The modern world is full of distractions. So many in fact, that it feels like it’s almost trying to catch us out. Toying with us to make us drop whatever we’re doing.
You only have to scroll through your social media feeds to see what I mean. Whether it’s adverts on Facebook imploring us to buy a new phone or to book a holiday to a tropical destination, everybody is competing for your eyeballs.
What these adverts, and the companies that post them, want you to do is to add more and more to your life. This is what is known as consumerism. I’ve written before about consumerism encourages us to buy liabilities instead of investing in assets.
Unfortunately, this is what a lot of the economy is based on. Mass consumption. If I take a walk around my city, I only have to look at the scrunched drink cans scattered everywhere, or the plastic takeaway boxes that have been carelessly discarded to realise this.
Removing yourself from this world can feel like an impossibility because we’re surrounded by it 24/7. This is the case more than ever now that products such as Amazon Echo and Google Home have infiltrated our houses. Whether they listen to what we say or not, social media platforms have an uncanny ability to show us adverts for things we talked about during the day.
It may feel like it’s helpless to resist. That you might as well go along with it all and become another consumer, stocking up on items that you don’t really need but you’ve been coerced into wanting.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There is another way. You can choose to ignore the constant adverts imploring you to spend your hard-earned money on their latest product.
It’s done by inverting the advertising process and subtracting rather than adding to your life.
Out with the old
If you look around your room, or even your whole house, you’re sure to find plenty of stuff that you no longer use. Just in my room, I have old phones, tennis rackets and all sorts of items that I haven’t used in a long time.
I don’t need any of this stuff. Over time it’s just accumulated and it’s got to the point where I don’t even recognise it anymore. The stuff has been there for that long, I’ve grown accustomed to it.
Would my life be any worse without it? Almost certainly not. Yet, I don't feel any compulsion to get rid of it either. It just sits there, gathering dust as impassive as it was yesterday.
In recent years, the ideas of Marie Kondo have become a phenomenon. Her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, has been translated into multiple languages and published in over thirty countries.
Kondo’s recommendations in her book are based around the KonMari method. The method suggests you gather your belongings, one category at a time in one place and decide what you want to keep and what yo discard.
The criteria by which you keep something is whether it provides you with tokimeku, that is, sparks joy. It’s a simple concept, but a powerful at the same time. How many of us can look at our belongings and say the majority of them sparks joy? Personally, I can only think of a handful of my belongings that provide me with joy.
If this is the case, then why add more? Why go out and add more clutter to your life when you don’t need to? Whatever we buy is unlikely to provide us with long-lasting happiness. Yes, even the novelty of that brand new phone wears off after a while.
Marie Kondo’s advice shouldn’t be taken to the extreme, but it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand either. Her writing has a lot of value and it’s certainly true that we often surround ourselves with stuff that we don’t need.
Less is better
Back in November 2012, I decided to go backpacking in Australia for a year. I left the UK on a working holiday visa which allowed me to work and live in the country for a year.
My room was full of clothes, books and various items that all got left behind during this time. Instead, I packed some clothes, my phone and a few other items into two backpacks that I took to the other side of the planet.
For a year, my life was compressed into the contents of two bags. At first, I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle travelling with such little stuff. I thought I would miss all the items that I left behind.
However, as the months went by I realised that I wasn’t pining for many of my items. I bought an iPad while I was there to log onto the internet and call my family, while my bike was the only thing that I truly missed. But, it’s not exactly easy to backpack with a bike!
What I realised during that year, and subsequent journeys in New Zealand and Spain, is that we don’t need as much as we think we do. I had hardly anything with me during that time. The contents of a 40-litre backpack and a small rucksack were all that I had on me.
It was more than enough. Could I have done with a few more things? Sure, but they weren’t necessary. It wasn’t a question of life and death if I didn’t have them with me.
By subtracting a large portion of my belongings, I felt lighter both mentally and physically. The problem with owning so many possessions is that over time, they end up owning you.
The same principle is true in our digital lives. How many of us spend too much time on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter? I’m gonna hold my hand up because I’m guilty on this count. Is my life enriched by using these platforms? Sort of, Twitter is a great place for advice, while Instagram is a fantastic place to get inspiration and photography tips.
I don’t like Facebook and see little benefit to it, so I limit my interactions there are much as possible. This frees up more time for activities and tasks that are more important as well as freeing my mental bandwidth.
The truth is that you’re constantly told that you need more to be happy. But you don’t. You can only own so many possessions before you get overwhelmed and you can only do so much until you burnout.
The art of subtraction is an underrated life hack, but one you can adopt to streamline your life and make it more palatable. Before buying something or committing to a new task, ask yourself, do I need this? Do I want this?
If the answer is no, then you should probably give it a miss.
Whenever I have visited countries that are not as well developed as my own, I’ve always been amazed by how happy everyone seems to be. This was certainly the case when I visited the Philippines.
They had little of what we have in the west, but they always had a smile on their faces. No $1,000 phone, a basic house and no designer clothes. Yet, they were beaming with happiness.
There is a lesson in there for most of us. More isn’t always better and it’s not always a good thing. Rather, it’s by considering what we need and what we don’t and by removing the excess in life that starts us on the path to happiness.
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