Far Beyond The Stars: The Archives

Written by Everett Bogue

Kevin Kelly believes that the human race is building the planet into one giant brain with our technology.

He’s not sure what it’s called, but some call it The One, others call it The Cloud.

I’m not sure what to believe, but I do know one thing: we’re all plugged in. Some of us never unplug.

This is why I believe that it’s an absolute imperative to turn it all off once in awhile.

We have to take the time to get away from the cloud, head into the forest, and discover what it is to not be part of The Borg.

I love being plugged in, but there are stories on the fringes of my imagination of a day when people can’t turn it off. When to tweet is a necessity of human nature.

We are closer to this reality than you and I believe.

Recently one of my heroes, Gwen Bell took a month off of the net. No working, no tweeting, no checking email. She’s back now, but the experience taught her to listen to herself again.

This is why I’m leaving you for awhile.

I’ll be camping in the wilds of upper Wisconsin from August 10th-23rd.

I won’t tweet. I won’t check email. I’m going without a computer, I’m going where there is no 3G (for now.)

My blog and business will run on auto-pilot. I have a post scheduled for Tuesday, Monday, and Monday.

Comments will be off until further notice.

If you miss me, read my blog archives. A good place to start is at the beginning. Or, check out my books. Some say they’re quite good.

Some say that I will miss opportunities while I’m gone. I think going away is the opportunity.

August is a slow month on the Internet. Many people take this time to get reacquainted with themselves. Maybe this is a good time for you to do that as well.

We’ll all be back in September, and the work will continue.

For now, a break.

A Free E-book Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

What is Minimalist Workday?

I’ve been tossing around the idea that our average workday is too long for awhile now.

Over the past year I’ve managed to build a business working an average of 2 hours a week. I’m not saying this to brag, but simply to let you know that it’s possible.

When you make slight behavioral modifications like turning off e-mail and focusing on what is important for your business, it’s amazing what you can accomplish.

Minimalist Workday outlines 50 strategies that I use to keep my workday at a comfortable 2 hours a day. This way I can dedicate more time to research, travel, self-improvement, cooking good food, yoga, and helping others.

This started as a blog post, but spiraled out of control. The e-book is around 5,000 words, over the course of 30 pages. I hope that it helps you.

Why is Minimalist Workday free?

To be honest, I probably could have charged for this information, but then it wouldn’t help as many people. I’ve already doubled my income over the last year, and while more money is always better, some ideas need to be free to have the largest impact.

Minimalist Workday isn’t for everyone.

To be honest, I wrote this specifically with self-employed professionals who are running simple one-person businesses in mind. It really is a free addition to Minimalist Business.

That being said, with a little mental tweaking, I imagine you can apply this knowledge to a 9-5 in order to free up more time for launching extra-income earning side-projects or get yourself promoted. If you’re part of a ROWE company, even better.

Click here to download your 100% free copy of Minimalist Workday.

If that looks bad on your Kindle, try this version (thanks @jprichter.)

What can you do to help?

If you enjoy this e-book, I’d really love if you could share it freely with as many people as you can.

• Retweet this post to your Twitter friends
• Stumble this post on Stumbleupon
• Email this post to friends.
• Bookmark it on Delicious.
• Etc, etc, any way that you can help would be great. Ideas can’t spread without your help.

Thanks for your time, and for your help sharing this with the world.

Best,

Everett

The less you have, the more epic your life.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Long time readers of this blog, and anyone who’s picked up a copy of The Art of Being Minimalist know that I’ve had a storied relationship with the personal possessions that I own and acquire.

Why you have so much stuff.

Basically, I think that we’ve been duped into buying things by an advertisement-dominated society for the last 50 years. The Internet is just now allowing us to break free of this mess and start to realize that the junk doesn’t matter.

Because I live with less stuff, and don’t buy much, all of the money I make from my minimalist business can go towards experiences such as travel and learning.

In my mind experiences are what life is worth living for, not possessions.

Last year, when I quit my job with $3,000 in the bank and moved to Portland, Or. I had 97 things. By the time I wandered back to the East coast, I had 75 things. When Alix and moved to San Francisco bay, I reduced my possessions to 50 things and a few weeks after I confessed that I really needed to live with more stuff than just 50 things.

Well, I just did one of my occasional stuff-counts, and it looks like I was right but not by much.

Even after saying that I was going to scale up the stuff, I only have 57 things.

Disclaimer that every minimalist blogger does about their stuff:

Now, obviously Alix and I have a bunch of shared items such kitchen and bedroom stuff. We got two used stools for our kitchen, we found an inexpensive couch and chair. We have a bed. I also hang my jackets on hangers. So before you leave a comment asking if I sleep on a bed, the answer is yes, I do.

Our kitchen stuff is just the essentials, but we recently purchased a blender/food processor which is decidedly un-minimalist, but allows us to have one of the best simple breakfasts known to man: freshly made fruit smoothies. My energy levels have skyrocketed and I’ve continued to lose weight because of this investment.

I’m counting my underwear and socks together because every other minimalist blogger does too. We’re allowed to cheat on undergarments because we always have.

I also have a few books that I’m reading right now. I usually pass my books on to people who really need them. For instance, I just read Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to be Rich, which I’m giving to my brother because he really needs some personal finance advice at the moment.

Big purchases since moving to Cali.

I’ve made two big purchases since moving to Cali. The first was a new bike, a Surly Steamroller fixie. I’ve always wanted one, so I decided now was the time. The bike market here is outrageous, so I would have spent almost as much on a good used bike as this simple fixed gear bike, so I opted to order it from online.

I also purchased the new iPhone 4, because my old iPhone screen broke when I was in Brooklyn. I use the iPhone as a way to keep in touch with readers over Twitter and to write 85% of my blog posts. I’ve also started using Internet tethering on the iPhone which gives me Internet anywhere that I go and eliminates the need for Internet in our house –though there are bandwidth restrictions, which might be problematic if you watch a lot of TV online. We’ve gone over a once so far but it still seems to be cheaper than a dedicated line.

In the outbox:

A good minimalist always has an outbox, and I’ve put one thing in mine that I think are important to note here.

I decided recently that I should give away my Canon SLR camera. I haven’t used it more than once since moving to San Francisco, and only a dozen times in the last year. It definitely isn’t fitting into my ‘one-month-rule’, and so needs to go. This is hard for me, because I was a photographer for a long time. As some of you remember, I closed down my photography business for good around six months ago in order to focus exclusively on writing.

To be honest, I’ve made 2000% more as a writer than I ever did as a photographer, so that was a good move from a business perspective. It’s still hard, because the camera cost so much in the first place and the resell value is incredibly low now that consumer cameras are everywhere.

All of the photos you see on this blog were taken on my iPhone (including the one above) — you can see all of my photos here. It’s honestly way better for casual captures than my Digital Rebel ever was.

I’ve discarded a significant amount of clothing because of wear and tear over the last few months as well, so my clothes have actually become more streamlined. For instance, I used to have two hoodies, now I only have one new one. However, I’ve purchased more underwear, which has helped with not having to do laundry so much. I also have more pairs of jeans and more shoes than I used to.

Here’s my list of 57 things:

1. MacBook Pro
2. Macbook cleaning cloth
3. iPhone 4
4. iPhone earbuds
5. Black Yoga Mat
6. Moleskin notebook
7. Pen to write in moleskin notebook
8. Surly Steamroller Fixie
9. Helmet
10. Bike lock
11. Frye Boots
12. Belt
13. Gray Converse Allstars
14. Tom’s Shoes
15. REI two-person backpacking tent
16. Sleeping bag
17. Gray hoodie
18. Wind breaker
19. Sunglasses
20. Army jacket
21. Tweed jacket
22. Black heavier jacket
23. Gray backpack
24. Black Diamond Gray Backpacking bag
25. Jeans
26. Jeans
27. Cutoff old jeans
28. Purple tank
29. Purple tank
30. Gray tank
31. Gray long-sleeve sweatshirt
32. Gray long-sleeve T
33. Coffee tank
34. Gray v-neck
35. Gray v-neck
36. Black v-neck
37. Blue v-neck
38. Purple T
39. Gray T
40. Gray T
41. Black T
42. Toothbrush
43. Deodorant
44. Swim Trunks
45. Keys to apartment + bike lock
46. Minimalist “wallet” (really just a paper clamp that I keep my cards and cash in)
47. Gray sweatpants
48. Brown sweatpants
49. Brown button cowboy shirt
50. Gray button-down
51. Socks (about 10 pairs)
52. Underwear (about 10 pairs)
53. Sewing repair kit for clothes
54. Travel towel
55. Knit hat that Alix made me
56. 1 TB harddrive
57. 500 Gb harddrive (looking into cloud backup options)

Obviously you don’t need much to have a great life. I certainly don’t have much of anything.

The point is to focus your possessions around what really matters to you, so this number will be bigger or smaller depending on your specific interests.

I live a location independent life working on the Internet, my main interests are writing and practicing yoga. This allows me to really only need two things for my interests: a yoga mat and a computer. Your life might be different, and it’s okay to have more.

I’m flexible with my things though, so I may buy more things. I may get rid of them. Who knows, I’m not really stressing about a specific number. Once I start traveling, I imagine I’m going to travel with less than 57 things, because I have a home-base here in Oakland now.

Why carry so many things when I can travel with 25 or 30 things?

The idea is that we need to curb our consumerism in order to focus on the important. This is why I live with less, because I’ve decided to stop consuming and start living.

–

For Monday I’ve written an epic post (over 4500+ words!), which is already scheduled about how I work less than 2 hours per day, and how you can too. Don’t miss out, did you know you can sign up to receive my blog posts in your email? Otherwise, it’s always great to read my blog via RSS.

[UPDATE: The epic blog post I had scheduled kept being deleted by WordPress, so I’ve decided that I’m going to release the post as a free e-book instead. Check back on Tuesday for the free e-book: Minimalist Workday.]

Stop back on Monday, it’s worth your time, I promise.

Interview by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

If you’ve been reading about minimalism for long, you know Joshua Becker and his family. Joshua started blogging about minimalism two years ago, and quietly gathered a large following on his blog Becoming Minimalist.

There are a lot of ‘being minimalist’ books coming out these days –these things tend to happen when a topic becomes so incredibly popular so quickly,– so I’ve started to become incredibly selective about which books I recommend to my readers.

The reason I’m recommending Joshua Becker’s new book is because it’s challenging, it’s engaging, and it really asks some tough questions about why you’re pursuing this lifestyle, and how to maintain your decisions in the long run.

Joshua Becker didn’t just write a book about simplicity because it’s a good business decision –in fact, he was scared to write this book, see below. He wrote it because he and his family actually live a minimalist life, and have for a number of years now.

So without any delay, here is my interview with Joshua Becker on controversial values, minimalism with children, and why Joshua believes that we will never have a simple utopian society:

Everett Bogue: You say in the opening pages that Inside-Out Simplicity was the book you were terrified to write. Why is that?

Joshua Becker: The short answer is that I was afraid of controversy.

Although, the book is not particularly controversial, the book is weighty. It deals with some very deep, heart issues – such as contentment, gratitude, and forgiveness – not to mention chapters on sexuality and spirituality. And I think that whenever you start to talk about such things, you never know for sure how people are going to respond.

It can be pretty difficult for people to deal with some of those issues in their own heart. But I still wanted to write about those topics and inspire them to pursue some of those key life-changing principles and find simplicity in life because of it.

In the end, I decided that I look forward to the disagreements. After all, if you agree with everything that’s written in a book, what’s the point in reading it?

Everett: You mention continually throughout the book that simplicity comes from inside you, which I think is totally true. I think it could really help our readers if you explain how you came to this conclusion and how it effects how we think about simplicity.

Joshua: Early on in our journey towards minimalism is when I came to that realization. I was surprised at the emotional response I was feeling to the practice of minimalism. It caught me completely off-guard.

As we went from room to room removing things, I kept asking myself the question, “How did I get all this stuff? Why did I buy it in the first place?” Luckily, I kept pursuing those questions until I found some answers in my heart and soul.

We will always live out our heart’s true desires. We can mask over them and change our lifestyle for a time, but our true motivations will eventually win out. That’s why we’ve got to develop those life-changing principles in our lives… because a life of simplicity is not possible in the long run without them.

Everett: You know what really blows my mind about this book? This line:

“…many people go through life having no clear sense of their true values. Instead, their desires are molded by the culture and the advertisements that bombard upon them each day. As a result, they find no consistency in life. No unity. Their desires change as fast as the culture and they are quickly swept off their feet by the newest fashion, the most recent technology, or the latest diet fad.”

I guess that says it all, but here’s my question: how did you come to the above conclusion, and how did this knowledge improve your life?

Joshua: Super-early in the blog when we were still just telling our story, a reader posted a comment that went something like this, “I think that minimalism forces you to recognize your values. It helps bring clarity to them.”

I hadn’t thought about our minimalist journey in quite that way prior, but he was absolutely right and helped me identify some of the emotions that were going through my mind. Minimalism is ultimately about values. And if your values are changing, it is very difficult to find simplicity in life. For me, the realization of that truth caused me to sit down one day and actually write out my values on paper.

I still vividly remember the morning and where I was sitting. It was freeing to define them and intentionally choose to pursue them about everything else.

Everett: One of the main differences between our blogs, lifestyles, etc. is that you have two children –whereas I don’t have any. This is one of the main reasons that I’m always saying ‘if you have kids, go read Joshua’s blog and stop emailing me saying you can’t have a simple life because you have kids.’ How has having kids influenced how you apply minimalism?

Joshua: It certainly makes it a bit tougher. Kids need stuff. And they are constantly changing (size, maturity, interests), so their material needs keep changing too. You can’t just settle in on a set of possessions.

You are always making adjustments. It forces you to think a little bit more. But more importantly, my kids have become my great motivation for minimalism. One of the greatest benefits of paring down is that I have so much more time with them.

My desire to spend time with them and invest into their lives is one of the reasons I continue to embrace the lifestyle.

Everett: Finally, one last hard question. Imagine for a second a world in which more people adopted the simple values that you describe in your book. What would this world look like?

Joshua: I once wrote a post on The Utopian Impact of Desiring Less. As I was writing the post, I came to the conclusion that a world where people desired less rather than more is not possible.

It will never happen on a global scale. But, it can happen on an individual scale! It can be true of my life and there are countless benefits to my own life and soul by choosing to desire less. In the same way, a world where everyone adopted the principles in this book is not going to happen.

Instead, I’d encourage people to ask the simpler question, “How would my life look different if I adopted these principles? How would my days look different if I was more generous, more committed in my relationships, and more forgiving?”

Because that is something that can actually happen. And one good reason you should pick up a copy of the book.

–

You can find out more information on Joshua Becker’s new e-book Inside-Out Simplicity here.

To learn more about Joshua Becker read his review of Minimalist Business, and check out my interview with him earlier this year about the power of rational minimalism.

How I didn’t end up living in a ditch down by the river

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

This week (July 15th 2010) it will have been exactly one year since I quit my day job photo editing New York Magazine’s blogs, and started on an unexpected adventure in self-employment via minimalism.

Here’s a short recap of what happened in that year:

1. I hopped on a plane Portland Oregon on August 22nd 2009, reducing my possessions to what would fit into one carry on, one computer bag, and a camera bag — 97-things in all.

2. In October I started Far Beyond The Stars, a blog where I wrote about my minimalist journey escaping my day job and living a simpler life. I threw a party for myself when I hit 23 subscribers. Now I have 4000+ subscribers and 50,000+ monthly readers. Wow, thanks for being here everyone!

3. I drank a lot of coffee in a lot of different cities. Stumptown (Portland), Blue Bottle (Oakland), and Ritual Roasters (San Francisco) rank high on my roast choices. Intelligensia in Chicago doesn’t even compare, sorry guys.

4. At the end of November I left Portland and took the Empire Builder Express (named after Chris Guillebeau’s epic guide to self-employment) to Chicago where I spent the holiday with my family, went skiing in the upper peninsula of Wisconsin and started writing The Art of Being Minimalist.

5. In January 2010 I flew back to New York with every intention of leaving asap. My girlfriend missed me, so I convinced her that we had to move somewhere other than Brooklyn eventually.

6. During January I finished The Art of Being Minimalist, which teaches people how to apply minimalism in order to survive without a job for long periods of time, among other things. In February I released the e-book, and surprisingly the profit from the e-book started paying for my minimalist lifestyle.

7. People started emailing me about how I was able to make a living from a little e-book on simplicity. I tried to help as many people as I could individually, but the emails became too much, so I decided instead to write another e-book.

8. In May I pre-relased Minimalist Business before it was done. Perfect is the enemy of done in my mind (more on that later). A lot of people went out of their way to purchase Minimalist Business before it was done. Thank you everyone! From what I hear, many people liked it.

9. On May 15th my girlfriend Alix, myself, and Lola the cat relocated to Oakland, CA. I reduced my possessions to 50 things for the move, but afterward realized that I needed a few more shirts so I wouldn’t have to do laundry so much.

10. In June I released Minimalist Business. My income surpassed what I made at my day job around this point (ie, a little more than I need to be making to support my minimalist lifestyle.) Now a legion of extraordinary individuals are applying the theories in the e-book to build their own minimalist businesses. Yay!

Not bad for one year since I quit my day job!

That being said, I’ve learned a few things since making the transition.

This is why I’ve compiled this list of 12 things I’ve learned since quitting my day job.

1. Moving anywhere isn’t as scary as you think.

I was absolutely terrified of moving to Portland. Everyone told me that I’d end up in the gutter at the edge of the river under the bridge with the bums.

In all honesty, here’s what people are scared about: the choices they have to decide on in order to make a long distance relocation a reality. Mostly this involves giving up your wall-sized entertainment system, and all of the knickknacks that you’ve been keeping in boxes since high school. They’re too freakin’ big to fit into a carry on bag. This junk is also not important, because you don’t use it.

I had to give up some things to be able to live anywhere. The 20lb light kit that I’d purchased in order to pursue the dream of becoming a photographer (which was never happening anyway, because I wasn’t really interested in it.) was one of the causalities. I also had to donate some jackets I never wore.

Of course there was more, but I forget now what that stuff was.

The reality is that freedom is much more important than your stuff, and anything you lose can be regained if you truly miss it.

2. You know what really scares me now?

Being forgotten, saying nothing important, living a life that I didn’t believe in. If I ever find myself in a place where I’m afraid that I’m not doing what I think is important, I will do everything in my power to change that.

I hope you will too.

3. It’s easier to live and work from anywhere if you make it easier.

Many people make it incredibly hard to work for themselves, and that’s why they fail.

The #1 culprit for self-employment failure, in my observations, is over-extended life overhead.

The reason I’m still standing here, one year after leaving my day job, and now making MORE money than I did at New York Magazine (and working 1/4th as much as I used to,) is because I was able to survive for the first three months without any income at all. It takes a long time to build the momentum to make a business happen, and if you’re feeling the pain of high-overhead, you’ll fail before you see results.

If your monthly overhead is $7,000, it’s much harder to succeed than if your monthly overhead is $1,000.

What is the easiest way to lower you overhead? Adopt a minimalist lifestyle. Ditch your car. Move somewhere cheap and live in a studio apartment or with roommates. If you truly want to live and work from anywhere, you have to sacrifice your consumerist tendencies and focus on the important until you see results.

4. You need to tell a simple story.

Look to the right of this blog post, in the sidebar of my blog (if you’re reading this in a feedreader or in email, visit my site.) What does it say?

“Hi I’m Everett Bogue. I’m the author of The Art of Being Minimalist and Minimalist Business. I live with less and work from anywhere in the world (currently Oakland, CA).”

People need to know exactly what you’re about immediately — because most people are only going to see your work for a 1.52 seconds. 80% of the people I come across on the Internet haven’t made it clear what they’re about, and that’s why they don’t get traction.

In reality my story is much more complicated than the one above, but you need to dig deeper to find that out.

You need to define yourself as a leader in order to make a living from anywhere in the world. The most effective people I know have tell people what they’re about in a very simple and direct way. Ashley Ambirge rejects the status quo and rebels against mediocrity. Glen Allsopp teaches people about how to use viral marketing to get their message to the world. Karol Gajda teaches people how to live free anywhere in the world.

In order to break through the noise you need a simple message that can spread. Make it fit into a tweet. Make it memorable, so if you meet someone on the street they’ll be able to remember you later.

Some call this an elevator pitch, but I don’t really use elevators anymore. I’d prefer to refer to it as a simple message that defines your work.

“Hi. I’m Everett Bogue. I teach you to apply minimalism in order to live and work from anywhere.”

5. Ignore Everybody.

This is the title of Hugh McLeod‘s book (he’s one of my heroes.) It’s a mantra that’s stayed with me through all the entire year — especially for some of the harder months in the beginning when things were first getting started.

Whenever you try to do something against the status-quo, such as starting your own business or pursuing your art, the naysayers will do everything in their power to let you know that you’re going to fail.

Over the last year my family thought I’d fail, my girlfriend thought I’d fail, everyone who I’d worked with previously thought I’d fail, some of my readers thought I’d fail. The only person who knew I wasn’t going to fail was me.

They all said ‘why don’t you just get a job like everyone else?’

Would I been successful if I’d given up because everyone thought I’d fail? Nope.

We only define success after a person has been successful. This means that you will never be successful when you first get started. No matter who you are, or where you’re coming from, you can never have a successful beginning.

This means you need to tune out everyone who tells you to take the safer road, and trust your gut.

6. The safest thing is often what everyone isn’t doing.

Believe it or not, the safest thing you could probably ever do is to do something that everyone thinks is impossible — most people don’t try to do impossible things, they try to do easy things. When you’re competing with 50,000 people trying to do the easiest thing, you’ll inevitably have a really hard time making a living doing that easy thing.

For example: getting a job in a coffee shop is basically impossible in Portland, because there are thousands of indie kids all competing to pour your coffee. Only the really talented coffee pourers win in this situation.

The tinier the niche you’re trying to fill, the easier it is to find success. I’m one of the very few people that teaches people how easy it is to live and work from anywhere by applying minimalism, this is why I haven’t encountered many brick walls on this path.

If I tried to write about celebrity gossip, I wouldn’t have been so lucky, because everyone does that.

7. Authenticity is in living the change you believe in.

Write what you believe, from the place where you’ve actually been. There are a lot of minimalist blogs out there, if you’ve noticed. I believe the number one reason that mine has been so successful is because I’m actually a minimalist, and I actually live and work from anywhere in the world.

If you write from a place of ‘look at this hypothetical idea that I’m not actually going to try.’ people aren’t actually going to believe you, because you’re not doing it.

I actually threw out my stuff and lived with 50 things for awhile. I actually moved across the country a few times. If you’re writing a guinea pig blog, you’d best actually have guinea pigs. If you’re writing a ‘save the planet’ blog, you’d best not be driving a car anymore. If you want to end world poverty, writing about it isn’t enough, you should actually be feeding people. If you write about raw food, you’d best actually be eating it.

If you don’t, no one will believe you.

How do I know that creating a minimalist business is a lot more fun than having a day job? Because I run one.

8. There is no original.

If you set out to be the most unique person on the planet, to only have original ideas, to only say something that no one has ever said in the history of the planet, you will never be able to say anything.

Everything has happened before, and everything will happen again. You can’t avoid that.

It’s being you that brings the originality. It’s your approach that makes it unique. It’s the fact that you’re actually doing something that inspires people.

Don’t worry that you’re stepping on Thoreau’s toes. He doesn’t mind.

9. Be ruthless with your attention.

You only have so many hours in your day. Don’t waste it on stupid things that don’t matter.

There are millions of channels to tune into in the Internet age, you can’t listen to them all.

In order to succeed you need to cut through the noise by using your attention wisely.

• Unsubscribe to a blog if it bores you (even if it’s mine.)
• Unfollow someone on Twitter if you don’t care anymore.
• Don’t answer that email if you know you’ll just get another one in return.

Your attention is always best spent on your work. Your work is actually creating things.

Track all of your other time. Social networking, email, reading noise, etc. Chances are you’re probably finding some hidden way to procrastinate against the actual process of creation.

Don’t do anything else until you’ve made work that matters.

10. Test all of your assumptions.

Everything you learned in college about how the world works was probably a lie. This isn’t because people are intentionally deceptive, it’s because the way the world works fundamentally changed in the last five years — most college professors still think it works the old TV-industrial way. It doesn’t work that way anymore.

Every time you find yourself assuming that the world works a certain way, make sure you test that theory out first. Because it is just a theory, assumptions aren’t necessarily reality.

I was told every single day in college that the only way to get my work published was to get an internship at a newspaper and work my way up newsroom ladder until I was a senior editor, and then I’d be able to say whatever I wanted. Two years later most newspapers in the country stopped being profitable. Now no one with any sense reads newspapers anymore.

You wouldn’t believe how many of my journalism school colleagues still think this false idea of current reality is true, just because a professor told them it was.

There are obviously a million examples of untested assumptions that people insist on believing. The record label is the only way to bring their music to the world (there is no music industry). The only way to be happy is to buy things (buying things makes you unhappy). McDonald’s hamburgers are made out of meat (mealworms?). Etc. None of these things are true, but you haven’t tested them now, have you?

Make sure you prove theories through execution, and not just because some old guy told you it was true.

11. Everything changed after 2003.

According to The Long Tail, 2003 was the last year that there was growth in the mega-artist industry. Remember the blockbuster albums from when you were a kid? There are no blockbusters anymore. Sure, there’s still somewhat popular stuff like Twilight and Lady Gaga, but this stuff will never be as popular was it was when the TV controlled what we heard and saw.

You are in control now. You are responsible for every single element of getting your message to the world. No one will pick you up and dump you in success-land. This also means that you can be successful with a very small group of people… some say you only need 1,000 true fans, and I concur, because the fans of my work support me.

The world is an equal playing field thanks to the Internet, and you have no excuse but to step up and start playing the game. Yes it’s hard. But do you know what’s harder? Sitting at a desk all day hating your life.

12. Your business shouldn’t cost anything.

The one sure-fire way to never be able to support yourself is to make your business cost as much as the revenue you have coming in.

I don’t care about your revenue, I care about your profits. My business works because every single dollar coming in either goes to an affiliate (because I pay my fans to support me) or it goes to me.

I know it’s obvious, but so many people just don’t get it. I wouldn’t be living and working from anywhere if my business overhead was more than my profits. If you start out thinking that investing tons of money in an idea is how money comes back, you’ll end up going bankrupt, not building a business.

Instead try the opposite approach: only invest what you need to, when you need to do it. Chances are you can build a business for free, or for very cheap. This is how to build a business: not the expensive way.

Thanks for reading this long blog post. I can’t wait for the next year, it’s going to be great!

Best,
Everett
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Oh! and before I forget. My buddy Tyler Tervooren interviewed me about running a minimalist business at Advanced Riskology.

Why It’s Easier to Succeed if You Have Nothing to Lose

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

“If money were no object for me I’d…”

“When I win the lottery I’ll…”

I hear these sayings all the time, we all do.

I want to take a moment to help you discover how to make money no object with very little money.

Why? Because I honestly think the idea that you need to wait until you have a large amount of resources is holding people back from achieving a reality where they can live and work from anywhere — or whatever your plans are.

I feel that eliminating excuses through simple experimentation has gone a long way towards helping me discover my own full potential, and I hope this will too.

Why the risk is really what you fear to lose.

When we truly dissect the above excuses, we can see quite easily what is really at stake: losing everything.

We’re afraid if we pursue the reality that we always dreamed of, we’ll end up losing the reality that we have now.

So we wait for the day when money is no longer an object. When we’ve made the millions that will support our every dream and ambition.

There are two elements that make this assumption completely absurd.

First I’ll break down the assumptions, and tell you why they’re wrong. Second, I’ll show you how to make money no longer an object through one simple practice that I’m sure you’re already aware of.

…and they are:

1. You’ll never make millions if you never take risks.

People think that if they sit around at a desk, someday they’ll get promoted and make millions. This isn’t true, because employers have an infinite choice of hiring potential. Who are they going to hire when it’s time to fill a new position? Someone new, exciting, and who appears more ambitious than you in a 45 minute interview. Also, while you sit around, you’re getting older and your dreams are rapidly turning to stone.

2. You’re not simply going to ‘get lucky’.

You can’t win the lottery if you don’t play. Buying a lottery ticket is a risk you have to take for impossible odds. If you don’t play, you also can’t win. This is a metaphor, of course, because it’s dumb to actually play the lottery. If you don’t risk something, you can’t move to the next level.

Okay, so now that I’ve dispelled those myths, I want to show you to beat the system. How to make the risk of following your dreams negligible.

Reduce what you’re risking as much as possible.

Risking putting everything on the table when you have a lot to lose is an awful lot to ask. ‘What if I lose the Porsche? How will I ever survive?’

One of my heroes, Julien Smith the co-author of Trust Agents, has a saying that “Cultural Transparency ÷ Risk = Upward Mobility“. From my experiences, I genuinely believe this to be true.

In order to move up in society, you need to both take risks and learn about how the world actually works — which is oddly enough not how everyone tells you it works.

So this is what you need to do, in order to eliminate as much risk as possible in order to pursue your dreams — which could be much more profitable and ultimately rewarding than the life you’re currently leading.

1. Eliminate anything, and everything, in your life that you fear to lose.

You can’t feel the pain of loss if you have nothing to lose. Give away the Porsche, junk the flatscreen TV, downsize to a smaller house, donate the Gucci handbag to someone who doesn’t need to risk anything.

Make a list of everything you think you can’t live without.

Now, sell everything on that list.

You can keep your clothes and your laptop if you think you need them. Maybe you need shoes. Maybe you don’t!

All of you junk is holding you back from your pursuit of your dreams. It’s best if you eliminate everything to the point that you’re living out of a bag or somewhere close to that.

I’ve been living out of a bag for a year now, this is the single most important factor in my ability to take risks in order to build my business to be as profitable as it is now.

2. Pay off all of your debts.

Every debt that you take on makes it harder to take risks. If you pay off all of your debts and resolve never to take on another again, you’ll be able to risk it all so much easier.

For more on paying off your debts see my article on Minimalism Vs. Debt.

3. Start taking risks.

You have to start small. Now that you have nothing to lose, I want you to go ahead and start taking some small risks just to be uncomfortable. The object is simply to push your boundaries and nothing more:

A simple risk taking activity to inspire you:

During a busy rush hour commute I want you to go to a public place where, more than 150 people are present — public transit is best, but a mall or plaza can do, with headphones and some sort of music playing device such as an iPod.

Now, pick a song that’s danceable and has lyrics you know by heart. I usually do this with Smashing Pumpkin’s ‘Ava Adore‘, but you know what you know.

Now, turn the song on, walk into the middle of the public place and start dancing + singing as loud and as extravagantly as possible. Stay in one place in the most crowded location possible. Do not stop until the song is over. There is nothing illegal about singing and dancing, you will not get in trouble.

People will probably look at you like you’re a crazy person. That’s okay.

Once you’re done, just walk out of there like nothing ever happened.

I realize the idea of doing this is terrifying to a lot of people. Being weird is frowned upon everywhere.

The idea is not to be weird, or to attract attention, it’s to start exploring what it feels like to take a risk. You might look like a fool if your simple business bombs. You might feel bad when your wife asks where the Porsche went. Feeling weird is part of risk taking.

The truth of the matter is that you’ll never succeed if you don’t try.

And the easiest way to try is to have nothing to lose.

I believe this is one of the fundamental lessons behind Minimalist Business.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

I’ve been receiving a considerable number of emails and Twitter messages asking for me to write about my average day.

So yesterday, I sat down and tried to figure out what I did every day, on average.

I ended up making up an ideal day that didn’t really reflect reality, that had never been lived and would not be lived.

Why I don’t have normal days.

This made me realize that I don’t really have a routine, I simply wake up every morning and do what I feel inspired to do from start to finish.

The ability to be able to do whatever you want on any given day can make life look relatively random when you attempt to scale it down to a post on your ideal day.

This makes the title of this post incredibly misleading, but I hope you’ll forgive me.

When I used to have average days.

When I worked at New York Magazine, I had average days. I’d wake up every morning at exactly 8am. I’d roll out of bed, turn on my laptop and immediately sign into email and AIM. Five minutes later I’d start to receive requests to put photos on the stories that other people had written.

This continued all morning, while I made coffee in the kitchen and made myself breakfast. Eventually I’d tell my assistant to cover for me while I jumped on the Subway and headed into Manhattan.

Then I’d sit at my desk making the photos on blog posts look great until 2, when I’d run out and grab lunch to come back and eat at my desk, and then at 5pm on the dot I’d turn it all off and continue on with my life. I did this every day, it was very average.

Now I don’t live like that anymore, because a year ago I quit my job and now I’m in control of my own destiny.

I don’t recommend living the day job average-day lifestyle, so far having random days where I discover what really interests me is much more profitable than sitting at a desk every day was.

That being said, there are things that I might do on most days that I think can help you emulate my day, if that’s the reason why you’re emailing me to tell you what my average day is like. These aren’t very revolutionary things, they’re just normal human things.

Here are some of the key elements of my day:

1. Writing. I write when I have an idea worth writing down. Other times I’ll write just to see if an idea will come — if it doesn’t I’ll stop writing. I don’t do this on any set schedule. For instance, I’m writing this at 6am in the morning, because I couldn’t sleep any longer and the idea just wouldn’t leave my head. Some days I’ll go to a coffee shop and write, other days I’ll sit down somewhere after Yoga and write. It all depends on the day.

2. Wandering. Another good portion of most days is spent wandering. I find that exploring the city is a great way to both generate ideas, and to simply discover new places and experiences. The most important element of wandering is not having an end destination. For instance, many people wander to the mall to buy something — this isn’t wandering, it’s consumerism. Wandering shouldn’t cost too much money. I recently picked up a new bike (I haven’t had a bike since I was in Portland last year) so now I can wander on wheels.

3. Reading. I read a lot, in order expand my knowledge of how people think. Right now I’m trying to decode Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan, Chris Guillebeau and Charlie Gilkey’s new Unconventional Guide to Freelancing, and I’m in the process of reading Derek Sivers’ blog from start to finish, because he has a lot to offer. I used to read the New York Times for two hours every day, but then I realized that it didn’t really help me. I’d know everything about the sad things happening in the world, but I really couldn’t do anything about them, so in the end I decided it was more important to read things that could help me achieve my goals instead of simply reading for the sake of the action. Be conscious of what you’re consuming, information is addictive and often meaningless.

4. Yoga. Yoga centers me and I think might keep me from going crazy. My recent yoga schedule is mostly taking the BART into San Francisco’s Mission District where I practice at Yoga to the People, a donation based studio that originally opened in New York. 95% of the time Scott teaches, but my friend Carly from dance school also teaches there remarkably enough.

5. Eating. The rest of my day is usually spent in pursuit of food. I’ll either cook meals from scratch or sometimes I’ll go out to eat. There are a lot of great meals to be had in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco, so I’ve been exploring the food choices. The most important element is to be healthy and make sure the food is enjoyable. Why eat junk food just because you’re hungry, when there’s so much great food out there?

6. Disconnecting. Finally, every day I spend as much time as I can disconnected from the Internet. There are a lot of distractions out there, and I think the most important skill you can have is the ability to turn them off. Many people get caught up in rudimentary communications like checking blog comments and answering emails — this is all surface stuff in life, and doesn’t really matter. You can spend ten hours a day answering emails, and you’ll never really accomplish anything. This is why I do my best to turn it all off. I check email once a day, a few other times a day I’ll check on Twitter to see how everything is going. The rest of the day I turn it all off, and do whatever I want.

I realize this isn’t exactly what you were looking for when you asked what I did in my average day, but I hope it helps. Some people enjoy living this way, but I’ve met other people who go absolutely insane when they realize they can do everything they ever wanted.

Some days I just don’t do anything, because that’s what I feel like doing. And that’s okay, because I realize it’s important to follow my intuition about what is important to me.

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The Simple Way to Save Hours of Your Time

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

A number of people emailed me after the last post to say that there was no way for them to stop checking their email 35 times a day. I hope this follow up blog post can help.

I’ve been using these strategies for years in order to lower the amount of time I spend on email to good effect.

Why check email once a day?

1. Incoming messages distract, if you ignore them you’ll get important work done.
2. So you can spend more time enjoying your life, learning, or simply sitting in the sun during this gorgeous summer.
3. You spend less time reacting to other people and more time on your own work.
4. Because your productivity will skyrocket when you aren’t flipping back and forth between email every five minutes.

Email is a non-urgent form of communication that’s weaseled it’s way into becoming a daily obligation for the entire world.

I’ve seen people out at bars at night frantically checking up on their emails between drinks, how silly is that? I’ve seen people sitting on the beach flipping through their email.

Stop! Enjoy the life you have, because eventually you won’t have it anymore.

The funny thing is, when you make people aware of the fact that you only check email once a day, in most cases they’ll understand wholeheartedly. Most people don’t make the decision to define how often they check email, so they end up spending most of their lives checking it.

In most cases it’s essential to give important people a way to get in touch with you for emergencies. Most of us have cell phones, so give your most important clients and family your number and make it clear if there is a real emergency to get in touch with you there instead of over email.

Here are five simple steps to work towards checking email once per day.

1. Set a time to check your email. I check email around noon, after I’ve completed all important work that I had to do during the morning, such as writing this blog post. If you want to start checking email twice per day first, check again at 4pm to make sure everything is taken care of. I used to do this two-pronged approach earlier in my business, but have recently stepped back to checking once per day.

2. Filter all unessential email to the archive or trash. We receive a lot of junk mail. Most people just read it mindlessly. Don’t be a zombie, filter that junk out! If a message you never want to see again comes into your box, create a filter (this is easiest with gmail) to automatically archive similar messages. If you really never want to see it again send it directly to trash.

3. Process all emails to done in one sitting. Sit down, open up your email box, and process the whole inbox until it’s empty in one sitting. This means you have to make judgement calls: can you act on this immediately? Do you need to act at all? If the answer is the latter, archive now! If an email will take up a few hours of your time, set it aside on your to-do list (if you have one.) and continue down the list. Your inbox needs to be at zero after you’re done.

4. Respond to most emails with 2-3 sentences. I get a lot of emails that are written like novels. I’m very grateful for the fan mail, but most ideas can be condensed down to a paragraph or less. The problem comes when you respond. We humans have a tendency to respond in equal length to long messages, this is the wrong approach to take! Respond to every email in less than 3 sentences and you’ll save a ton of time. Yes, some people might get annoyed, but that’s life.

5. Make it more difficult to contact you. Most people put their email addresses out in the open for everyone to see. Don’t do this if you want to check email once per day! You have to install barriers of entry to your email address, or only give it to people who you want to talk to. For instance, my contact page has a list of requirements to read over before sending email (because I got a lot of it otherwise.)

If you follow these instructions, eventually you’ll be able to reduce your email checking to once per day. Good luck!

Gwen Bell also uses this email strategy, and she’s one of the most influential women in technology!

The surprising truth about not doing things that don’t matter

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

A few days ago I read Glen’s post on Viperchill about how he passed 10,000 subscribers by choosing what not to do with his business.

I’ve taken a very similar approach to building my own minimalist business, so I thought I’d share what I’ve discovered.

As a benchmark for the success of these strategies: my business revenue this month broke into the low five-digits, recently this blog passed 4,000 subscribers (not quite Viperchill benchmarks, but I can’t pretend to be as brilliant as Glen), and 50,000 monthly visitors.

That being said, I don’t really pay attention, or put any stock into statistics like subscriber counts and visitors and you shouldn’t either. I’ve seen plenty of 4,000+ subscriber blogs that weren’t saying anything important or making any change in the world.

I just thought I’d share these strategies for success anyway in the hopes that it can help you grow your blogging platform as well.

Why what you don’t do is more important than what you do.

I’ve become convinced that what you don’t do with your time is a lot more important than what you decide to do with it.

Empty space in time is a lot more useful than a frantically booked schedule.

As Derek Sivers said on this blog, if you aren’t “HELL YEAH” about something, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. Because if you don’t, you’ll have time to do something you really care about.

The reason I’m doing this is because I see a lot of people who are also building minimalist businesses who are also doing a lot of things that they don’t need to do.

The irony is that by choosing what not to do you can enjoy a lot more success than if you try to do everything.

When you run around frantically trying every strategy in the book in the hopes that something will work, inevitably nothing will actually work.

All of these strategies may not apply to you, but I hope that one or two can inspire you to save an additional 2-3 hours a week while conducting your business.

Here are 13 things that I’ve decided not to do in order grow my minimalist business.

1. Write about topics I don’t care about.

Many people create content about subjects they aren’t really passionate about. The problem with that is we can tell you don’t care, so we tune it out.

In the digital world there’s plenty of useless noise already, why should we listen to something that you’re saying but don’t care about? So we tune it out.

I decided early on with my minimalist business not to write things if I wasn’t 100% passionate about what I was saying. This means I post a lot less than other people, but it also gives me a lot of free time to do important things like sipping coffee and thinking about what I’m actually passionate about.

2. Write long responses to everyone who emails me.

As your business grows, you start to get incredibly large amounts of email. Most people choose to spend incredible amounts of time responding to all of this email, I’ve decided instead to not do that.

This frees up another 2-3 hours a day –and that’s current estimates, imagine if I had twice as many people reading and sending me emails?

I still send 1-2 sentence responses to most people (and if you get more, that’s because what you said really made me want to help you individually.) Instead of spending 2-3 hours responding to every unsolicited message, I spend my time helping people who I really care about grow their own business.

Bonus: When I first started receiving large amounts of email I added a list of requirements for people who needed to contact me on my contact form. This helped cut down the noise considerably.

3. Respond to every comment.

I decided from the start of this blog that every comment I receive doesn’t necessarily need a response.

This isn’t because I don’t care, because I really do, it’s just that when you focus all of your attention on making a relatively small pool of readers (I estimate 5%) feel appreciated, you end up spending a lot of time doing it. When you put a priority on responding to every comment, you just end up getting a lot more comments.

That’s one way of measuring success, but I personally don’t think it’s a good one. When you spend all of your time waiting around for a new comment to drop in your cue, you end up not doing important things in your life like reading books that blow your mind, creating content that matters, or simply enjoying life.

This is why A-list bloggers eventually turn off their comments, because it isn’t a necessary metric for success.

Obviously take this with a grain of salt, as many other people do build successful blogs around conversations, I’m just mentioning it here because I estimate it frees up 2-4 hours a day that I’d otherwise spend reacting. This allows me to create work that I think really helps people instead.

4. Debate topics with a non-committal devil’s advocate perspective.

Many people debate things just because they think they should, not because they really care.

For example, sometimes I see people arguing that cars are necessary to human life, even though for millions of years we didn’t have cars and millions of people do just fine without them. It just doesn’t make sense to debate that any longer, these people need to sell their cars and start making the world a better place to live in — they’re just afraid to do it, or aren’t making the easy choice to move to a walkable city.

When you take an oppositional perspective, even if it’s not what you believe, you’re mostly just wasting people’s time. Speak from what you believe, and you avoid that situation.

Try starting your argument the sentence: “I believe that…” instead of “I’m just being annoying but…” The first is a much more productive and healthier way to approach a conversation, it also makes people like you more — because it makes you more believable, as you’re talking from your heart instead of some weird hypothetical place that even you don’t care about.

There are obviously so many other opportunities to play devils advocate even if you don’t care or you aren’t right. Why argue about something even if you aren’t right? Spend that time enjoying the day instead.

5. Post twelve times a day.

Some bloggers think that in order to grow their business they need to post once a day, some even think they need to post twelve or forty times a day. This is silly, because if you post that much you end up just annoying people with information that isn’t important.

Filling quotas is filling quotas, it isn’t doing work that matters. If I don’t have something important to say that will help people, I simply don’t write anything. This means eventually I might go for weeks at a time without posting to the blog, because I have more important things to do –like taking mini-retirements.

6. Check email constantly.

There’s been a lot of debate about the idea that we need go check our email constantly in order to stay on top of things.

I made the decision to not check my email more than once or twice a day, and this frees up another hour or two that I’d spend hitting the refresh button on gmail.

By not checking email, I have additional time to create scalable works that really help people, and then I can spend the rest of my time pursuing quality free time like learning to sail on the bay, or reading books on how to live aboard a sail boat and sail around the world.

I know a lot of people disagree with me, they think that spending 8 hours a day hitting the refresh button on their email is important. I really think this is a personal choice, one that I’ve taken because it inevitably leads to my work being greater. Some people are different, other businesses are based around reaction times, to each their own.

This strategy simply works for me. If you haven’t tried it, I’d suggest giving it a shot for a week and you’ll see your ability to make work double or even triple in the same amount of time.

7. Work more than two hours a day.

Many people think that working a lot will earn them more money, but I’ve found this is the opposite of true.

Yes, I realize that some jobs pay by the hour, but I’m convinced these are designed to keep people down. When I used to work 60 hour weeks, I could barely afford to pay my bills.

When you’re super-tired you want to spend more money to make you happy, and also when you’re tired you can’t come up with ideas that create huge amounts of revenue. I realize that this isn’t a strategy that works for everyone, but working less than 2 hours a day works for me, so I do it.

Eventually I hope to scale this down to 4 hours or less of work a week as I develop more passive income sources. This will allow me to spend more time doing what is truly important to me, like cooking good food for dinner. The bonus of working less is that you can get paid more per hour.

For instance, this month I just worked out that I was paid approximately $250 per hour of my time that I spend doing real work. That doesn’t happen if you spend all day working, because productivity has diminishing returns as time goes on.

8. Write something just because it will be popular.

Many people create with the idea that it will be popular with the world. This means they end up creating something they aren’t truly passionate about, which ends up not impressing anybody. This isn’t high school anymore, you don’t need to pretend to be like everyone else.

Because the Internet destroyed all of the boundaries between people in time and space, there’s no reason to create something you aren’t 100% enthusiastic about. The funny thing is, creating junk you think will interest people generally ends up interesting no one.

9. Sit at a desk.

A lot of people think that sitting at a desk for twelve hours a day is the solution to paying the bills.

I never sit at a desk, in fact, I don’t even own one! I find all sorts of nice places to sit down at, such as many of the local coffee shops in Oakland and San Francisco. Sometimes I sit at the bar in my kitchen and work while I’m sipping coffee I just made for myself. Sometimes I even work in bed! You can’t do those things if you’re sitting at a desk under fluorescent lights.

10. Follow everyone back on Twitter.

When you start to build a popular platform for getting your message to the world, you’ll eventually start to get lots and lots of followers on Twitter.

The thing is, if you follow all of these people back, it’s impossible to hear the important stuff coming from people who matter to you.

I only follow people who I really care about on Twitter, people who are doing work that I want to read. Yes, this means that I miss out on some stuff, but instead of spending all day reading tweets (which I’d have to do if I followed everyone back.) I can focus on the work that matters.

11. Respond to angry haters.

When your work becomes more popular, if you’re saying anything important, you’ll inevitably have haters. For everything I write at least 10% of the reaction is people telling me that I’m crazy. Now, I could spend all day responding to crazy people (most of whom are wrong) who think I’m nuts, or I could get real actual work that matters done. I choose to tune out the haters and focus on the important. This strategy works for others as well.

12. Try every strategy on Problogger.

If you read popular blogs such as Problogger, you begin to realize that there are 235,654,434 different strategies for growing your blog.

You can’t try them all, or you’ll end up doing one thing every day until you die and nothing will ever work. Instead, you have to test out a few of the best strategies and stick to them until they show results (or kill them off if they don’t.)

For instance, I’ve found that guest posting doesn’t really work as a way to grow my blog. Maybe it works for you, but it hasn’t for me. I’ve found that doing Interviews is a good way to grow my blog, so that’s an approach I take. Try things out, if they don’t work don’t do them.

13. Consume unimportant information.

The Internet is filled with unimportant information that people really want you to read right now, this moment, or you’ll be missing out. Well, the thing is if you spend all day reading everything you come across on the Internet, you end up not doing anything important at all. There is infinite data out there, and you only have finite mind-space. It’s important to realize that you can only consume so much, and so you need to focus on what you’re truly interested in. Subscribe to only the blogs that really help you. Learn to stop reading things when you aren’t getting any real information.

My real goal for writing this post.

I could go on and on about how not to spend your time. In fact, I had twenty-seven more bullet points ready to go that I just deleted — because I want to save your time and mine.

The point is that building a platform for your business is about focusing your attention on what is important to you. A huge part of that is eliminating the unnecessary and focusing on the essential.

This are just a few ways that you can do that. I admit they aren’t for everyone, and some of them are very difficult to fit into a modern workflow, especially if you work for someone else.

If you find you’re doing something that takes up 2-3 hours of your day, take a moment to justify whether or not that activity is really giving your business the return on investment that you need. If it isn’t bringing in money, you might be better off not engaging in the activity.

Everyone needs to decide for themselves what is important.

Be decisive with your time, and you’ll start to find that you only need to work 10 hours or less a week to bring in the same amount of money that you do working 50 hours a week right now.

An uncomfortable minimalist solution to a problem everyone wishes they could fix.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Editor’s note: I’ve been sitting on this article for a week or so because I was honestly afraid it would offend a good portion of the readers here. Tammy Strobel’s article on The Moral Imperative to Drive Less convinced me that this message can no longer wait.

This is the defining change that needs to happen in our time, and if the idea that you are responsible for the health of this planet offends you, then I want you to unsubscribe from my blog. I’m serious.

If you’ve googled the news lately, you know there’s a lot of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

I won’t go over the exact details here, because I’m not an expert on oil spills, but from what I hear it’s a ecological disaster the likes of which we haven’t seen before.

And no one knows how to fix it.

Here’s what most people like to do in this situation: point fingers at people in power and say “how did you let this happen?” They like to whine, cry, complain.

And do you know what? Whining doesn’t do one damn bit of good. Why?

Because the oil spill is our fault. It’s not Obama’s fault, it’s not BP’s fault, it’s ours. And our whining isn’t doing anything to fix it.

Large amounts of oil aren’t being pumped out of the ground to fill a business’s pockets with money, that’s just a side effect.

The reality is that oil is being produced to fill the needs of a large portion of America that thinks commuting an hour and a half to work and driving to the mall is what you’re supposed to do with your life.

Why is it our fault? Because we drive. A good portion of our population own (or are paying back a giant loan for the next ten years.) a huge block of metal on wheels that does a couple of things:

1. Cars kill people who walk, bike, and drive other cars.
2. Cars consume an expensive limited resource that is spilling itself all over the Gulf right now.
3. Cars pollute the environment with their construction, emissions, and finally when you junk them at the end of their lives.
4. Cities built around the idea of cars are in many cases inhospitable to people who walk, bike, or take alternative transport.

And do you know what? I’m guilty too. Even though I haven’t owned a car in my entire life, and I live with less than 75 things, I still fly occasionally, I still drive a few times a year, and I still buy things off the Internet, and these things come in trucks.

So we’re all guilty of this, but if enough of us make the right decisions, we can put an end to demand for oil in this country (or at least put a dent in it.) That will make a difference, I really believe this, because it actually matters.

So here’s a brief guide on how to stop whining and start making a change in the world.

1. Stop driving now.

There are no longer any excuses. If you stop driving, that big lump of metal you drive around stops consuming the oil that BP was drilling out to fill your gas tank. How do you stop driving? You donate your car to recycling center that will turn your car into something that isn’t a car. Or sell it if that makes more sense to you.

Then you move to a city that you can walk in, and you buy a bike off Craigslist. If you already live in a city where you can walk or take public transit, and you’re still driving, you have no excuses. Stop now.

And guess what? You’ll be healthier and skinnier once you start walking and biking. It’s an epic win on so many levels.

2. Stop buying stuff now.

Stuff is a triple whammy: it’s keeping you in debt, it’s tethering you to a location, and most of all it takes oil to make and to deliver stuff. Stop buying junk, and start living your life. If you stop buying 1,000 things a year, and reduce that amount to one that is reasonable, say 50 items a year, you can make a difference in your oil consumption.

I think enough of us are living with less than 100 things at this point to prove that living a freedom lifestyle is much more enjoyable than filling your 4th bedroom with junk you don’t use. If you’re not on board with this idea yet, I don’t know what’s stopping you.

3. Eat local now.

Finally, our food distribution system is screwed up by big agribusiness in this country. The best way you can fix it is to seek out local food. This means taking the time to make sure your tomatoes didn’t get flown in from the Philippines, it means shopping at farmers markets, and yes, it means your food will cost more. What it won’t cost is the health of our planet, and also? Local food is healthier for you because it hasn’t been pumped full of chemicals to keep it from turning the color puke by the time you eat it.

4. Share this message.

If all 4,000 subscribers of this blog convince 10 people to stop driving, 40,000 people will cease to be consuming huge amounts of oil. I know it’s unrealistic to think that can happen, but you all known I’m an idealist.

Finally…

If you can’t start doing one or all of those three things, then I want you to stop talking about how terrible the oil spill is over coffee before you jump into your car to commute to work, and instead go down to the Gulf and start scrubbing turtles with a tooth brush.

Because you are responsible for this. You, me, everyone.

This is our planet, and we’re destroying it with our choices.

I realize this is terrifying to most of you, but you haven’t been living in a little place I like to call reality. Your impact on this planet matters, and only you can change it.

Minimalism is about saving the planet.

Thank you, have a good night.

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If you have time, check out Tammy Strobel’s article on The Moral Imperative to Drive Less.