Never underestimate the importance of removing stuff you don’t need.
Encouragement is important in all areas of life, but especially when trying to live a life different than those around us.
Encouragement provides us with motivation to persevere. It invites us to dream dreams of significance for our lives. And it begs us to work diligently with optimism and promise.
Overcoming the pull of consumerism is a difficult challenge regardless of our stage in life. Simplicity requires encouragement. To that end, I hope you will find motivation in these articles below.
Each post was intentionality chosen to inspire simplicity in your life. For maximum effect, find a quiet moment this weekend and enjoy them with a fresh cup of coffee or tea.
Chasing After More When You Already Have Enough | Money Saving Mom by Crystal Paine. While there can be good things with some of those “more’s”, it’s time we stop spending our life chasing after more and really stop and ask ourselves, “When is enough, enough?”
The Power of Altruism | The New York Times by David Brooks. Maybe it’s time to upend classical economics and political science. Maybe it’s time to build institutions that harness people’s natural longing to do good.
Hi Joshua, great website ! Thanks for what you do. I need inspiration regularly and this is a great place to get it.
I am wondering if you have ever read or heard of the book “Enough” by John Bogle. The man who started the Vanguard Mutual Funds. It is absolutely one of my favorite all time books along with “Your Money or Your Life”. I keep both on my night stand to remind me that I have more than enough.
Cheers.
I have not read it. But thanks for the introduction.
Thank you so much for another great listing of articles. When you don’t have like-minded people surrounding you, it helps to find others who think the same way.
Looking at the clutter surrounding us, it becomes apparent that living a simpler life is needlessly inconvenient. The missing ingredient is information sharing that can remove the barriers to products and services flowing without resistance between us so we don’t need our own. And that information sharing requires a platform: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/attracting-platform-needed-circular-economy-andy-e-williams
Erica’s point about giving yourself enough time to get to each task/appointment rang true. As I continue to lose functionality everything takes longer!
I thought Crystal’s article was well done, too. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone say that 3 kids isn’t a huge family!
Thanks for sharing the article. I’m practicing minimalism and blogging about my journey. Hopefully i will be able to help and inspire others too as you have.
David Brooks “the moral lens vs the economic lens” was insightful, as was his line “Imagine what would happen to a marriage if both people went in saying, ‘I want to get more out of this than I put in.’ The prospects of such a marriage would not be good.” Excellent points. Also, I’m enjoying the uncluttered course, your house tour, the interview with Leo. All great stuff, so thank you.
Thanks so much for such a powerful collection of articles. These concepts resonate with me as my brother recently buried his wife of forty years last week. Death is one of life’s events that causes us to reprioritize and to determine exactly what we want our legacy to be when it is our time to go.
It just so happened that I have strep throat symptoms this weekend and taking the time to read each article was just what I needed.
I’m honored to be among these links! Thanks for sharing my 52 ways to simplify. Off to check out the rest of these great reads!
I loved your story Erica!
As always, thank you for curating these articles for us. I always enjoy them. The one by David Brooks was particularly enjoyable to me as his thesis was similar in some ways to the conceptual framework I used for my dissertation on teacher’s responses to merit pay.
Good morning Joshua!
I always love weekend reads! I’ve missed your blogging lately, and hope all is well.
I’am also doing your Uncluttered course, and as it was you who brought me to minimalism in January 2015 I think it’s great.
Seeing your house has been my favorite week! For those of us who have had more time as a minimalist it might be helpful to divide the back half of the course off, since up until week 9 (besides week 1 when I rewrote my original statement) it was all things I’ve already done.
Additionally I havent had a Facebook account in over 5 years, and felt like creating one for the course didn’t make sense for my simple living/ minimalist lifestyle. I’am not a computer person, but it might be more in line with the values if we could someone have a message board/ communicate from
The uncluttered website, since I feel like not having access to Facebook is causing me to miss out on a lot of connections.
Thanks for listening.
There’s no way I can thank you, and Leo (Zen Habits) enough for introducing me to this- the life I always wanted to have, but couldn’t get to before. I paid off my car loan yesterday. Now I’am officially debt free. I even have a savings account. I’am able to give go chairities (like yours) almost monthly. I read, hike, rest, and enjoy my life more everyday now.
Have a great weekend with your family. Take care.
Jodie
Hey Joshua
I’ve been wondering, do you read all those articles? Or do you skim through, look what they’re about, whether they’re well written, and fit in well?
Thanks. And keep up your work, you’re inspiring!
Now that’s a unique question. During the week, when I find (or get sent) a helpful article or post that promotes simple living, I send it out via Twitter. From there, I get a sense of its appeal—did a large number of people enjoy reading it and sending it out to friends. Using that as a general guideline, I re-post the 4-5 most popular and helpful articles here. On a good week, each of the articles have been read by me. On a week that featured a large number of other commitments, they were probably skimmed thoroughly. Hope that helps.