Less is More

In the book "The Four Hour Work Week" - Tim Ferriss introduces the reader to the 80/20 rule also known at the Pareto principle. It is wildly applicable to many things and through-out the book Tim references it in various aspects.

As part of my transformation I'm trying to apply the 80/20 rule to my life. I know, by this point you are asking WTF is the 80/20 rule... Here are some applications:

Basic principle - 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts

• Business - 80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients.
  
• Work - 80% of your work is completed by 20% of your tasks. If you look at your daily work, most of your results don't come from emailing back and forth, checking websites, reading reports etc. While these pointless pursuits occupy 80% of your day they serve to do nothing else.
  
• You wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time and furthermore you only use about 20% of the things you own.
  

I'm not Tim Ferriss so I can't get you started on the first two as well as the other examples he gives. If you'd like to eliminate 80% of your workload while maintaining your effectiveness, then I suggest picking up his book "The Four Hour Work Week".

What I'm going to touch on today is eliminating 80% of your life. We are owned by what we own. Ever find that your friends that have really nice cars worry about their cars? People that wear really expensive clothes worry about their clothes? I've never seen someone spill red wine on a Walmart shirt and freak out. Why? cause they don't care. It's a $12 shirt, they'll replace it. So let's get started shall we?

1. Purge your office clean. Start with your office. Look around, anything you haven't used in a few months. Get rid off. Throw out anything that isn't of value to anyone, give away the rest. Put it in a box, label "free" on it and stick it somewhere of high visibility. Let the people that don't know any better pick it up, collect it and have it occupy space in their life.
   
   
2. Let's clean out your closet. ANYTHING you haven't worn in the last year. GONE. That suit you had when you were a size 40 waist? Gone. Old shirts? shoes? jeans? shorts? socks? gone. You really only wear 20% of your entire wardrobe. So lets get rid of the rest. Things to save: specific pieces for things like mountain climbing, outdoor adventure, costumes, tuxedos (that fit), suits and the like. You might not have worn these lately but when you are more awesome you'll need them again. I did this several weeks ago and I eliminated about 60% of volume from my closet and I plan on doing this again in a few months. I find myself buying 2 pairs of jeans and cycling them till they are worn. When they are I toss out my oldest pair. At any given time I have 3-4 pairs of jeans and one of those are designated for cleaning/painting/mechanics etc. Let's take this pile of clothes that we no longer want to the Salvation Army. This is win win, you are free and clear of more things you don't want or use and you'll feel good about giving to people that have next to nothing.
   
   
3. The rest of the house. Now here comes the fun, you'll probably need a day for this and some good albums to get you through it. Anything you haven't used in one year. GET RID OF IT. Ok, maybe that's a bit much, you might need some wrenches and screw drivers etc. Keep those and anything that is there for an emergency, for repairs, etc. That jar of pens? gone. Stacks of papers? magazines? Let's be honest you are not going to need to reference that shit. One, because it's dated. Two, because you have the internet you can find this information in less time that it would take to find the magazine/paper .. This goes for school text books, annual reports and any other shit. Gone, gone and gone. Now we are really building momentum. Feels good doesn't it?
   
   
4. CD's, DVD's and the like. Remember your stack of audio cassettes? the ones that you hung on to as CD's phased in? Remember when you threw them out? The "let's get rid of this junk" feelings you had. Well, CD's and DVD's are being phased out. Sure you really like the cases or some stupid reason that you are justifying keeping them. "It's a good movie" unless that's the archival copy you are holding on to for the Weinstein Brothers, then get rid of it. It's time to load up the CD's. First we are ripping them to your hard drive because you don't listen to CD's anymore. They are dying, actually they are dead. So now you have copies of the music you paid to license, nothing illegal here. Now throw them out (give them away, I don't care). DVD's? When was the last time you took a movie out of your DVD collection and watched it? If you really want a movie you can download it, so lets pack these up and take them to Blockbuster where they will give you store credit for them. Now you can buy something with that credit (I think they have mp3 players, and other stuff that are not DVD related items). I know that less is more, but you paid hundreds if not thousands for the DVD collection and I want you to feel like you are getting something for it.
   
   
5. Look around, it feels good. We just cut out about 50% of the shit we don't want. It feels good doesn't it? All of a sudden we have less to worry about. We don't have to worry about something happening to something we don't care about, as well as we have more space. Wait we have more space! More space for more stuff right? Not exactly. Ever notice that you feel really free when you are somewhere that is empty and open?
   Think of a big field or a spacious room with minimal furniture, how does that make you feel, now look at your new zen like space. FREEDOM!
   

I encourage you to continue to do this, to purge your life clean of useless items. You will feel less owned by the items you have and you'll find yourself saving money. What? Really? Saving money by throwing out/giving away stuff? Yes, you'll find yourself in this new Zen like state, well maybe not all of us, but you'll find that you want less cause you realize that you'll probably just end up getting rid of it sooner or later.

Would you rather work here:

Or here: