Don't Fear the iPhone

Leo Babauta on wanting stuff:

I don’t, however, buy the iPhone. I’ve lusted after the iPhone since it first came out in 2007, and for more than four years, I’ve resisted getting one. Not because I like torturing myself, nor because I think I’m too cool for an iPhone, but because I don’t want to give in to the lust. I know I don’t need the iPhone, and I know my brain has been tricked into wanting it.

I love minimalism as much as the next guy, but I don’t fully agree with this.

What is the fear here? What will happen if you buy something you’ve wanted for four years, or “give in to the lust,” as Leo calls it, with scary music in the background.

Obviously, none of us need an iPhone like we need food, shelter, and love, and I don’t think everyone should have one. But the notion of “resisting” buying an iPhone for four years seems counterproductive. That’s four years of internal struggle because of a cell phone.

Minimalists often recommend a 30-day waiting list to avoid impulse buying. When you see something you want, you write it down and see if you still want it in a month. If you genuinely do, go ahead and buy it guilt-free. I think this is a practical idea and not too extreme of a suggestion. But why does the iPhone not apply?

I agree with Leo that advertising convinces the mind that we need much more than we actually do. His tips for reducing desires are great, and I adhere to most of them. But I don’t think owning an iPhone turns me into a victimized consumer either.

Leo’s tweet about Steve Jobs received a decent lashing, and I was among the criticism. My life is different because I own an iPhone, and I’m not ashamed to admit I believe it’s been for the better. As I wrote in my post on why the iPhone is minimalist, it makes my life easier. It makes communication and learning easier, which makes growing easier.

Leo responded to his critics shortly thereafter:

If you have been convinced a product changed your life, then it has. That’s how the magic works.

That’s not magic; it’s common sense. Your perception is your reality. If I believe the sky is red, then to me, it is. The logic here is so circuitous that it’s almost impossible to refute. The more I protest, “But the iPhone really has changed my life!”, the more effective Steve Jobs’s trick was, according to Leo. All of us who tweeted back only made him feel more validated.

Leo takes pity on us in his article, saying its not our fault. We’re only human and easily tricked. My problem is with insinuating that Steve Jobs set out to trick us with his shiny devices. Unfortunately, arguing either way is futile. If that’s what you believe, then that’s what he did.

This issue is a matter of semantics. There’s no convincing either side otherwise. I believe Apple has changed our lives regardless of whether we own any of its products. If you agree, you agree. If not, then in your eyes, I’ve been duped. I just don’t think an iPhone, or an iPad that allows a 99-year-old woman to read and write, is the same as a commercial telling you to buy unhealthy food or pointless possessions. Maybe I’m wrong, though.

I advocate minimalism because I think it solves problems. There are many different degrees of minimalism, which work for many different people. Leo’s way works for him, as mine does for me. However, what I don’t advocate is implying that people who do not adhere to a certain level of minimalism simply by having a passion for a tangible object are somehow worse off. Again, the argument is cyclical. These people have only “given into the lust” if you believe they have. Such language, intentionally or not, plays on fear by making people think, “Oh no! I don’t want to give in to lust! Lust is bad! I don’t want to be tricked!” That’s not constructive; it’s minimalism-mongering.

The iPhone is not harmful enough to warrant four years of mental struggle. Leo will be fine whether he owns an iPhone or not, and so will the rest of us.

Seth Godin on Typography

Seth Godin:

The choice of a typeface, the care given to kerning and to readability—it all sends a powerful signal. When your business card is nothing but Arial on a piece of cardboard, you’ve just told people how they ought to think about you… precisely the opposite of what you were trying to do when you made the card in the first place.

I love typography. I don’t know if I’m any good at it, but I do think about it regularly, and I’m learning little by little.

At the very least, I promise you’ll never see Arial on this website.

A Word About QLE's Tone

J. Eddie Smith, IV on the absent self-leverage genre:

I’ve learned that the most helpful self-help books are those that I read like a shattered mirror. They were helpful to the extent that I saw my own reflection cast back. It wasn’t that the author didn’t ask me to change; it was that I didn’t ask myself.

Since this site is still in its infancy, I’ve been struggling a bit to find its proper tone, particularly for the inner peace articles, which could be considered “self-help” posts.

I do want to help people through this website, but I also want to avoid falling into the trap of always saying “you should do this”, or “you should act more like this”. I’m not perfect. Only you know what’s best for you.

So far, I think I’ve been a little careless with the second-person pronoun. When I say “you”, I’m really just thinking aloud and talking to myself as much as I’m talking to my readers. I hope I haven’t offended anybody by seeming like I know how you should think or act.

From now on, I’m going to try to write more from a “here’s what I struggle with, here’s how I’ve tried to fix it, here’s what did or did not work” mindset. If that helps you in some way, great. If not, that’s okay. Do what you will with my information, and let me know about your own experience so we can learn from each other.

We're Not Worthy!

Richard J. Anderson on being an “aspiring writer”:

After all, I hadn’t published a novel, sold a story, or landed a gig writing for pay in any form. Until something along those lines happened, I felt unfit to actually call myself a writer, no matter how much or how little I wrote. Dropping the qualifier has gone a long way to make sure I actually live up to the title I assign myself.

Great point. Often, the qualifier gives us an excuse to fail. If I call myself an “aspiring writer”, by definition, I don’t need to write everyday. I’m just aspiring. I might as well call myself a “struggling writer”. In that case, I pretty much can’t write everyday, or I wouldn’t be struggling, at least not in terms of output.

This website is the first instance where I’ve been writing creatively everyday. Up to this point, any possibility of calling myself a writer was tied to the fact that I was a pretty good English major. Any and all writing I did was for the classroom. Even then, I don’t think I considered myself a writer because I was only writing things out of fear for my GPA. Every college student has to write papers; what makes me a writer instead of them?

Like Richard, I felt I needed to have something to show for myself. Notebooks filled with original works of literary art. Articles published in newspapers and magazines. But that’s not true. As many have said, “A writer writes”, and I think they write because they want to, even when it’s hard.

Now that my academic career is winding down, I’ve been able to start writing this website consistently, Monday through Friday. I committed to publishing the site without fail for a month, succeeded, and kept on going.

I love it.

But the thing is, I still haven’t told anyone what I’m doing. I have zero readers. Does that mean I can’t call myself a writer? I don’t think so. Richard asserts it nicely:

I commit myself to writing, ergo I am a writer. No matter how good my work is, no matter how many or how few read my work, it’s still writing. If I do everything a writer does, I’ll be a writer.

Do I have aspirations for my writing? Of course. But having five readers or five thousand readers doesn’t make me any more or less of a writer. Readers don’t make a writer. Writing makes a writer.

I am a writer; I just happen to have an aspiring website.

The Great iTunes Purge

Last night, I decided to take a couple of hours and purge my iTunes library.

I started with 16,716 songs. That’s a cumulative 129.23 GB of music, which would take 64 days to listen to from start to finish.

By the time I reached the end of my library, I had whittled it down to 12,170 songs. I deleted almost 40 GBs of music. Now it would only take me 44 days to listen to my entire collection. Decent.

How’d I do it? Songs and artists I don’t like, but had some how acquired (Taylor Swift): gone. Songs I don’t mind, but would never consciously decide to listen to (Aerosmith): gone. I kept artists who I’m interested in, but haven’t gotten around to listening to yet, and I obviously kept all my favorite artists.

So, why the merciless deletion?

For one, I’m working toward being able to get all my music on my iPhone so I can stop carrying around both it and an iPod. Up to this point, the iPhone’s 32 GB hard drive has been too small for me to comfortably fit everything; my music collection was/is too big to selectively comb through every song. My library is still pretty enormous, but with the larger hard drives coming up, an iPhone-only setup is definitely doable in the near future.

Second, I keep all of my music on a 750 GB external hard drive because I like knowing that if my computer crashes, it’s all safe and sound. I don’t miss not having my music on my laptop because I either A) have my iPod with me, or B) have access to the internet and any number of music streaming solutions, Spotify and Grooveshark chief among them. These alternatives allow me to keep my computer lean and fast; I don’t have to take up valuable hard drive space with thousands of songs, many of which I don’t listen to regularly.

I want to start backing up this drive, and the more refined my music collection is, the easier that’ll be. Deleting all of my songs-I’m-never-going-to-listen-to also frees up a considerable amount of space on my external drive, thus prolonging the time when I’ll need to upgrade to something larger. Plus, I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to finally delete Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen.

Additionally, letting go of all those never-played songs feels great. It’s easy to think that the more songs you have in your iTunes, the more sophisticated and eclectic a person you are. But the truth is, no one cares. The feeling of not having to wade through thousands of unplayed songs far outweighs the tiny bit of reassurance you might get from knowing those songs are there if you ever need them, which you probably won’t.

It was time to eliminate all of the musical clutter I’d accumulated over the years, and I recommend purging all types of files every once in a while. It feels awesome, and your computer will thank you.

New from Shawn Blanc: Tools & Toys

Shawn Blanc just announced his new website:

Tools & Toys is a collection of items for the pickiest of gadget geeks, software aficionados, snowboard junkies, music lovers, writers, coffee nuts, and all around collectors of fine paraphernalia.

It’s already awesome. Great insight on great gear. Check it out.

Fine Writers & Content Creators

Shawn Blanc on “consuming content”:

To say that I am “creating content” for this website is a fancy way of saying that I’m writing. The phrase creating content could be boiled down to simply creating. Or, when we talk about creating content, why not be more specific? Writing, drawing, designing, building, working.

Totally.

I agree with Shawn: there are far better phrases to use than consuming or creating content. “Reading” and “writing” come to mind. But for me, the offense isn’t so much in the verb as it is in the object.

I can’t stand the word “content”. The blogging bloggers throw it around all the time, declaring that the best way to have a successful website is to “create amazing content!” Sure, it’s true, but something about the word just irks me. Like Shawn says, when I sit down to create a post, I’m not thinking about “creating content”; I sit down to write.

“Content” sounds like SEO-infused, pageview-driven… stuff. It lacks heart, and it completely eradicates the romanticism of what it means to be a writer. I don’t set out to include a certain number of keywords, or make sure my article has lots of lists and subheadings to make it easy to skim, or that the title always has some variation of “7 Steps to a Happier, Healthier You!”. When it comes to having a successful website, these criteria seem to be at the center of what the experts define as “amazing content”. But can’t great writing exist without all that?

I’ve been struggling lately with the idea that there are two kinds of writers on the web. The first group is concerned with creating “amazing content”. They have tantalizing headlines, and lots of bold and italics, and plenty of sass, attitude, and exclamation points to GET. YOU. PSYCHED. The goal seems to be pageviews and click-throughs. This group exhausts me.

The second group is concerned with fine writing. These are people obsessed with crafting a great sentence, who love words and seek to explore and understand things. These are writers like John Gruber, Shawn Blanc, Patrick Rhone, Michael Lopp, James Shelley, Merlin Mann, and innumerable others. These are not people who are concerned with making their articles accessible to search engines. These are people intent on producing the best writing they’re capable of. Subsequently, they’re also the writers I respect the most and the ones I consider the most successful.

You could argue that both groups are doing the same thing; they’re both making stuff for us to read, and sure, you could say all fine writers are also content creators. But I believe there’s a different attitude at work. Different intentions, different goals, and different methods for achieving them.

I suppose what it comes down to is signal versus noise. I like to think of “signal” as being synonymous with “depth”. The writers I admire most are those who dig deep to produce quality insight and observations about their field. They don’t wave their arms and shout from the hilltops looking for attention. Rather, they display a quiet reserve, almost a venerable quality. The writing speaks for itself. There’s no need to force it on people. That’s the kind of writer I aspire to be.

My goal is not to lure people into clicking things. So no, maybe my headlines don’t come with flashing neon lights. Maybe my posts don’t have lots of lists and bullets. And maybe you won’t actually die if you don’t read my latest article. But I’ll still be proud of what I’ve written, and there’s a chance someone may find it thought-provoking. I aspire to write things that would make the above individuals think, “Hmm. This doesn’t suck.”

If you believe this website to be full of “amazing content”, thank you, but I hope you feel it was achieved with strong, honest writing above all else.

Be Not Afraid

New CEO Tim Cook in a letter to Apple staff:

Team:

I am looking forward to the amazing opportunity of serving as CEO of the most innovative company in the world. Joining Apple was the best decision I’ve ever made and it’s been the privilege of a lifetime to work for Apple and Steve for over 13 years. I share Steve’s optimism for Apple’s bright future.

Steve has been an incredible leader and mentor to me, as well as to the entire executive team and our amazing employees. We are really looking forward to Steve’s ongoing guidance and inspiration as our Chairman.

I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple’s unique principles and values. Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that—it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.

I love Apple and I am looking forward to diving into my new role. All of the incredible support from the Board, the executive team and many of you has been inspiring. I am confident our best years lie ahead of us and that together we will continue to make Apple the magical place that it is.

Tim

Thank You, Steve.

Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple and is now Chairman of the Board:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

How to Not Miss Out

Leo Babauta challenges us to stop worrying about missing out:

It’s why we’re so busy — we take on so much because we don’t want to miss out. We take on dozens of goals and aspirations, because we don’t want to miss out.

The title of Leo’s piece, “The Tragedy of Missing Out,” is ironic. At first glance, it sounds like missing out on things is tragic; we tend to interpret the act of missing out as a negative experience.

But it’s actually the fear of missing out that causes us to miss out in the first place:

If you always worry about what you’re missing out on, you will miss out on what you already have.

The tragedy lies not in missing out on things; that’s unavoidable. Instead, the tragedy lies in the mindset of “I’m missing out”. When we feel like we’re lacking — in experiences, social circles, possessions — we feel compelled to chase after those things in the hopes of feeling complete and of not missing out. Thus, our minds trick ourselves into pursuing things out of fear, rather than enjoying and being content with what we already have.

You will miss out, but in striving to do everything, you’ll miss out on the wonder of the thing you are doing right now.

File that under “mindfulness”.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain...

This is what a migraine feels like.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading — treading — till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through —

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum —
Kept beating — beating — till I thought
My Mind was going numb —

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space — began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here —

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down —
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing — then —

By Emily Dickinson

Jotting Things Down in OmniFocus

I’ve been slowly wading into the OmniFocus pool, having bought the iPhone app a couple weeks ago after finishing David Allen’s Getting Things Done. The learning curve is significant, but reading GTD helps a lot, and I’m slowly starting to assimilate the iPhone app into my workflow.

The power and flexibility of OmniFocus allows me to be as strict or lenient with the official GTD methodology as I want. One of the things I’ve been trying to figure out is how I like to use the Inbox. OmniFocus is so robust that it initially took me almost a minute to figure out how to properly input an action. I’m getting better, but sometimes I just want to jot something down quickly and process it later. Fortunately, OmniFocus’s Inbox is perfect for that sort of thing.

J. Eddie Smith, IV puts it very nicely:

The OmniFocus inbox just seems like the best “don’t think about where to put it, just get it down” place.

If a non-actionable thought is truly worth saving, you can always move it to a better saving place later. There should be no rules around what you write to your inbox, only rules about what stays in OmniFocus.

His article is full of practical tips for using iOS’s quick entry and Inbox features. I was beginning to uncover a similar strategy myself, but Eddie sheds a whole lot of light on using OmniFocus to capture anything and everything. Love it.

Via The Brooks Review

Busted

(Or, How Math Homework Can Teach You to Not Worry About Yesterday)

When I was little, I hated getting in trouble.

Being a nerd when you’re 24 is cool; being a nerd when you’re 11? Not so much. But a nerd I was, and so I was mostly well-behaved, studious, and terrified of rule breaking. Not of other kids breaking rules, but the thought of personally getting in trouble made my little pre-pubescent heart palpitate.

One night, when I was in sixth grade, I didn’t do my math homework. Well, I wrote down the numbers to the problems, and stared at the paper for a little while, and then scrawled a big question mark next to the problem to fill up some of the very blank page. Unfortunately, question marks weren’t considered acceptable. When my teacher checked my homework the next day, despite my stammering attempts to explain, all I got was a smug “Boo-hoo. Sign the book,” in her elderly southern drawl. The book, as in, The Detention Book.

Needless to say, I was a wreck for the rest of the day. Detention? I don’t even know what that means! What do I have to do? Where do I go? What are the procedures? How do I get home? How can I avoid mom and dad finding out about this? What the heck is a “late bus”?!

It’s funny, in retrospect, how much anxiety a little boy can experience just from having to stay an extra 45 minutes after school, but what can I say? I hated getting in trouble.

I still do, even as a post-pubescent. Fortunately, my last math assignment was over four years ago. Still, even a simple, “Sir, you can’t park here,” makes me flinch. I end up repeating the incident over and over again in my head, replaying it ad nauseum until enough time passes, and it fades from memory.

Fortunately, as an adult, I rarely find myself in trouble, and the occasional incident is far less debilitating than it was in the halls of John Wallace Middle School. What I’ve come to realize is there’s no point in worrying about things that have already happened. Repeating a mistake in your head over and over again rectifies nothing. It only causes you to experience the same unpleasant emotional response you felt at the time.

It sounds simplistic to say you should learn from your mistakes, but that’s really all you can do about them once they’ve been made. I should have done my homework. Oh, well. Can’t do anything about it now — except prevent it from happening again.

Dwelling on the past beyond any meaningful reflection is a waste of time.

That’s not to say it isn’t hard to do, but sometimes you need to ask yourself what you’re gaining from allowing a thought to take up residence in your head. What purpose does this thought serve? Is it healthy for me to continue to think about this thing I can’t do anything about?

Maybe the answer is yes. Maybe it’s taking a long time to figure out exactly what happened and how to learn from it. That’s okay. But anguishing over things you can’t change, and things that, in thirteen years, might not be such a big deal, isn’t productive. In fact, it can be counterproductive if it prevents you from moving forward. It’s another form of paralysis generated by the mind. Fortunately, that means it’s also something you can control.

Everett Bogue puts it splendidly:

Spending one moment more than necessary worrying about what I should have done yesterday is a moment that I’m not spending now taking concrete actions that are necessary in order to achieve what I need now.

Don’t worry about yesterday. Do your homework, and soldier on.

Home Button Follow-Up

In my post about why the iPhone is minimalist, I mentioned that the Home button serves a single purpose: to return to the home screen.

I’d say this is true the majority of the time. However, Luke Wroblewski actually came up with thirteen different functions for the Home button, most of which I hadn’t thought about.

I stand corrected, but Luke’s list doesn’t make the Home button any less minimalist. After all, one button is far simpler than thirteen different ones.

Via The Brooks Review

Anger vs. Art

Seth Godin asks if your anger is killing your art:

It’s rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person.

They can’t occupy the same space, and if your anger moves in, generosity and creativity often move out. It’s difficult to use revenge or animus to fuel great work.

Most of the blogs I had when I was younger (LiveJournal?!) ended up descending into meaningless rants and complaining sessions. Not fun to read, unrewarding to write. Although, perhaps understandable for high school.

A Fair Fight

Leo Babauta on the amazing power of being present:

If you are completely present, the external forces are no longer a problem, because there is only you and that external force, in this moment, and not a million other things you need to worry about.

Vital, but so very challenging. It’s really hard, for example, to do yoga when you’ve got a hundred things on your mind and a ton of stuff to do after you’re done. It’s really hard to go to work after having a rough morning and realize it’s only Tuesday.

I thrive when I have things to look forward to. It can be anything, really: plans with friends, a new podcast to listen to, a new album coming out. Having these things in the back of my mind helps me get through the stuff I’d rather not be doing. It’s a means to an end; you have to get through the obligations in order to reach the things you’re passionate about.

But when there doesn’t seem to be anything to look forward to other than long workweeks and uneventful weekends, things can seem pretty bleak. So while having stuff to look forward to can be an advantage, it can also be a detriment when there’s nothing exciting on the calendar. That is, reliance on always having something to look forward to is not the most effective method for avoiding a bad mood.

Leo’s advice about being present is the solution. It’s a form of mindfulness:

Being present becomes, then, a way to handle any problem, any distraction, any stressor. It allows everything else to fade away, leaving only you and whatever you’re dealing with right now.

If I’m at work, I’m responsible for teaching a great karate class. I can’t let the thought of having nothing to do this weekend affect my performance. The better option would be to focus on the present moment and think about what I can do to make this class memorable for the students. Then, my fear or longing for things outside the moment will fade away, rather than dictate how I feel. This allows me to give my full attention to whatever I’m doing right now. In other words, don’t let something happening in the future affect your happiness in the here and now. Deal with it when it arrives, not when you can’t do anything about it.

If you’re present, you can fully enjoy the moment. Even if the moment finds you working on something you’d rather not be doing, you’ll be better equipped to deal with it when it has your full attention, not when you’re simultaneously thinking about ten other things.

When it’s just you and the moment, it’s one-on-one: a fair fight. All that other stuff will still be there afterward. One thing at a time.

Monday Romanticism

Shawn Blanc offers a new perspective on Mondays as the morning of the week:

For those who work with their mind, Mondays should be for dreaming and planning. They are the morning of the week, and each Monday brings with it a new beginning, a fresh start, and a sea of potential.

A refreshing take on the bane of many’s existence. Shawn’s attitude can be difficult to achieve, especially if you work in a manmade box. But at the same time, Monday happens no matter where you work. A change in perspective might just be the cure for that Office Space joke.

Simplicity In Your Pocket

(Or, Why the iPhone is Minimalist)

Dave Caolo rolls out his new, practical 52 Tiger with a post on how to de-clutter your iPhone. It’s a good article with simple strategies for keeping your device clean and tidy. A personal favorite:

I like to keep the bottom row icon-free. This habit developed when I bought the original iPhone years ago, and there was a dearth of apps for it. Since then, I’ve always keep that bottom row empty. It looks nice and provides an obvious lane for swiping back and forth.

I’ve been keeping my bottom row free since I got my iPhone 3G, and I find it makes a world of difference in how calm my home screen looks and feels.

Still, as with all Apple products, the iPhone itself is designed with focus and simplicity in mind so you don’t have to actively think about keeping it clutter-free.

From a software point of view, iOS has a uniform design; everything is consistent across each screen. Every icon is the same shape and style, and they’re all organized into a neat grid in the order of your choosing.

A friend once asked me to fix one of the icons on her Android phone, which was inexplicably out-of-line with the others. I tried several things, but the icon refused to conform with the grid. Staring at one rogue icon all the time would drive me nuts. Fortunately, the iPhone makes it impossible to have a messy home screen. Even if you have the maximum twenty icons or an entire page of folders, they’re still neatly arranged and offer a soothing user experience.

Dave also suggests being ruthless about which apps you keep on your device. I generally don’t keep apps that I might need “someday” for the precise reasons Dave describes: Re-downloading an app from the App Store is simple and free, and iOS 5 will save my app data even when I remove unused apps. Quick and painless.

Any self-respecting nerd will tell you home screen organization is a science. A judicious approach to app selection allows me to only have two screens-worth of icons. My home screen contains my most used apps, and the second screen contains folders for games, reading, utilities, and apps I’m intrigued by or experimenting with. This setup keeps all my apps only a swipe or tap away and protects me from having to dig through pages and pages of icons to find what I’m looking for.

Of course, the iPhone’s minimalist design is not only limited to software. The hardware itself is also clean and free of any extraneous buttons, keyboards, or trackballs. The iPhone’s Home button, for example, has a single function: return to the home screen. Its simplicity allows virtually any user to be able to navigate the phone within seconds. There’s practically no learning curve; if you’ve pressed it once, you’ve mastered it. This ease-of-use is what enabled my grandmother to look up something on Wikipedia despite having never owned a computer.

“But it’s so expensive!” you protest. “How can can something so expensive be considered minimalist?”

You could certainly make an argument that a free flip-phone is more minimalist than an iPhone, but this brings me to the issue of quality.

I’m a fairly ardent minimalist, but I agree with Marco Arment on this issue:

If you sit on, sleep on, stare at, or touch something for more than an hour a day, spend whatever it takes to get the best.

Why? Well:

1. Quality lasts longer. You can buy something cheap that will need to be frequently replaced, or you can buy a high-end item that will serve you well into the future. My iPhone 4 is fifteen months old — forever in technology years — and it still seems brand new.
2. Quality feels better. I love using my iPhone. I don’t get frustrated with it because I can’t figure out how to do something or because something isn’t working properly. That’s one less source of stress in my life.
3. Quality inspires you. My MacBook Pro is so enjoyable to use that I actually want to write posts with it. My iPad makes me want to read articles, essays, and novels. I don’t dread using these devices, so they actually allow me to get more done. Could I get by on a phone that just makes calls? Yes, but I’m a nerd, and I need more than that. Maybe not as a human, but as Andrew Marvin, I need to be able to read the latest news and check Twitter and play a game here and there because those things make me happy.

Everyday, the iPhone makes my life simpler and easier. I don’t have to carry a dictionary around with me. I don’t have to wait until I’m at a computer to send a quick email. I don’t need to buy a GPS for my car or a pedometer for exercising. I don’t need to keep a planner or a book with me all the time. The iPhone simplifies all of these areas in my life, which in turn makes me more productive, calmer, and happier.

“Option Erasers”

James Shelley on Choice Anxiety:

Discipline — regardless of century, technology or era — has always been the commitment to choose one thing at the expense of all others.

Today, many people call this skill “productivity”, but I still contend that it is simply self-control.

Saying no frees you to say yes to something else.

This Week

(Or, Three Ways to Survive Bad Times; a.k.a. The Big Perspective Post #1)

This week promises to be what can only be described as “a bitch.”

Allow me to explain.

As I’m writing this, it’s Sunday night. This week I will be teaching at our annual Karate Camp, which runs from 9am to 3pm, Monday through Friday. Our regular classes will continue unabated from approximately 4pm to 9pm. On Friday evening, virtually the entire school will be graduating via three different ceremonies, and on Saturday, after I teach the regular classes from 9am - 1pm, I have to do a birthday party for what is sure to be a manic group of youngsters. This week ends at 3pm Saturday, a horrific 126 hours after it begins, and about 70 of which I will be hard at work teaching little kids how to defend themselves using only their shoelaces. Personal fitness, healthy dietary choices, and solitude are sure to take a backseat for the next six days. Not to mention it’s going to be difficult to find time to write and maintain this website, which threatens my 30 day writing commitment.

In addition, summer was slapped across the face today by a 68 degree and relentlessly rainy day, with the rest of the week looking to offer more of the same. All the while, my exquisite girlfriend will be sequestered in a draconian training program for her upcoming job, the likes of which does not allow for much verbal or textual communication.

All in all, the week of August 15, 2011 appears to be a prescription for angst, exhaustion, and general burnout.

Fortunately, this post is not intended to be a colossal woe-as-me rant. Nobody likes a complainer. Rather, I thought I would take this opportunity to document exactly how I intend to survive this hellish week and emerge in six days with my sanity mostly intact.

To put it simply, as I often try to do, the answer lies in Perspective.

For the past few years, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of Perspective and how it can be practically applied to help us lead healthier, calmer, and overall happier lives. This week provides an excellent chance to explain some of the strategies I use to ensure life doesn’t beat me when the going gets tough.

Perspective is a very complex topic, and there are many ways to implement it. I’m only going to talk about three in this post. More will follow in future posts.

The first thing to remember when dealing with any sort of challenging situation is also perhaps the most important:

1. You aren’t going to die.

Obviously, heartbreaking situations do exist, and they do happen, but those extraordinary circumstances aren’t the challenges we’re talking about here. We’re talking about beating the average bad day. Or week, as the case may be.

Always ask yourself, when presented with a scary or otherwise stressful situation, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Chances are it’s not that bad, and chances are even greater that the worst thing probably isn’t going to be what actually goes down. Realistically, the worst thing that could happen to me this week is I get exhausted, run down, and frustrated. Maybe I even get sick from working too long and too hard. But even then, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I’m bedridden for a few days, I suppose. That probably won’t happen, but even if it does, it’s not going to kill me. I’m not going to die.

Bob Parsons, CEO & Founder of GoDaddy.com, says in one of his rules to live by:

With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of “undefined consequences.” My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, “Well, Robert, if it doesn’t work, they can’t eat you.”

This is huge. For many people, the worst case scenario in life is death, or, in Bob Parsons’ case, to be literally devoured by humans. I agree completely; that’d be terrible. But, it’s not going to happen. No matter how badly you screw up a presentation, disappoint a loved one, or fail to meet a goal, no one’s going to eat you for it. That’s a very comforting thought. Say you embarrass yourself in front of a packed room of people. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They all laugh at you? You end up on YouTube? I suppose, but those outcomes have slim odds. You’re not going to die, and you will live to see another day. This is incredibly empowering if you can keep it in mind and not let fear consume you.

“Alright, fine,” you say. “I know I’m not going to die, but this is still going to be awful!”

Yes, you’re right. But that just means you need to ingrain this second mindset:

2. Time never stops.

I’m staring down a 70-hour workweek right now, and nothing in the world is going to change that. No matter how badly I wish it wasn’t so, nothing’s going to change the fact that I have a long six days ahead of me. The 70 hours are a reality I cannot alter.

What I can change, however, is how my mind thinks about and deals with those 70 hours.

When it comes to challenging parts of life, there is no fast-forwarding, but at the same time, there’s no pausing, stopping, or rewinding either. Time never stops moving forward. That means once the clock starts on those 70 hours, every day, hour, and minute that goes by brings me a little bit closer to 3pm Saturday afternoon. This mindset can have a tremendously augment your ability to deal with tough times. No matter how much it sucks, it will never be worse than it is at moment zero, when the pain or stress first starts. Every minute that goes by brings you a little bit closer to being okay. Thus, the end never gets any further away. Time never stops. You’re always moving closer to the goal, to the end, to the solution.

If you envision your challenge as a tunnel you need to walk through, you could say the worst part is the first step because you’re still the entire length of the tunnel away from your goal at the other end. But in fact, you’re also one step closer than you were when you were outside the tunnel. As long as you don’t give up or turn back, as long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you’re always getting closer to the end and to being okay again.

You can apply this thinking to virtually any situation:

If you’re sick, you can wallow in self-pity and mucous-filled tissues, or you can take comfort knowing you’re not going to be sick forever. The pain is temporary. There is a fixed point in the future when you’re going to feel better, and every passing hour brings you closer to that moment.

If you have to do twenty push-ups, and you hate push-ups, you can focus on the pain and agony in your triceps, or you can enjoy the fact that every push-up you do brings you closer to number twenty. Twenty is never getting any further away! Plus, the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get there.

If you’re devastated you haven’t met the love of your life yet, and you think you never will, you can beat yourself up about it, or you can decide you believe he or she is out there, and it’s only a matter of time before you find that person. They aren’t getting any farther away, even if you have no idea when they’ll show up.

In some of these cases, you can’t control when the end/relief/solution arrives, but you can always control how your mind deals with the time until you reach that moment.

If I sound like I’m repeating myself, it’s because you have to treat this step as a mantra. The more you say it, the truer it becomes.

And finally…

3. We are all wonderfully irrelevant.

There’s no doubt about it: this is going to be a trying week for me. Still, in the grand scheme of things, it really isn’t that big a deal. In seven days, the previous six will be just a memory.

What might be a big week in the world of Andrew Marvin is really just an undetectable blip on the timeline of the Universe. My rough week isn’t that important to anybody except me — apologies, dear readers — and as such, it holds a complex duality. It’s a big deal to me because it’s my life, and my life is my whole world. But at the same time, it’s practically nothing in the larger picture of humanity.

The Universe is incomprehensibly big. We are tiny infinitesimal specks on a minuscule little planet in a vast solar system, which is just one small part of thousands of galaxies and stars and space.

You may find this depressing, but it’s actually incredibly liberating. When you keep in mind how insignificant we probably are, things have a way of becoming far less serious.

As George Harrison wrote:

Try to realize it’s all within yourself,
No one else can make you change,
And to see you’re really only very small,
And life flows on within you and without you.

So there you have it: three strategies for beating a bad week. Note that none of them change the bad week itself, only the way you approach it.

The bottom line is you usually have no control over the things that happen to you, but you will always have control over your mind and how it deals with them.

Now, I’m off to bed. The sooner I sleep, the sooner tomorrow comes, and the sooner day one is complete. If I don’t see you, I hope you’ve found this article useful, and I encourage you to adapt my strategies to suit your own thinking.

I’m sure I’ll see you, though.

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