
Relentlessly Simplify - dend
https://den.dev/blog/relentlessly-simplify/
======
thejohnconway
When I think about the successful, interesting people I have known in my life,
I struggle to think of one that fitted this zen minimalist model. Most (all
maybe?), have messy or at least full offices and houses. They have lots of
interest in things, and have artefacts of those interests around them. Lots of
half-finished/in progress projects, books, papers, tools, materials and so on.

What they have in common is relentless and flexible thinking about their
subject(s) of interest, not, like, really nice sound systems.

That's not to say that minimalism doesn't work for some, but I don't think all
this meta stuff matters much. And I'd like to see some evidence from sorts of
people who write about how great minimalism is that it does.

~~~
eitland
When I was younger someone tried to sell me the idea that your desk reflects
your head.

This bothered me briefly until I realized that if this was the case I'd rather
have a messy desk than an empty desk ;-)

~~~
nwah1
Minimalism sometimes is an economic class identifier. Maintaining a tidy and
minimal living environment is much easier if you can outsource all housework,
and upgrade to the absolute latest technology, and if you don't feel much need
to hoard anything because you can afford to buy or rent exactly what you want
precisely when you want it.

~~~
ar_lan
It's also sometimes not, though. In college I was a minimalist mostly out of
necessity - it's not hard to keep tidy if you can only afford a $600/mo.
bedroom and only own a laptop, bed, a desk, and some clothes.

~~~
nwah1
I agree that it is not always an economic class thing. Of course, the
stereotype is that college dorm rooms are notoriously messy. So it is
sometimes just an extension of one's personality, habits, and aesthetics.

Other caveats include children and pets. With some kids and some pets, it
doesn't matter how much money you have and how tidy you are by habit.

------
vinceguidry
Long down this road. More tips:

Routinizing your diet can bear more useful fruit than anything else. First
prioritize ease of preparation, then taste and enjoyment, then health. Doing
it in that order makes the subsequent steps a million times easier.

At work, I would go out to eat every day. They clean out the fridge every week
and any time I'd start to get into a lunch routine, the fridge cleanout
wrecked progress every time and I'd be back to eating out. Eventually I
started bringing canned soups to work as they don't need refrigeration. With
lunch no longer being subject to the dictates of the fridge schedule, I can
start prioritizing taste and enjoyment. I got oil, vinegar, hot sauce, salt
and pepper grinders to add to the soups. Canned chicken adds a lot to them as
well, and just enough calories so that I don't get hungry again an hour later.

I have similar routines for dinner, which allows more flexibility due to a
fridge I can control and a stove and utensils and all that. It's still limited
by the fact that I can't cook every single night. So I compromise, building on
frozen dinners, adding onions, peppers, seasonings, butter, protein, then
saving half for the next day. Make things a little better each time while
staying within your routine. Eventually it's all muscle memory and your mind
focuses on what's new and it doesn't feel like drudgery.

Health comes in after you've finished the heavy lifting on the first two. I
started noticing little differences in how I feel after meals, and adjusting
how much I eat each time. Pounds have been coming off effortlessly, but I
don't feel hungry very often unless I get off my routine for whatever reason.

Your computing life can be simplified the same way. Build on a foundation, in
my case Ubuntu. Years ago I maintained a set of instructions, nowadays my
scripts are reliable enough to get a brand new Ubuntu system from just
installed to usable in some 10 minutes. I use them more often than you'd
think.

You learn deeper concepts over time. I kept everything on Dropbox until I
found Spacemacs and projectile, now I'm moving it all back to git. I used to
keep complicated sync scripts in .bashrc, now I manually run a sync script as
a matter of routine. Workflowy is giving way to orgmode. Ruby may never be
dislodged from my life, but I've been adding in Crystal for use in keyboard
macros. More power is slowly earned and the number of Sorcerer's Apprentice
ordeals dwindles.

~~~
gremlinsinc
My optimization is OMAD... only focus on one meal per day, I try to keep it
keto-ish. But not required. When food has less daily focus weight falls off.
Lost 95 pounds last year. Hoping for another 95 in 2020.

~~~
vinceguidry
I lost a ton of weight that way several years ago. Something about my mindset
means I can't do the same thing twice though. I decided for my next push it
would be a true lifestyle change. Meaning no temporary changes like eating
different things than I'd normally eat, like keto or slow carb, nor forcing
myself to be hungry. Neither of these tactics are sustainable over the long
term.

I mean, if you can force yourself to eat once a day for the rest of your life,
or never eat a donut ever again, well, more power to you. I'm not that
disciplined. What I can do is pay close attention to how full I feel and eat
only until then, never keep going until I'm stuffed. Even then it's only for
the few times a week where I'm not eating one of my portioned out routine
meals.

For awhile I was getting hungry during the day outside a meal so I keep pre-
portioned 100 calorie snacks, usually nuts, for 3pm. As I slowly adjust my
intake downwards, my need for these is slowly going away. I think when my
current stash is gone, I may not need to re-up.

Now I can't even really imagine doing it significantly differently. If I drove
to work I'd bring a week's worth of lunch from home and precook it, but since
I walk I don't want to carry all that.

~~~
gremlinsinc
Yeah, it's the only way that works for me... but I tend to do it in 6 month
spurts. Then I go off. I think the biggest thing is I gave up reg. soda at the
same time. So while I go off/on the plan, I haven't gained the weight back,
though I do yo-yo 10 pounds or so depending on my sweet tooth. I also did
crossfit, and need to get back into that to get to my next goal. I've got bad
ADHD and am now on meds and feel I got things sort of in order, but I still
feel there's not enough time in my life for everything I want to do... Fitness
takes a back seat often over family events, and working on my 'mvps', and
client work.

------
ta1234567890
This is a video of a slime mold finding food:
[https://youtu.be/GwKuFREOgmo](https://youtu.be/GwKuFREOgmo)

It seems to be operating in something like 2 main phases: an initial
exploratory phase in which it expands almost in every direction and then a
second "optimization" (simplification) phase in which it just keeps the links
between the food sources.

I think we operate in a similar way. We learn by exploring and then we
optimize when "exploiting".

Everyone is different though, some like exploring more, others like optimizing
more, and there's a big range in between. It also depends on the subject or
activity.

I personally almost exclusively enjoy the exploration part (learning about
things), and don't have much interest in the optimization part (executing
repetitively the same thing for gain).

------
zentiggr
"Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler." I have a Google Sheet
that lets me track items as

calendared, with a priority increasing as the date approaches

"done at this time", with a repeat timeframe, and again ramping priority

Set priority project / reminder, so I can get to it when all the other
priorities above them are clear

I've added some extra features on top of that (a column that lets me do a one
time +/\- to the priority) and it just works the way I think now.

Plus Simple Notepad on my phone so i'm two clicks away from typing down
anything that comes up.

------
iamaelephant
So just to re-iterate, here are the products you need to purchase to simplify
your life

* A notebook

* Some phone apps like Flow

* Bulk toothpaste

* Duplicates of utilities like USB cables

* UNIQLO t-shirts

* A Sonos speaker system

* Ubiquity networking equipment

Gosh it sure seems expensive to live a simple life.

~~~
uxp100
Except for the last two, the rest are cheap items. I feel like this is a
canned response that is valid for some types of self help articles, but this
is a personal blog, and the "article" is just a list of some cool stuff the
author likes. Maybe the title is over the top for someone with a sonos setup,
but again, it's a personal blog.

~~~
dend
[Author of blog post here] YMMV may vary - what works for me and saves me time
is not necessarily something that will work for others, so very much spot on
observation about this being a reflection on a personal approach that helped
me. It's by no means a universal mantra.

------
FillardMillmore
I've been meaning to put some of the principles laid out here to practice in
my personal life. I've always been the guy with the cluttered desk. Though I
feel no compulsion to keep it tidy, I must admit that when I do decide to tidy
it up, I feel a sense of ease and relief - like some invisible, slightly
intangible burden has just been lifted off my shoulders.

I think this is the feeling that people get when they simplify things and try
to adhere to minimalism. It's easy enough to focus first on your digital life,
like the author noted. Get rid of all the unnecessary things on your phone.
Then perhaps move to your computer - tidy and organize all those random links
and shortcuts on your desktop and organize all those digital photos.

Then of course, applying the principles to your own life in physical reality.
Automating monthly payments, getting recurring shipments of things you need (I
get monthly shipments of coffee, but you could probably get things like toilet
paper, soaps, etc.), tidying up your house or apartment. I believe we all
heard the stories about how Steve Jobs had multiples of the same shirts/pants
to simplify his decision making in the morning and free his mind. Personally,
I went and got 10 pairs of the same socks and did away with most of my others
(socks of various sizes, colors, lengths, etc.) - now, whenever a sock loses
its pair, I can simply pair it up with another sock as they are, after all,
the same.

Minimalism has quite a few benefits, how you can best implement it in your own
life will vary depending on your routine and lifestyle.

~~~
imglorp
I think that sense of relief, when you clean up a work area, is tangible and
has a biological explanation.

As David Allen (Getting Things Done) observed, we maintain a __physical
__memory palace in these workspaces. Each item on the workspace is a todo, an
unfinished object, a project in progress, or a reference thing in case we ever
need it again. The link is works both ways: either brain-to-desk or desk-to-
brain. You can probably remember where in the pile a document for some project
is.

There is tangible stress having all that stuff in your head.

The beauty of filing things away where they go, off your desk, is that you get
it out of your head, trusting the system, and the stress is relieved! It
doesn't really matter what system you use as long as you trust it and it gets
it out of your head and off your workspace.

~~~
duderific
I wonder how this maps to the number of browser tabs a person keeps open. I'm
a "less than 10" guy myself. Sometimes I see someone with like 100 tabs open,
and it stresses me out.

I use a Chrome extension called OneTab that at the click of a button, collects
your open tabs into an internal chrome extension page, from which you can
reopen them if desired.

As you say, I find that this gets things "out of my head" into a system I can
trust, and I can switch context more easily once I have done this.

~~~
FillardMillmore
I'm also one of those people you're referring to with '100 tabs open' (well,
technically, I currently have 83 tabs spread across 5 browser windows). It can
be kind of stressful sometimes, but my fear of not being able to find what I
was looking for should I need a page again always seems worse.

Of course, I know there are native methods and browser extensions to mitigate
the possibility of losing things, but old habits die hard.

------
michaelbuckbee
I've always sort of chafed at the "simplification" model of things, the term I
like is "deliberateness". Have a lot of stuff or a litte, but make sure you're
not just mindlessly accumulating or pushing away things.

------
akersten
It's interesting the contrast between the Sonos soundbar piece and the
networking setup - both are described as simple, but I think one is much more
complicated to set up than the other. So I suppose it's about the end result
being easier to reason about, versus the overall convenience?

Minimalism is good in both life and work. The best code is no code, and the
next best is as little code as possible.

~~~
loopz
Simple != Easy

Like certain stuff looks simple in ie. golang, there's tons of opinionated
design decision behind every nuance of the language. For some, simple would be
more like Haskell, while for others bash (until they need to understand old
code). Each eye of the beholder can argue either way.

So what is most simple? Compile linux kernel by hand, or automate it?
Automation becomes "simpler" (more valuable) the more it is actually used.

The article talks about simplifying, though is more about discipline,
something many find hard to find motivation and incentives for in this age of
instant gratification!

~~~
ISO-morphism
> Simple != Easy

> For some, simple would be more like Haskell, while for others bash (until
> they need to understand old code). Each eye of the beholder can argue either
> way.

Certainly simple != easy, but I think in the second part there "simple" should
be replaced with "easy". Simple is objective, while easy is subjective [1].
Haskell may be easier for some as they've spent more time with it, similarly
bash for others. However, their simplicity, i.e. how many concerns are
intertwined, how much global context is required to reason about a program,
can be more objectively analyzed.

> The article talks about simplifying, though is more about discipline,
> something many find hard to find motivation and incentives for in this age
> of instant gratification!

Indeed, it takes discipline to maintain simplicity. Simplicity is hard.
Complexity is easy. "If I had more time to write, this letter would be
shorter."

[1] [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-
Easy/](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/)

------
asdfman123
Getting a 40-hour-a-week job and not having kids is my strategy. I don't have
to relentlessly optimize my time management strategies.

~~~
carlivar
Not having kids is BY FAR a simpler life. I wish these articles were bucketed
into life's various phases and situations. Though most suggestions still
apply, there's something about the time commitment and in-your-personal-space-
ness that makes simplification more difficult.

~~~
dend
[Author of blog post here] Totally fair observation - the article I put
together naively skips through some of the most complicated aspects of life.
Someone that has kids, a different commute, a job that requires different
effort, health-related concerns, etc. may not have an easy time at all with
the approach of "simplifying" things around them. The post itself is not meant
to be some sort of a universal, "you should do this and your life will be
peachy" advice, but rather a reflection on what worked best for me personally,
that will hopefully get people thinking about what works for them in their own
stages of life.

------
aonsager
I think that "simple" rather than "minimal" is an important distinction that
is sometimes overlooked. Sometimes adding something new will let you reduce a
lot of friction.

For example, a paper journal or a plain text to-do list is very minimal, but
I've found that having a dedicated to-do app is the best way for me to
simplify my workflow.

* I can dump in new tasks with a quick keystroke as they come up and manage them later

* I can set a date for upcoming things and get automatic reminders

* I can make recurring tasks repeat automatically

* I can keep a backlog of completed tasks out of sight until I need to refer to something

Or, when my room is messy that usually means things are left out where I use
them and are usually within reach. When I tidy up and put things away, I need
to spend effort thinking about where something is, go get it, and put it away
again when I'm done with it. Messy can be simpler than clean.

------
FridgeSeal
> hassle-free Sonos system at home instead of trying to fiddle with custom
> soundbars, connectors, sub-par applications

I found this kind of funny, given my experience with the Sonos at work:

* it seemingly can’t stay on the wifi

* the app crashes frequently, often mid song, leaving you with something that can’t be controlled (without the buttons) for a few minutes while the app starts back and and lazily attempts to reconnect.

* both the app and the device apparently need to do updates all the time, and it will nag you relentlessly if you don’t do the update before eventually not letting you use it at all.

* It doesn’t appear to support airplay, but sometimes iTunes and Spotify can cast to it in a rickety kind of way?

* The app UI/UX is also downright horrible.

It’s quite literally the opposite of what I’d consider simple.

~~~
dend
[Author of blog post here] I'd say it probably varies and depends on a lot of
factors - sometimes I have issues with the Play One connecting over AirPlay,
but overall it _significantly_ reduces friction compared to all other audio
systems I've used.

------
mouzogu
I first need to have the realisation that things have become wasteful or
complicated in some aspect of my life. Simplifying things becomes clearer at
that point. However, I still often need to go through that wasteful, trial and
error process of figuring out that I need to simplify. I always admire those
people that seem to have a kind of common sense or self awareness to realise
that they don't need something in the first place. There's a kind of
directness of thought and clarity of execution which seem totally natural.

------
dwild
I love how almost nothing in his blog post seems simple... yet that's was his
goals.

I guess it's "simple" for him, but then it would means it's learned and
anything can become simple considering that.

To me that sounds more like, finding what's works for him, and has nothing to
do with simplifying. He seems to get to the same conclusion at the end.

~~~
dend
[Author of blog post here] Bingo - this is a reflection on my own process.
It's not a recipe for others to follow as much as it is food for thought and
maybe a push to figure out what works for you.

------
berelig
For a blog post about simplifying there sure are a lot of links embedded in
the text to take your attention away.

~~~
dend
[Author of blog post here] Good feedback - thank you! Probably would be easier
to include them as reference to the end of the post for those that want to dig
into it.

------
ppeetteerr
>there is no reason to preserve those beyond a couple of weeks or months

I find preserving TODOs to be an important part of yearly evaluation of work.
I can quickly go over my notes for a year and see all of the items that I did
over the year. If I didn't have a rolling todo list, I'd have to maintain a
separate list of accomplishments, which is actually the TODO list.

~~~
dend
[Author of blog post here] To me those are different things. TODOs on a daily
basis can contain mundane tasks - e.g. "Send a Christmas card to cousin Terry"
doesn't strike me as something I need to keep a record of. For things that
I've accomplished, e.g. launched a new site, reached some milestone, I can
just keep it on a separate page/note.

------
ptcampbell
I wonder if the author has stopped to examine the structural influences that
make him feel that the onus is his to relentlessly simplify. Presumably the
author eats alone at his desk every lunchtime. Hopefully his sex life has been
spared from this austerity.

~~~
dend
[Author of blog post here] Appreciate your concerns, thank you :)

------
taurath
Which of the bolded points are not like the others here? Are you really gonna
get a lot of mileage out of a better router vs removing distractions from your
life? Cmon.

~~~
dend
[Author of blog post here] Depends on what causes friction in your life, so
YMMV. To me, if I have a bad network at home, and I constantly have to fiddle
with a router and reboot it whenever the ISP deploys some changes, that's time
I can spend on other things.

------
aj7
Left out the most important thing. ONE bank account, probably a brokerage
account with bill paying, free transactions, checking.

------
cutler
How about reducing the need to know a dozen programming languages leading to
being a master of none?

