Come hang out with The Minimalists on Zoom. Join Joshua, Ryan, and T.K. for a live conversation about minimizing, intentional living, and the messy realities of living more deliberately.

Our next FAMZ call is November 6 at 3 PM ET. Bring your questions, insights, and clutter stories. Or simply watch quietly with your camera off.

These calls are available exclusively to Patreon members—we’ll send the Zoom link via email one hour before the call.

Can’t make it live? Every session is recorded and shared afterward.

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I’ve spent countless days browsing showrooms, stores, and websites, daydreaming about things I desire: cars, clothes, cottages, commodities, careers.

After numerous acquisitions
and endless disappointments,
I’ve learned that we don’t actually
want these things…

We want the wanting.

You know… The hours spent configuring the car online, imagining our hands on the leather steering wheel. Choosing the perfect pants, picturing the outfit, imagining how impressed others might be.

Before you acquire the thing, it can be anything you imagine.

But as soon as you obtain the BMW sedan or the Balenciaga shoes, your desire is extinguished. Unfortunately, it was that very desire that made you feel alive. Once you have the thing, you miss having something to look forward to.

So you look for more…

A cashmere sweater in another color.
A kitchen island with cold granite beneath your palms.
A new business card embossed with a new job title.

Each accretion is a proxy for a hypothetical future in which you would finally feel satisfied. Sure, the objects change, but the underlying craving remains.

Perhaps the key, then, isn’t
to merely acquire the thing
nor to get rid of the desire
but to find satisfaction in the wanting.

It is possible to admire the sweater, to feel its softness between your fingers and imagine wearing it on a cold morning … and then put it back on the shelf.

And if you do indeed make the purchase anyway, know this…

Getting what you want is fine. Just don’t expect to get what you want after you get what you want.

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Joshua and T.K. speak with author Ben Meer about choosing a slower life in a fast world, why many work promotions turn into downgrades at home, creating distance from your current routine, five decluttering hot takes from apartment therapy, and more.

Listen to the Episode

Apple · Spotify · Patreon

Discussed in This Episode

• How can I choose a slower life in a culture that expects me to keep climbing?
• Right Here, Right Now: Patreon Zoom calls and a programming note.
• Listener Tip: What should someone look for when they’re trying out a different way of living?
• What systems can I put in place for maintaining my home to support my life?
• Talkaboutable: The Minimalists are hypocrites.
• Talkaboutable: You don’t have the power to ruin my day.
• More About Less: 5 Decluttering Hot Takes from Apartment Therapy
• Sucky Ad: Victor Wembanyama Says He Will ‘Never’ Sign Sports Betting Deal, Calls Others ‘Sad’ for Doing It
• Added Value: A track by a new singer-songwriter from Fresno.

Minimal Maxims

Joshua, Ryan, and T.K.’s pithy, shareable, less-than-140-character responses. Find more quotes from The Minimalists at MinimalMaxims.com.

• A promotion at work can be a demotion at home.
• A life you have to recover from leaves little time for living.
• You need distance from your routine to notice what it’s costing you.
• Everything you own gives you something to do.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

• Added Value: “Same Room”
• Book: How to Be Good at Life
• Course: Simplify Everything
• Essay: Luxury Time
• Instagram: Ben Meer
• More About Less: 5 Decluttering Hot Takes from Apartment Therapy
• Sucky Ad: Victor Wembanyama Says He Will ‘Never’ Sign Sports Betting Deal, Calls Others ‘Sad’ for Doing It
• Watch: Talkaboutable #2
• Website: Ben Meer
• Website: Workaway

Follow Our Team

• Joshua Fields Millburn
• Ryan Nicodemus
• T.K. Coleman
• Benjamin Hull
• Matt Savidakis
• Shawn Mihalik
• Jeff Sarris
• Dave LaTulippe
• Cat Remaks

Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to podcast@themins.com.

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There are no dumb questions, but the best questions are ignorant questions.

A decade ago, when my daughter was only three, she wasn’t very knowledgeable about the world—she didn’t know a thing about geometry, geography, or game theory—and yet she taught me to be smarter.

Every time she asked a seemingly silly question—Where does the sun go at night? What happens to us before we’re born? Why do people have to go to work?—her curiosity forced me to pause and reconsider what I thought I knew.

The smartest adults I know are equally curious. They ask ignorant questions despite their culture’s fear of judgment, scorn, or ridicule:

Why do we need to be busy?
How do I know when I have enough?
What if I’m wrong?

Their ignorance is their strength.

At three, my daughter wasn’t worried about sounding smart. She simply wanted to understand.

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This summer I was negotiating a deal for a film I was producing. The deal fell through. What a bummer.

This wasn’t my first run-in with failure. I’ve experienced countless creative disappointments over the last decade: book proposals that were turned down, tours that didn’t get booked, television shows that didn’t air, media appearances that never materialized, studio spaces that went to a higher bidder.

My self-indulgent twenties were seasoned with similar letdowns: promotions I didn’t earn, expensive homes I couldn’t afford, intimate relationships that petered out before they got started. And let’s not forget the hallmarks of a lotus eater: cars, clothes, furniture, watches, money, admiration. I wanted each so badly I could practically smell the satisfaction lingering around the corner of procurement.

Perpetually wanting more than you have is a terrific recipe for discontentment. If you’re a human being with desires, I suspect you can relate. The more you desire a thing, the more disappointed you are when you don’t obtain it.

But after decades of being battered by my own unfulfilled desires, I’ve discovered that disappointment travels with a curious companion: relief. There’s relief in not getting what you want because the decision has already been made for you.

When you decide to apply for a new job or drive to the mall for a new shirt, you experience a pang of relief—not because you acquired the object of your desire (you haven’t yet), but because you made a decision. At least that much is settled.

To decide is, etymologically, to cut off. A decision cuts off the deliberation, even if someone else does the cutting.

When that film deal fell through, my disappointment came with a gift: one fewer possibility to fret over. In one sense, I didn’t get what I wanted. But in a deeper sense, I did: I got to stop agonizing over it.

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The streets of Cincinnati are apocalyptic at this early hour.

I pull into the concrete parking garage on East Fourth Street at 5:27 AM, haul my overcrowded briefcase across the skybridge into a glass tower, grab a large coffee and orange scone from the Starbucks nestled inside the atrium, take the third elevator to the fourteenth floor, beeline past a sea of cubicles to my corner office.

Somehow I’m not the first person here.

In preparation for the impending onslaught of meetings, I am seated in my ergonomic office chair by 5:45 AM, plugging numbers into spreadsheets before the sun has risen.

Not that I’ll see the sun today.

After a few hours of prep work, I find myself landlocked with two dozen co-workers in a windowless conference room on the eleventh floor, all of us slow-roasting under fluorescent lights. Red and blue neckties bisect our starched white shirts, making us look vaguely patriotic. The carpet is the same hue as Thousand Island dressing. Dry-erase markers and top-shelf cologne potpourri the recycled air.

The year is 2007. Today is “Meeting Monday.”

The first meeting of the day—our 8 AM Operations Meeting—is followed immediately by a Sales Meeting and then a 30-minute Marketing “Pre-Meeting” that borders the real Marketing Meeting at 10:30 AM. That one runs late for no good reason, making me late for my OpEx Meeting, wherefrom I depart early for a Lunch Meeting with my boss. (Because who wants to eat in peace?)

At least a calendar this full makes me feel important.

After wolfing down half a sandwich, my afternoon is swallowed whole. Our weekly CapEx Meeting, from which several people played hooky, is flanked by a new “Planning Meeting” (whatever that means) and a Customer Retention Meeting. Toward the end of the latter, I glance at the Rolex on my wrist just in time to realize I need to be on the seventh floor in three minutes for a 4 PM standing meeting that just says “Meeting” on my calendar.

I finish the other half of my sandwich in the elevator and return to my office at 5:34 PM, ready to finally get some work done.

None of this is made up.

For years, every Monday was brimming with the same chaos. The watch on my arm measured each passing second with mechanical precision, but almost none of those seconds belonged to me.

Segal’s Law says that a man with one watch knows what time it is, but a man with two watches is never sure. So I guess I didn’t stand a chance.

I had several expensive timepieces, but no time peace.

Today, I don’t own a single wristwatch, but I have something much more luxurious: my own time. No longer is my calendar pointillated with pointlessness.

A spacious calendar is my new favorite luxury item. There’s room to pandiculate between obligations. Room to breathe and wander and eat lunch without turning it into a meeting. Room each day to step outside and see the sun.

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What becomes possible when we stop clinging?

Last year, I started writing a book called How to Let Go. But the more I wrote, the more I realized something wasn’t working. The ideas made sense on my screen, but they really came alive on stage—in the laughter, the pauses, the tears, and the interactions with the audience.

Turns out, some ideas deserve a stage more than a page. So I closed the book and started building my first solo live show.

Today, I’m excited to announce the first few cities:

Seattle — Sep 11 **SOLD OUT**

Vancouver — Sep 12 **SOLD OUT**

New York City — Oct 18 (tickets)

Los Angeles — Dec 11 (tickets)

At these events, we’ll explore the heavy burdens we carry: clutter, expectations, anxiety, resentment, and everything else that weighs us down. Through funny personal stories and serious practical ideas, we’ll discover what happens when we finally let go.

I can’t wait to see you there.

—JFM

P.S. Where should I go next? Leave a comment on Instagram or Facebook and let me know what city we should add to the tour.

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I was nervous for the first time in a long time. Last week, I hit the road to kick off the How to Let Go Tour in the Pacific Northwest. On the first night, I called Ryan Nicodemus from the green room in Seattle.

“It feels so weird without you,” I confessed.

“You’re going to do great,” he assured me, followed by a few funny observations about previous events.

This was the start of The Minimalists’ thirteenth tour—but my first solo run. Ryan and I had just finished touring together over the summer for the tenth anniversary of our first Netflix film, and I loved having someone beside me to bounce ideas off in real time.

But a solo show is different.

I had spent nearly a year preparing for this night—ninety minutes of spoken material, more than a hundred slides, dozens of unpublished pages—and yet I still felt anxious without my fleshy safety net standing next to me.

Someone knocked on the green-room door and gave me the five-minute warning. I said goodbye to Ryan, hung up.

My heart raced.
My lungs quickened.
My palms dampened.

And then I realized: I’m not nervous. I’m excited.

I felt alive because I was outside my comfort zone again.

Every human has a baseline need for comfort. But with too much comfort we atrophy. The Discomfort Zone is where we stretch beyond the familiar and discover what we’re actually capable of.

The moment I walked onto the stage, my worries dissolved. I had left my expectations backstage. What followed was two hours of flow.

I don’t remember half of what I said that evening, but I felt all of it. It was a peak experience—not despite the discomfort, but because of it.

The next night in Vancouver was completely different—different material, different audience, different culture, different responses—which brought a whole new kind of discomfort.

How delightful … to be uncomfortable again.

—JFM

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Clutter is anything that gets in the way.

But did you know there are actually two kinds of clutter?

Absolute clutter is anything that no longer adds value to your life: a dried-out pen, a single glove whose partner disappeared, a board game missing half its pieces, a stack of business cards from people you don’t remember, a bottle of sunscreen from a vacation six summers ago.

Contextual clutter, on the other hand, consists of things that still add value but are currently out of place: A blender in my bed renders both the blender and the bed useless. A suitcase blocking the hallway three weeks after a trip becomes an obstacle. A stack of mail on the passenger seat makes it difficult for someone to sit there.

The problem isn’t always the thing itself. Sometimes the problem is simply where it is.

Absolute clutter needs to go.

Contextual clutter just needs a home.

—JFM

P.S. If you’d like 12 rules to help contextualize your clutter, my new book, Very, Very Simple, is now in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.

The post Contextual Clutter appeared first on The Minimalists.

The year before I stumbled into minimalism, my mother developed Stage 4 cancer. Although we called it “lung cancer,” it had metastasized to other vital organs, including her brain, before she passed.

If there was a silver lining in my mother’s painful death, it’s that losing her forced me to take an inventory of my own life. And so, seventeen years ago, I started simplifying.

Within a few months, I jettisoned 90% of my material possessions. Soon, my first marriage ended, I crawled out of a crater of debt, and I quit my corporate job. It was shocking to experience so much change at once.

Indeed, my excess had started with the stuff. New purchases became new bills. New bills required more work. More work crowded my calendar. A packed schedule strained my relationships. And digital distractions filled whatever space remained.

For years, I stood by as my clutter metastasized beyond my personal effects.

Fortunately, simplicity spreads, too. For me, one small act of subtraction revealed the next. Which revealed the next…

This is why minimalists start with stuff. Not because possessions matter most, but because the stuff is the most obvious place to begin. Once we address the physical clutter, we can clearly see the other excesses—the digital, financial, relational, and calendar clutter—that get in the way.

—JFM

P.S. Those are the five areas Ryan, T.K., and I tackle in Simplify Everything, the decluttering course I wish I’d had all those years ago. I’d love for you to join us—it’s $100 off this month while we test the new format.

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