Wife thought we should acquire the book Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of less a few months ago, and I’ve just started reading it.
Many principles are discussed, but a few things strike me early on:
- Priority is singular. Full stop. It references one thing, and cannot refer to many things. There are no such things as priorities. If it is not number one, it cannot be referred to as a priority.
- Mindset is critical. If I cannot fully commit to something, say “No.” It’s not enough to ask “Could I do it?” (or in the case of clothing “Can I imagine a situation in which I wear it?”), I have to be more disciplined, and say “Will I do it? Do I have the bandwidth to focus on making this thing happen?” (Or with clothing again: “Will I actually wear it in the next ___ days/weeks? Do I like wearing it? Does it make me look better?”)
So, although I tend to live a relatively simple lifestyle relating to things I own, I probably have room to make some improvements.
I have a lot of books I’m not currently reading. I tend to be a Kindle person anyway, and the ease of downloading to a device when I’m ready to read it works really really well. However, the overlap between physical books I own and Kindle books I own is pretty small. But my tendency to come back to physical books is not as high for most as it is for Kindle books. So I could probably reduce the books I have.
Wife and I have never been camping together. However, we have an entire closet of camping gear packed from floor to ceiling. I have no say over this stuff because it’s hers from before we were married. And she wants to go camping with me at some point.
I have a large number of unfinished projects. I have a partially finished tiny house than need some final touches on the outside. I started this almost 9 months ago, and didn’t finish the outside because I injured my back in February. I’m healed enough I should completely finish the outside, even if I’m unlikely to finish the inside any time soon. We have plans to grow a food forest. We’ve acquired 30+ trees in the last 2 years to make this happen, and we’re currently laying wood chips over the front lawn. We also spent the last few weeks laying irrigation lines so we wouldn’t have to pretty much ever again. We also want to add a greenhouse and plant a bunch more food in the ground.
There’s that pesky “get out of debt” thought I’ve been having for the past 2 years also.
Oh, and we’re trying to use medicine to get a baby. And that takes time and effort too.
So taking what we have and identifying the priority, and only pursuing the things that will lead to success in that is critical to moving forward.