Even if you don’t share my love for the band Switchfoot, there is one song you should check out today. “American Dream” is a song about the very things we talk about on this blog and more broadly in the minimalist community: how wrong things go when “success is equated with excess“.

The band goes on to proclaim:

I want out of this machine
It doesn’t feel like freedom

This ain’t my American dream
I want to live and die for bigger things
I’m tired of fighting for just me
This ain’t my American dream

Yesterday, I was once again listening to this song and it got me thinking. It’s true that as a whole — even outside america, our culture measures success in the wrong way, counting the stuff we collect around us: If you drive a fancy car and live in a big house, you are considered a success in life. But what other ways are there to measure success?

1. Wealth as success

This one is just a different version of success as excess, but a significantly better version. In their top 10 bestseller, The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko share their studies on who the real millionaires are, and (actually not so) surprisingly conclude that they are not the ones drowning themselves with stuff but the frugal ones instead.

They don’t measure success by how much stuff they own but by how much they have on their savings accounts.

This beats stuff because it’s more sustainable. When you collect wealth, at its best, it can mean that you are collecting freedom. In the book, it is calculated that the real millionaires could spend years living on their savings without having to work at all. But they rarely do. Collecting wealth and trying to be a millionaire is hard work, so they give up the freedom to save the money they have worked hard to get.

And also, coming back to my worldview, really well described by the Switchfoot song, I’d say this is still “fighting for just me.” No bigger things to live and die for over here.

2. Happiness as success

I don’t believe there is one big meaning for life; to me a meaningful life consists of small, meaningful everyday actions. We will talk more about meanings next week, but for now, I wanted to bring this up to back up the following ideas on measuring success.

First, if there is no all-encompassing meaning for life, maybe happiness could indeed be a decent goal for a good life. If you are happy, you have been successful in life, we would say. And it’s not all bad. After all, helping someone, caring for your family, collecting interesting experiences, learning new skills and being part of your community are all things that can make you happy, just like getting more stuff and working for just money tend to make you miserable.

Happiness is good, but it has one property that makes it a lousy measure for success: it’s a feeling. Some things that make you feel happy today, might not do the same for you tomorrow. You can practice being present and noticing all the things that make you happy, but if you don’t do that, it is easy to fall back to the belief that to be happy you need to spend money, and start “fighting for just me” instead of doing the things that would really make you happy.

3. Change as success

When you take the best from using happiness as a goal for life, you get some good, actionable points:

• Pick small goals that matter to you, and try to make them happen. Not too big, not too small. Something you can handle and that keeps you excited for some amount of time. Don’t take them as THE meaning for life, but meaningful steps you can take in your life. You will be at your happiest while working your way to make the change happen.
• Care for people. Your closest ones as well as the rest of the world in general. It will make you  sad at times, but you will feel alive.

This could be the measure for success we need as a species. It is measurable: the more we change our world to the better, the more successful we are. It doesn’t harm others: Just compare to the status quo. When you are successful measured by consumerist rules, you pollute and create heaps of waste. With this measure, the more successful you are, the better it is for the rest of us!

And, you will be happy as a side product.

4. Just enough success

In the end, one question remains: are we asking the wrong question?

By always talking about success, we are turning life into a competition. It’s a cliché, but we don’t have the time to stop and smell the roses. And what kind of success we are competing for doesn’t change that.

Maybe the right answer could be to have just enough success to feel like you are making a difference. Work on something that matters to you, just so much that you have enough and you can create enough change in the world for one person. Maybe even without setting goals for yourself. Then you can slow down and enjoy your success.

***

How do you define success and how much of it is enough for you?

Related posts:

1. Learning to Be Happy With What You Have
2. There is No Such Thing as Failure
3. The One Secret To Success: Do Something

© Jarkko Laine, 2010. | Permalink | No comments

There are times when it seems like the world is never going to change for the better, and making a difference sounds like a distant dream.

Today is not one of those days.

Raam Dev, blogger and digital nomad currently staying in Nepal, has put together an e-book that shows that there is still will, passion, and caring left in this world, and that everyone can make their lives stand for something. The way he created the book makes the message shine even brighter: The book is a collection of small tips (from a couple of sentences up to one page of text) written by over 40 bloggers unaware of each other, each trying their best to make a difference in the world.

I contributed three of the over 100 tips in the book: “Practice your enough”, “Take the first step”, and “Don’t give up”.

It’s amazing that so many people care about the topic and each responded to Raams inquiry for contributions with great enthusiasm. But to me, there is something about this book that inspires me even more and that’s how quickly Raam put it together. When you read the book, you wouldn’t believe that it was only a month ago that Raam sent out the email asking for contributions! That’s what happens when you care about something with great passion!

This is one book you don’t want to miss, if you care about making a difference in the world (as I am sure you do!). Here’s what Raam says about the book in his introduction:

This ebook is a plea for help. It’s a voice in a room full of people who care about exactly the same thing but who are entirely oblivious to each other. It’s a calling for everyone living on Earth to recognize a new responsibility that we’ve brought upon ourselves, a responsibility that we created by quenching our thirst for abundance and feeding our lust for social and economic development.

In a world where technological advancement has given entire populations individual access to more knowledge than was available in the past thousand years combined, we have a new responsibility. We have a responsibility to speak up when something isn’t right and take action when things need to change. We have a responsibility to be responsible.

I was going to write more about the book, but my older son just woke up, and I need to get this post out now. So, without further ado, go download “Small Ways to Make a Big Difference” and get inspired to keep making the world a better place! The book is free, and there are no strings attached. You don’t even have to give out your email address.

Related posts:

1. The Only Piece of Productivity Advice You Really Need
2. Minimalist E-Book Roundup
3. Why Labeling Myself Minimalist Made All the Difference

© Jarkko Laine, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments

In some ways, like how they jump in with both feet and enjoy the small things, children are role models who can show us how to live our lives. But many times they teach us in another way, by letting their human weaknesses show as caricatures of us grown ups. They don’t know how to pretend.

My son Oiva, who just turned three in May, is a perfect example of this. He always wants more:

We gather for lunch, and he gets his share, but he can’t start to eat because he thinks he needs more. And if his glass is filled only to the half, he can start to cry and become unable to drink any of it , just because it’s not as much as he’d like it to be.

It is frustrating to keep telling my son that he will get more once he has finished the first plate (and that he already has a lot) when all he can see is that right now the plate is not as full as he’d like it to be. But I have I realized that there is a lesson I can learn from his fear of not getting enough. This feeling of scarcity is something completely human, and it happens to us adults all the time as well.

We dream of all the big things we want to do some day: travel to exotic places, build successful businesses, write books, buy more gadgets because what we already have doesn’t seem enough. When choosing how much food to cook, I even feel the very same primitive fear of running out of food as Oiva does.

Dreaming is not a problem. The problem is when dreaming gets in the way of enjoying what we already have, and when dreaming of dessert makes you rush through the main dish.

Here is what I try to do to stay happy with what I have. My guidelines for abundance:

1. Realize there will always be something you don’t have. You can achieve a lot in life if you put your mind to it. But you are setting yourself up for failure if you measure yourself only by material success. There will always be someone who has something you don’t: When you finally own your mansion, there comes Richard Branson and tells you he owns his own island!
2. Be thankful for what you have now. A thankful heart is a happy heart. Take time to think about all the things that are right in your life. This will also be a great exercise for balancing your values: Every time I think about all the things I am thankful for in my life, I realize they have nothing to do with mansions or private islands.
3. Dreams are good because they give you meaningful things to do. I don’t know if this applies to everyone or not, but for me, doing great things is what makes me come alive. I love having big goals, but it’s not that much because of the goal itself but how the goal guides my actions at this point in life. For example, my goal of making a living through blogging and writing makes me write right now. It’s not a distant event in the future — it’s happening already!
4. Enough. What a powerful word. I don’t use it as often as I should, yet, but I’m learning. After a meal, when contemplating eating some more, if you tell yourself you’ve had enough, you value the food you already ate. You don’t put it down by saying it was too much or that you shouldn’t have eaten it at all in the first place. You just say it was enough, and that you can be thankful without getting more.

You don’t need more. This too is a choice.

No related posts.

© Jarkko Laine, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments

Here’s a secret: you don’t have to. There is always another choice. Choosing can be hard and you may still pick either way, but you are not a mindless puppet on a string but a human being responsible for your own choices.

Pick what excites and scares you, and amazing things will happen.

You don’t have to…

1. Work long hours: Time is your most valuable possession, so don’t let go of it too easily. Also, long hours rarely lead to improved productivity.
2. Take your kids to kindergarten every morning: If you choose to live in a big house in an expensive area, and buy everything you need to fit in, you will be working all the time — and thus need someone to take care of your kids. But this too, is a choice. Do you see how things could change if you lived with less?
3. Go to school: Even school can be debated. Leo Babauta’s kids are unschooled and it seems like it’s working well for them.
4. Put off your life plans until you retire: What if you never do?
5. Live a routine: Living every day according to the same script is not mandatory. It’s a choice.
6. Buy that new Full-HD television: What was wrong with the old one? The best TV shows are great even with lower fidelity. I watch my movies from the 13″ laptop screen of my MacBook Pro. If the story is good, it will move you just the same.
7. Get an iPad: It might be world changing but no one knows what they will be using it for, thinking they will figure that part out once they have the device.
8. Always keep your phone turned on: People are clever: if they cannot reach you 24/7, they will come up with something else. My brother just spent two weeks alone at a summer house with his phone turned off and with no connection to the Internet, and he tells it was one of the best two weeks he has had in a long time. (And it’s good to know that if you don’t like the phone, you are not alone)
9. Earn a lot of money: It’s surprising how little you really need for a good life when you become minimalist.
10. Live in a big house: Not so long ago it was completely normal for two or more kids to share a room. And the kitchen table is a perfectly good place for work. Less rooms means less to clean and worry about.
11. Eat out every day: Planning and cooking your own food from real ingredients is as fun — if not more — as eating it.
12. Buy bread: You can make your own bread, and it can be better than what you get from the store!
13. Travel far to go camping: Using what you have and a bit of imagination, you can have a great trip without traveling anywhere!
14. Impress people: They are all just like you, with the insecurities and all — and they don’t care as much as you think. So, do what you feel right. Stop living for other people’s approval.
15. Listen to your inner critic: If your lizard brain tells you to stop, punch it and do it anyway! That’s how great things start to happen.
16. Be big: Small is good too.
17. Eat meat: You can have a perfectly healthy diet without meat. And if going all the way vegetarian is hard, eating less meat is easy.
18. Wear shoes when running: The Tarahumara don’t wear running shoes, yet they are some of the world’s best long distance runners!
19. Create things just for the money: What if you put your soul in what you create, and try to help people instead?

These are all choices that only you can make yourself. Choose what suits you but make sure when you choose you say so. There is no such thing as “have to.”

Related posts:

1. Find Better Dreams

© Jarkko Laine, 2010. | Permalink | 16 comments

Before I revived my blog from its latest hiatus a bit over a month ago, I made a promise to myself: this blog will not need big numbers for me to consider it a success.

Like with so many other great ideas before, Seth Godin was once again involved. I was listening to him read his latest book, Linchpin, and as he talked about shipping art, it all became clear to me. Like a revelation, only a lot less dramatic:

What you leave behind matters. If it makes money or becomes your career doesn’t. And when you measure success, you need to use a completely different set of numbers than the one we are used to.

You need just one number: one.

If you write something that changes one person’s thoughts, if you give your time to make one person feel valued, if you build something that makes one person’s life worth living, you have performed a miracle. Then you repeat until some day, you touch someone else. Every single time that happens is priceless.

In life, there are two often conflicting goals: you need to make a living, and you live to do things that matter. When you work your way towards your ideal life, your best shot is to try to combine those two goals. But there is a big risk that when you do, you focus on the big numbers that drive the living, and skip the only number that matters — one.

Maybe there is one person out there who needs to read this today. I might never know. And that’s why you have to keep making and shipping art: between the many misses, some day you might produce a hit.

And when that happens, there is no one else here: it’s you and it’s me. And still, I might not even notice.

—

Update on July 1st, 2010: I decided to give a try to the idea Raam suggested in his comment below and not look at stats for a month or so until August. For a couple of days now, when I go to the blog, this is what I see:

Don’t tell me the real number, I want it to be a secret that only you know!

Related posts:

1. The Only Question That Matters: How Useful Can You Be?

© Jarkko Laine, 2010. | Permalink | 11 comments

I believe the point in life is to make it stand for something: Not having it easy but burning out bright, seeing every day as a miracle that is given to you as a chance to make it count.

Today, in this small post, I want to point you to a few powerful actions that you can do right now to feel a bit more proud to be alive (all of these are things I’m working on, sometimes with more and sometimes with less success):

1. Pass on a great book: Books are meant to be read and great books should change lives. If a book changed your life, why would you want to keep it to yourself. Give, or if you don’t want to go that far, lend the book to a friend. Don’t use books as decorations.
2. Clear some clutter: A cluttered, messy environment brings you down and keeps you from doing great work. Clear some of your physical space and you’ll also clear room inside your head. Fill that newly found space with something that matters – or even better, leave it empty.
3. Play with your kids with your whole mind in it: Kids don’t need more toys, they need more of your attention. Show to your kids how much you value them by listening to their stories and jumping in their fantasy plays. Email and Facebook (and even your own world changing projects) will still be there when your kids go to sleep, but the chance to build that huge Lego tower might not come again.
4. Help an entrepreneur from a developing country: With just 25 dollars you can change the life of not just one person but her family and the village she lives in. And you can do it right now.
5. Ship some art: Put your heart and soul to something you work on, and ship it to the whole world to see. It can be anything: write a blog post, create a WordPress plugin, or share a tasty vegetable stock recipe. Make it free or priceless.
6. Take some time off: Time can buy money but money can never buy back time. Skip that raise and work for four days a week instead. Figuring out what matters starts from taking some time in silence.
7. Leave your car home: Take the bus and read a book. Or ride the bike and notice what your world looks, sounds and smells like.
8. Shop consciously: You need to buy food, and sometimes new clothes also become a necessity. Try to live by this Vietnamese saying (shared by @mmstud on Twitter): “When eating a fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.”
9. Grow your own food: I have no idea if my potatoes and carrots will ever grow to something that can feed my family for even one meal, but even if they don’t, digging the dirt and seeing the plants grow will have taught us more respect towards the food we eat.
10. Sleep: I will do this right after I hit publish on this post. To produce your best work, to figure out what matters, and to ship art you need to be well rested. Life is too precious to be spend only half awake.

This was one list of things that matter. I am sure you could easily come up with 10 other, equally important things so I’m asking: what matters to you today?

Related posts:

1. The Only Piece of Productivity Advice You Really Need

© Jarkko Laine, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments

“Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.”

An Easy Life is NOT The Answer

When someone talks about freedom, be it through minimalism, automation, passive income, or retirement, we immediately think he is looking for an easy way out. We might even think that this person is lazy and doesn’t want to do his part in the society. Sure, for some people, that’s what they are after. But for most, and for almost all of the people who make it, that’s not the point.

Freedom does by definition mean that no one can tell you what you do. Yet the implication is wrong: When you have the freedom, doing nothing is not going to make you thrive. And when you say your job sucks, it’s usually not because the work is hard but because the work is missing a meaning, a reason why it is worth doing.

In an interview regarding their latest album, Hello Hurricane, Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman said something hugely inspiring (quoting Dolly Parton):

“If you ain’t crying, why are you singing it?”

Ask yourself this question:

• If what I do is not for a cause that makes me cry, why am I doing it?
• If what I work on isn’t touching something deep inside my heart and bringing it to tears, why am I working on it?
• If this isn’t a thing I could die doing, why am I spending my life doing it?

This is not a simple question. There are reasons to carry on doing the less meaningful work for a while, but make sure to keep these questions in mind when you plan your next actions. Like Chris Guillebeau tells in his practical post: look for the thing that irritates you (or makes you cry) in this world and get excited to change it!

(P.S. Today is my son Oiva’s third birthday, and this blog also turned three six days ago. Thanks for still following!)

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© Jarkko Laine, 2010. | Permalink | 10 comments

As I grow older, I have noticed that I love the ideas of minimalism and the slow movement a bit more every day. To me, they stand for taking the most basic, purest pleasures in life and enjoying them to the fullest: Cooking a great, home made meal with as little fluff as I can, taking my time to enjoy the smell of the spices and the act of creating the experience. Riding my bike through the forest and feeling every curve. Being able to see my kids grow and not miss their childhood years because of all the busywork.

Minimalism stands for freedom

I admire Everett Bogue for going all the way in using minimalism to work from anywhere, and standing for it: Minimalism means giving up stuff. And when you do, you notice that there is more to this life. Less is better.

My goal with minimalism is a bit different, but just like Everett’s it comes down to freedom: I want to rule my own hours and have more time with my family. To some extent, I have been able to do that already: My family still fits just fine in my 1997 Ford KA. We cook most of our food ourselves. I make all the bread we eat. And we don’t have a television.

By prioritizing time over stuff, I have been able to cut working at my day job to 4 days (or 30 hours) per week. And I haven’t gone all the way to my minimalist edge yet; I’m sure that by going further in cutting my consumption, I can still make a lot of progress with my minimalist motivation: using minimalism to make more time.

Whatever it is you want in this life, unless it is more stuff, I’m sure minimalism can help you get there. That’s because, at its core, minimalism is a tool to more freedom: Freedom to choose where you live. Freedom to be quicker in your decisions (because you have less possessions and commitments to worry about). Freedom to choose what you do with your time.

Slow stands for appreciation

If you want to cut the non-essential from your life through minimalism, the next natural step is to slow down and enjoy what’s left to the fullest. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing slowly.

As much as anyone, I’m still often the guy who is always in a hurry, doing too many things and multitasking. But because of the beautiful results I have seen in slowing down so far, I’m constantly practicing to be able to appreciate life by taking time to notice it as it happens:

By eating more slowly, I appreciate the food I am fortunate to have.

By walking more slowly, I appreciate the surrounding I walk through.

By reading more slowly, I appreciate the writer who spent hours to craft that blog post or weeks and months to build that novel. And in the end, the text touches me and pushes me to action on a whole new level.

Less is better, and slow makes it beautiful.

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© Jarkko Laine, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments

I started this blog two years and eleven months ago, exactly one week before the birth of my firstborn. When I look back at those early posts, I hear a familiar voice, like a dear friend from the past, someone with whom I used to hang out all the time but haven’t met in a while. The blog is my window into the steps that made that person the me I know today.

Inspired by personal development bloggers like my earliest blogger hero, Leo Babauta, I have experimented with all kinds of habits, learned and unlearned new ways of thinking. Many times, the habits soon became nothing but good intentions, but some have become an important part of who I am today. That’s exactly how it has to go: you are building your own perfect life, so you need to be picky. What sticks is what works for you. And what works for you defines who you are.

I’m sure there are faster ways to get to know yourself, but this is the most trustworthy. That’s why I encourage you to always keep experimenting. Don’t get stuck and don’t worry too much if things don’t work out the way you planned! Move on to the next thing with the same enthusiasm and, in the end, you will have a nice collection of habits and ideas worth fighting for.

In this post, I am sharing four of my habits that have passed the test of time so that you can see if they would fit your personality, and maybe give them a shot. Who knows, maybe some of them are the favorite ideas of your future self!

1. Always carry a notebook (and a pen) with you

You never know when the next killer idea hits you, you find a new way to look at your life, or someone shares a great quote or book recommendation that you have to save for the future. Beside these obvious benefits, I have found that it feels good to be able to offer a pen to a stranger in need of something to write with,  and that having your sketching gear in your pocket is a life-saver when traveling with a tired toddler who loves to draw. My small Ecojot notebooks are more than notebooks, they are a bodypart.

2. Read many books at the same time

These days as I fall more in love with minimalism every day, I have cut back on the number of blogs I follow. I have realized that it makes more sense to focus on the gems and then occasionally follow their leads to other sites than to try to keep track of everything that goes on in the blogosphere.

Books are a different story. Last year I read 52 books, one every week, and this year I’m making good progress towards another 52. This quote from the blog, A Working Library, spoke straight to my heart, it’s exactly how I read, and why:

Read voraciously, many books at a time. Only then will you hear the conversation taking place among them.

If you are into reading, make sure to read the whole post about ways of reading. If you aren’t, read it anyway, it will turn you into one.

3. Bake your own bread

I have been a big fan of home made artisan bread for more than two years already, but the tipping point for me was in July of last year, when I saw a video of baking instructor Richard Bertinet mixing his dough. I got a copy of his first book, Dough, that very day and soon accompanied it with the follow-up, Crust. Both books have been in heavy use ever since and in the past ten months, we haven’t bought bread more than twice — I baked all the rest.

I love the art in slowly fermenting the bread. I love it how the dough forces you to learn patience and stop rushing things up. And I adore the smell of fresh bread coming from my oven.

4. Run, run, run

I picked up the habit of running in January 2008 to complete my first races as a participant in the Train for Humanity project. At first, I thought I’d only run a half marathon, but after completing that first race in May, I decided to try a full marathon. In September, I completed my first marathon. It wasn’t a complete success as I had to walk some parts of the race, but I was happy to make it to the finishing line.

This year, I’m doing it again. Because I now have two kids (Oiva is soon three, and Altti is a bit over three months), it’s harder to find time for running than last time, but every time I make it out the door, I remember why I do it.

Running, to me, is more about distance and endurance than it is about speed. And most, it’s about peace and freedom: It’s a form of leading a slower life, seizing the moment and going to the extremes to get to know yourself and your limits. One day, I hope to run my first ultra marathon, and then, who knows, maybe some day I will stand at the finishing line of Spartathlon!

What else?

There are many newer ideas that I’m almost certain will be on my list of time tested building blocks of my life when I look back after three more years. More on those later — now, I want to know what are your dearest and most durable habits, the ones you couldn’t imagine living without anymore?

Related posts:

1. Bread

© Jarkko Laine, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments

The author of The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss, has quickly become THE guy to go to when puzzled with questions about lifestyle design. He is never afraid to test and improve his methods, and his experiments show us that it’s possible to go well beyond the ordinary limits of our human minds and bodies.

Still, in many ways, most of us are very different from him and do not seek the same kind of lifestyle Tim is after.

Tim is a single guy who thrives traveling the world. We have families to take care and would love nothing more than to spend more time with them.

Tim goes to the gym twice or more every day and has a perfect six-pack. We would be happy just to lose the few extra pounds of belly fat.

And so on.

Tim Ferris is a bit like a movie star or a figure in a fairy tale — a guy from some other world than the one I live in.

Lifestyle Design Doesn’t Mean Becoming Tim Ferriss

Lifestyle design is about figuring out what YOU want in life and then finding ways to make that dream to become reality. Making room for the things you love, one small action and choice at the time.

For someone like Tim, the life he wants can be about exercising many times a day and winning tango competitions in Argentina. And that’s just fine. But it’s important to remember that for you the dream could be something entirely different: growing tomatoes, baking fresh bread, and building castles from Lego bricks are just as good choices in your lifestyle design as the fancier sounding Ferraris and trips to the Amazon.

Further Reading

Here are some highlights from the more down-to-earth lifestyle design posts (many written by other dads) that I have enjoyed lately, mixed with some favorites from this blog’s archives:

• Being A Good Parent *Is* Being Productive
• Getting (Some) Things Done With a Baby in the House
• The 7 Essential Rules To Optimum Health & Weight Loss
• (The Key to Life is) Running, Reading… and Writing
• How to Live Without the Clock
• Eliminate Distraction: The 8 Things to Let Go First
• Working Vacations Rule?
• Why I Read All The Time And How You Can Too
• 5 Small Lessons Learned From Carrying a Notebook Everywhere

And a Question to You

If lifestyle design means nothing else than figuring out what you want your life to be like, and then engineering your thoughts and actions so that they get you closer to that goal, why not start now? There is nothing mysterious or snobbish about it. And definitely, there is a lot for the normal people, moms, dads, guys from across the street to gain from it.

So, here’s my question: If you were to start designing your lifestyle today, what is it that you would aim for?

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© Jarkko Laine, 2009. | Permalink | 11 comments