, “Teddy Bear”), the odds of her forgetting that anytime soon will be relatively minimal. That is, unless you do that sort of thing all the time – in which case maybe a box of chocolates would be a welcome surprise!

All kidding aside, think about the holidays, birthdays, and other occasions that you really remember. Why do you remember them? In almost every case, I’m betting you can identify something unique or different about that event that triggers your memory.

Two Stories

I have two stories to illustrate – one positive, one negative.

On the negative side, when I was thirteen, sometime around Valentine’s Day, I forgot my girlfriend’s name. No, I’m not kidding, and yes, I remember the building I was in, why we were there, where I was standing, and the name of the other person involved in the conversation. I also remember attempting to surreptitiously get that other person to address my girlfriend by name. They did, and I was rescued.

On the positive side, we have a story about flowers. I don’t like giving flowers, because they’re very expensive, and they don’t last very long. When my wife and I were dating, she’d told me that her favorite flower was the calla lily. I was reading a local email list one day, and a lady had calla lilies for sale. Fake calla lilies, to be exact – the kind they sell at craft stores. She had dozens of them, and she wanted them out of her house.

So I presented my wife with a huge bouquet of 30+ fake calla lilies. She thought it was awesome, and we still have some of them decorating the living room today.

One Common Theme

I didn’t particularly enjoy forgetting my girlfriend’s name. The calla lily thing was awesome. But positive or negative, they have a common thread – they each have an element where something out of the ordinary happened.

That’s what we’re trying to create when we give a gift – an experience that the other person remembers. We’re obviously aiming more for “calla lily” than “forgetting your girlfriend’s name”, but even the bad experiences usually make funny stories a couple years after the fact.

That memory, that story, that’s what great gift giving is all about.

Care To Share?

In keeping with the story theme, I’d love to hear some of your stories. Valentine’s Day stories would be most appropriate, but any are welcome. Leave one or two in the comments!

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15 Minutes Of Ruthless Purging (Shift415)

Robert — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:29:07 +0000

A lot of people talk about “inbox zero” – that semi-mythical point where all of your inboxes are empty, your priorities and tasks are all listed somewhere in what David Allen would call a “trusted system”.

At that point, your life is organized….right?

Sure, until…well…five minutes from now. In the next five minutes you’ll get a hundred messages on your Twitter stream, a few dozen Facebook updates from friends, a text message, and half a dozen emails (mostly spam).

Assuming that you have some internal commitment to keep reasonably up-to-date on these things, this creates a backlog. Clearing backlog may give you a good feeling, but it’s generally not useful work.

With that in mind, I figure we should learn to do it as efficiently as possible. More than that, however, we should look at the things that create the backlog in the first place, and see if we can get them under control.

Today we’re going to take a look at email.

Grab An Inbox, And….

I don’t know about you, but I get hundreds of emails per day. Most of them are spam, but there are also several from clients, friends, and other bloggers. I also get payment notifications and other information via email.

For every message, I have to make a decision about what to do with it.

Spam It

If I’ve never asked to receive the message, and it’s from somebody I don’t know (and don’t want to hear from), I hit the “mark as spam” button in Gmail.

I do not, under any circumstances, use this on communications I’ve asked to receive, or newsletters I’ve subscribed to. “Mark as spam” is not a shortcut for “unsubscribe”, and it’s socially irresponsible to use it as such.

Marking messages as spam helps Gmail learn how to keep spam out of my inbox – which is one of my goals.

Unsubscribe From It

If I get an automated mailing, and I almost never read messages from that company, I try to get off their list.

The “unsubscribe” button is usually right at the top of the message, or all the way at the bottom. I unsubscribe, then try to find any other messages from that list and remove them too.

Filter It

I’m on a couple of email discussion lists. I filter those into another folder, so I can read them when (and if) I get time. They don’t have the same priority as, say, an email from a close friend.

The thing about filters is they create the potential for huge, unchecked folders full of unread messages. Filters are like storage containers in your house – occasionally useful, but heavily overused.

Every month or two I go through and purge the messages in my filter folders, to prevent them from becoming too large and unwieldy.

When it’s a toss up between filtering and unsubscribing, unsubscribing is usually the better option.

Archive It

Archiving doesn’t prevent the mail from coming in, but it does get it out of my inbox.

Sometimes it makes sense to keep a copy of a message, but there’s no sense in keeping it in my inbox. I keep copies of most business-related messages, so I can reference them later if necessary. Payment notifications also get archived.

I know people who see archiving as “the next step after reading”. That’s a crazy way to think! I don’t archive something because I’ve read it – I archive it because I believe I may need to reference it in the future.

For example, a notification of a sale at my favorite store may be appreciated when it shows up in my inbox. After the sale is over though, will I ever look at that message again? Really?

If not…

Delete It

The delete button is probably the most underused function in every email program. The things that don’t need to be kept should be tossed, for the exact same reason that unneeded items in your house should be purged.

That’s a no-brainer, right?

Oh, And I Scan My Spam

Occasionally a message I want to receive lands in my spam folder. I go through my spam folder once every day or two, and scan quickly. I look for names or subject lines that jump out at me, and if the spam filter caught something it shouldn’t have I mark them as “not spam”.

Getting Control Again

It sounds like a lot of work, and it can be – at least at first. But I can tell you from my experience that even the largest inboxes can be tamed if you take an extra fifteen minutes a day to plow through them.

I can also tell you that “under control” is a great feeling to have when it comes to your email.

What about you? Do you feel like your email is “under control”? Tell me about your email-related challenges (and successes!) in the comments!

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15 Minutes To Narrow Your Circle (Shift415)

Robert — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:49:23 +0000

I’m on Twitter and Facebook, and I finally caved to a LinkedIn invite. I have hundreds of Twitter followers, a couple hundred Facebook friends, and I’m sure sooner rather than later I’ll have dozens of people adding me to their LinkedIn networks.

But being friends with a thousand people and spamming their social media accounts so you can get something out of them isn’t really “social”, is it? If the only reason you’re my Facebook friend is because you want virtual wagon wheels for your virtual wagon in an online game, does the word “friend” even really apply?

I’ve decided I need a major pruning in my social media tree. Like many other things, this first required a mental adjustment.

Let me share the high points of that adjustment with you.

It Doesn’t Matter If I Knew Them From School

I went to a high school with two thousand people. Many of them knew who I was. I was friends with maybe a dozen people, max. Now factor in that I didn’t stay friends with everybody from high school after I graduated.

That means there are about 1,995 people from a school of 2,000 that I really have no inherent reason to be friends with on Facebook, because we’re not actually friends.

These are people that I wouldn’t recognize if I saw them at the store. I couldn’t get them to come give me a jump-start if my car battery died. If I called them on the phone to tell them about my day, they’d likely hang up on me.

These people aren’t really my friends. If that ever changes, that’ll be awesome – but for now I don’t need to see what they’re doing every minute of every day.

It Doesn’t Matter If They’re Nice People

I replied to a friend’s post about problems at the local animal shelter one day, and had a nice conversation with her and about five other people.

Shortly after that, some of the other people started sending me friend requests. I added them, because they seemed like nice enough people.

Then it happened.

My timeline was literally flooded with posts about animal shelters, irresponsible breeders, breed rescues, and a million other similar things. These people apparently have a life goal of changing the face of animal shelters nationwide.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an admirable goal. It’s a goal that I think would change the world in a positive way. But it’s not something I’m seriously passionate about, at least partly because I can’t get anywhere near an actual animal shelter without having nasty allergic reactions.

Their interests and mine don’t intersect, so I unfriended them. It’s not a matter of judging them; it’s a matter of “I don’t need to see everything going on in their lives”.

It Doesn’t Matter If They’re Family

I have uncles and cousins that I haven’t talked to in years. They don’t call me, and I don’t call them. This is a subset of the second point – their interests and mine just don’t intersect.

It Actually Doesn’t Even Matter If You’re Friends

I have at least a couple people that I’d call friends in real life that I absolutely won’t interact with online. If the person you like to hang out with on Friday nights is a complete jerk on Facebook, there’s no reason to drown in their jerkiness on a daily basis.

That’s what the “unfriend” button is for.

The Only Thing That Matters Is Meaningful Interaction

I’ve decided that the gold standard has to be meaningful interaction. This leads to a few very basic questions:

Am I friends with this person in real life?
Do we interact meaningfully online?
Are their updates meaningful to me?

For me, at least one of these questions had to be answerable with a “yes” in order to keep them.

The Great UnFriending Of 2012

Spending fifteen minutes evaluating each of your social media circles can save you both time and stress in the future. I don’t think I have to explain how you’d do this; you know the drill already.

I can tell you that when I did this with just Facebook, I managed to cut about fifty people. I plan to do it again in about a month, since it’ll give me time to focus on the people that are left and do some more thinking.

I can also tell you that being able to focus on the people that really matter is a good feeling.

I’m curious about your experiences. Have you done a serious pruning of your online friends list? If so, what were the results? If not, why not? Let me know in the comments!

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15 Minute Weight Loss – Build A Framework (Shift415)

Robert — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:33:12 +0000

On Monday we left off after determining a clear, specific “give up” goal. We’ve identified a single item that we want to eat less of. Today we’re going to tackle part two of the “Get Specific, Get A Framework, Get Momentum” plan I outlined in my earlier post. Let’s dive in!

Get A Framework

Let’s be real here. Even though you know you shouldn’t be eating that item, just cutting it out of your diet entirely isn’t a pleasant thought. That negative reaction to cutting it out, if left unchecked, can totally derail your dieting plans. You need a framework to support your plan to cut it out.

I’d suggest that, in an ideal world, that framework would do a few things:

Be Satisfying - If you’re going to eat whatever-it-is substantially less, you’re going to find yourself (at least initially) really looking forward to when you do get to eat it. This means that you want to get maximum enjoyment out of your occasional indulgence. There’s no sense in cutting your pizza consumption down to one pizza every two weeks, and then having a poor-quality pizza that you don’t enjoy!
Prevent Excessive Eating – If you’re going to stick to your schedule, you’d like to intentionally design things so that it’s hard to overeat – even if you want to.

With these goals in mind, there are three simple things you can do to create a framework that supports your goal:

Identify An Ideal - Come up with the ultimate version of whatever you’re looking to cut out. If you’re cutting out ice cream, list your absolute favorite kind of ice cream. If you’re cutting out pizza, list the crust type, toppings, and the place you get it from. You’re looking for your absolute favorite whatever-it-is here.
Bring It Into Line With Reality - If your ideal pizza is only available in New York and you live in Alaska, you’re obviously going to have to settle for something else – but settle for something else that tastes good! What’s the closest you can get to your ideal?
Sparsely Stock It - If your weakness is DiGiorno frozen pizza, keeping fifteen of them in your upright freezer might be the most frugal way to buy….but it’s setting you up for failure. If you shop for groceries every week, and you’re going to eat one pizza a week, buy the pizza on your grocery trip. It’s okay if it costs you a buck or two extra.
Have A Back-Up Plan – If the store is out of your ideal option, what are the two next-best options? It doesn’t happen often, but when you’re at home with the flu, your spouse is doing the shopping, and the store is out of your default, you won’t have to sit there and think about your options.

If you do this right, you’ll have created an environment where it’s very hard to over-consume the item, and where you get maximum enjoyment out of it everytime you do.

You’re on the road to success! The last thing we need to address is “Get Momentum”, which we’ll handle in the next post.

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15 Minute Weight Loss – The Plan Of Attack (Shift415)

Robert — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:24:35 +0000

The #1 New Year’s resolution has to be “I’m going to lose weight”. People who are die-hard gym-goers have stories about how swamped the places are in January, only to be empty again in April. No lasting change is usually made, because the cycle repeats itself the next year.

So how do we get on the path to real, lasting change? We implement the “Get Specific, Get A Framework, Get Momentum” plan I outlined in my earlier post. Let’s dive in!

The Overview

We need to define some action that we can take to help us with weight loss. Since weight loss is inextricably tied to your eating habits, that’s as good a place as any to start.

Think of the food you eat as belonging to three basic groups. There’s the food that’s really good for you (like fresh veggies), food that’s really bad for you (like triple-chocolate ice cream), and food that’s somewhere in the middle.

Before we go any further, I can already hear the objection. “Wait, nobody can agree on what’s really healthy or unhealthy – everybody tells me to eat something different!” The interesting thing is, there are “really good” and “really bad” groups that tend to be agreed upon by most health authors. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a diet that wouldn’t let you eat fresh veggies, and you’d be even harder-pressed to come up with a diet that would allow you large quantities of triple-chocolate ice cream.

There are two basic ways you can change your eating habits. You can start eating things that are really good for you, or you can stop eating things that are really bad for you. For this exercise, we’re going to focus on the latter.

Get Specific

Identify things that you eat right now, but should probably eat less of. There might be a lot of things, and that’s okay. Make as complete a list as you can.

Once you have the list, pick the one that’s likely to make the biggest difference. If you eat a pint of ice cream every day, that’s a good place to start. Soda is another. Delivered pizza is a good candidate too!

You’re going to significantly reduce your consumption of just that one item. If there are more items on the list, save the list – you can repeat this process as necessary!

Now do two simple things:

Find Your Frequency - How often do you currently eat the item on your list? Once a day? Once a week? Make a note of it.
Re-Tune Your Dial - Now create a new frequency. If you were eating delivered pizza once a day before, switching to twice a week or once a week would be reasonable. If you were eating a big bowl of ice cream a few times a week, once every week or once every two weeks would be a good place to start. The idea is to eat it less often, not to cut it out entirely.

This results in a specific action, in the form “I’m will only eat pizza one time a week, instead of three times a week”. Write that action down. That idea will be the basis of your action plan, which we’ll discuss in the next post!

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