Mind the Beginner

You’ll experience less stress, you’ll save more money and you’ll be healthier. Just a few benefits that you can enjoy when being a minimalist. But don’t just take my word for it. Here is what some other bloggers have to say about minimalism:

MNMlist

“Often we don’t really need those possessions as much as we might think, and even when we do have them, we’re not as secure as we might think.” A blogpost on the troubles with getting rid of your possessions. It’s actually by far the hardest thing out there in the minimalist approach: the initial struggle to reduce your belongings. Leo argues that your belongings give you a false sense of security. You’re prepared for all sorts of events. The idea of being prepared goes a bit overboard when you have a triple redundancy on your car, a stack of over 20 dinner plates and you just can’t get rid of that old tv. “What if the new one breaks down, I won’t be able to watch tv for a while”

Keeping stuff means you need a bigger house to store them all in.

The Everyday Minimalist

A 20 something blogger living out of a suitcase since 2006. Having lived in 1600 and 1200 square foot apartments and now living in a 600 square foot studio. Just imagine the difference in monthly rent! and immediately two benefits come to mind: the first being that rent, it’s probably going to be cheaper and secondly: you can vacuum the entire space without unplugging the vacuum. Cleaning 600 square foot while owning just a few things means you have a lot of empty floorspace. Enough space to exercise, lie flat on the floor and stare at the ceiling for a while or dance.

A smaller home and less stuff means easier cleaning

Far Beyond the Stars

You know about the 100-things challenge. Everett took it one step further and decided to go with just 50 items for a while! “The 50 things movement doesn’t count shared items like cooking supplies, bedding, and furniture. I was only counting personal possessions that only belong to me.” Give it a little thought, what if you could live with the freedom of having so few things that you could tuck it all in a suitcase. You’d no longer have to wonder what you would be packing when going on a holiday, you’d just pack every single thing you own!

Everett dropped the 50 things and went back to 75 after a while, to make life just that little bit easier (think laundry…) “Living with less isn’t for everyone, but I’ve discovered that it can make life a lot simpler when you decide to opt out of the endless cycle of consumerism.”

Less stuff means more mobility

Wake Up Cloud

“Having the latest gadgets is cool, but I also realize that it is largely unnecessary and something I’m going to grow tired of within a few weeks.” As soon as you realize this, you can start saving some serious money. Do you actually need that iPhone, iPad or high powered notebook? Or worse, phone, pad AND notebook. Thinking about needs versus wants will help you here. Will owning the latest thing seriously make you happy? And if so, for how long. Especially on the more expensive things, think about how long it took you to save up all that money and so where you will spend those hours of your life on you can never get back. And so Henri realized: “happiness doesn’t come from things, it comes from inside of me.” You can be happy with nothing, and unhappy with everything.

Less desires lets you find true happiness

Simple. Organized. Life.

Is there something wrong with you if you choose to own less? David has been told this countless times. Many people think an empty house is an empty life but they couldn’t be more wrong. For them it certainly is true because thy identify who they are and what they are worth by their possessions. Minimalists however find their worth not in the stuff they own, but what they carry with them in their mind and hear. Happiness really does come from within. So is there something wrong with us because we know where to find true happiness?

Minimalists are completely sane and have a full life

The Minimalist Path

Minimalism can be applied just about anywhere in life, and David points out that it’s actually fun! Yes, you know and I know, but do others know as well? Spread the word. You get perspective and control over your own life. There are less things to take into account when making a decision, less stuff to worry about. Although on the one end there are a few who think that going minimal actually costs more, David makes a clear statement that it actually doesn’t cost anything to get organized.

Sure, if you own just a few things, you’ll be inclined to make those few things the best they can be. If you can own only one computer and it’s essential to your income you’ll be wanting a very reliable laptop and those are expensive. If you have just one coat or one pair of shoes, you’re going to make sure that they will last. It’s still cheaper than buying something new every week or month and -maybe that’s just me- it’s fun to go hunting/researching for the best possible buy.

Minimalism goes great with frugality and quality

Step 1 minimalist

The final blog we’re visiting it written by Brett and gives you the absolute best reason to become a minimalist: Time. “Looking at every aspect of minimalism, it constantly comes back to creating more time to focus on and act upon what we love, while discarding the rest.” Remember that triple redundant car I mentioned? If you spend some time (and fun) on hunting down the single best car you can buy, you don’t have to work all those hours to buy the other two, work all those hours to maintain them, and have a garage that will fit them while you drive around in the first one. Bigger garages come with bigger houses, that come with higher rents or mortgages. Well, you get the idea.

Minimalists have more time to spend on the important things in life

Where it all comes down to

There are plenty of benefits to be had in living the minimalist lifestyle. It will save you time, money, space, stress and distraction among other things. You’ll be rewarded with a sense of freedom and control over your own life, and live green and save money at the same time! You want to live the minimal life? A good place to start is to take the one step towards a minimalist home.

One way to get rid of clutter in your bag

After a year of keeping track of minimalism it still seems to be a trending topic on the Internet. It’s not that hard to understand why, it’s a natural extension of productivity and mindfulness. It’s the effect of being focused, a single goal in mind. There is no place for useless things if you want to reach your goal in a straight line.

When you need your wallet or your keys, do you know exactly where they are? Can you grab them without even looking? Or do you need to dig around in a huge bag crying out “It’s in here somewhere” while you turn the entire contents over on a table.

Frustrating isn’t it, when you can’t find what you are looking for. Of course you have these situations every day. That piece of paper on your desk, that file on your computer, that bill, and where did that scarp of paper go with that phone number you needed to call for a job offer.

Small problems, small solutions

You’ve seen minimalist homes like these and these before, and there are many more examples out there. What they all have in common is that “there is a place for everything and everything in it’s place”. Your car is in the driveway, your TV in the living room and your bed in the bedroom. Huge things with their own clearly defined place. The smaller things get however, the harder it seems to give them their own place.

The reason for this is that smaller things have more places they can be stored. How many places are there to store your car? You’ll be looking in the driveway or the garage. Now, how many places are there to store your keys? A smaller home, room, desk or bag will solve issues like these for you.

Reducing spaces

Minimalism is easy in theory and that’s why the solution is easy as well. Reduce the number of places those small things can hide. How, you ask? Get a smaller bag. Have fewer coats to leave your keys in. Reduce the number of folders in your computer. Best would be to reduce so far that even the smallest thing has only one or two places it can be.

If you religiously hold to those places you can find anything and everything in just a few seconds. Make it a habit (Leo is an expert in this) to put those small things in place. I’ll give you the example of my keyring: it has exactly 2 places it can be: 1: My right front pocket 2: The drawer in my desk. If it’s not in either, I’ve lost it.

Sure, a keyring can be stored in many more places but it doesn’t belong there.

Answer me these questions

To help you look at these questions:

• What is it for?
• Do you need it?
• When do you need it?
• What is it’s specific place?
• Is that place suitable? (not to small but certainly not to big!)
• What other things will be sharing that place?

And of course  ask those questions for the other times found in the last question as well. Start small and work your way up. If you find something that serves no purpose, that you don’t need. Is there a need to keep it? That of course is the last step in applying minimalism. Get rid of anything that serves no purpose. A last tip: if you do not enjoy using an item, do not keep it!

Every day I’m confronted with problems, problems of my own and problems other people have. And as with all problems I like to see them for what they are: challenges and puzzles to be solved. Sometimes problems are much easier to solve than you’d think. Take the classic Gordian Knot, a very complex knot impossible to untie but made short work of with a sword. Other problems might not be that easy but are still easy enough when cut down to size a bit.

The trap

The hard part here is yielding the sword properly. Cutting the problem down to size will in the end leave you with a very simple problem to solve, but will the solution still hold in the big picture? You could cut the knot, but what if the owner of the rope would get very upset if you cut the rope, which was a family heirloom? You got so focused on finding a solution to the knot itself that you forgot the context.

Just a few days ago I made this mistake in a very complex problem. I kept reducing and cutting away until I got the simple solution, but I forgot all about the context of the problem. My solution to the small problem would actually do exactly the opposite when applied to the problem in situ.  If someone turns down your solution because of this, they are absolutely right to do so. Nobody wants to make things worse now do they? And of course I’m sorry for suggestion such a stupid and short-sighted “solution”.

Keep the context in mind

Finding answers to questions is what we all do. Even up to the point of “If it won’t fit… get a bigger hammer” or “You’ll just have to make time”. Did you ever try actually making time, let’s not go there. Fact remains that when you whittle down a challenge, reducing it to a single step, that step may no longer be an answer to the question. While simplification is a very nice tool, and you can cut away a lot of things that don’t matter at all. If you cut away even a single chip of the context that has a direct or indirect impact on the problem, you just changed the problem and so the answer.

So there you are hacking away at the problem, making it smaller and smaller. It’s actually starting to look like the answer just like making a statue of an elephant from a piece of marble is as simple as chipping away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.  We all look on while you’re blurred behind a cloud of chippings and then suddenly we hear that dreaded word “oops”.

…

Thankfully you noticed that you messed up and didn’t present your answer as the answer to the question right? What? You didn’t notice!? You were so happily chipping away that you didn’t notice? We’ll just have to display that elephant without a tail and hope nobody bothers to look at the backside of the statue. You might pull it off every now and then, but you will know the tail isn’t there and I’m sure it will get noticed once you realise that the statue was meant to be placed on a low pillar in the centre of a lawn.

The clear view

If you want to simplify problems you’re always free to do so, at your own risk. If you’re to extreme you’ll get into trouble. If you’re not extreme enough you still have a lot of work to do. Simplification is a very delicate business and more of an art-form than just a skill. Something I’ve definitely not mastered yet but am working on every single day to perfect.

What are you trying to simplify?

Are you a collector of something? A huge collection of stamps, a secret collection of comic books or a coin collection so heavy you can’t carry it all at once. One of my teachers actually has a dice collection. As you can see, he needs two more to make his collection complete. It has to do with the orientation of the dots if you’re wondering.

Before a collection is complete it’s obviously incomplete just to state the obvious. Collection at this stage revolves around that which you do not have. Essentially the same as minimalism although in minimalism we look to expand that which we do not have.

It is the emptiness within the cup that makes it useful – Lao-tzu

Just like with minimalism you’re never completely content with the things you do have, you’re always striving to expand one way or the other. Different sides to the same coin but the same coin nonetheless. And you want the bigger coin.

Collecting Minimalism

Is it possible to collect minimalism? To expand that which you do not have. I’ve written about it several times already, Be it the 100 things challenge, the one-step to creating a minimalist home  or using a razor to cut away the uselessness, minimalism has become somewhat of a main topic on my blog. It’s also the search term that gets me the most traffic through Google. I’m slowly becoming an expert on minimalism through Zen.

Minimalism actually is to me a natural result from practising Zen. It’s not that I’m collecting minimalism, I’m constantly trying to expand usefulness and awareness and trying to reduce uselessness and carelessness. We humans are hunter-gatherers, gathering is in our genes. Building collections is what we do, no exceptions. And so I collect as well, but it’s what I collect that makes the difference.

Turning round

Given the fact that we must collect to feel satisfied in life it’s your choice to choose what to actually collect. The easiest by far (or at least most portable) would be to collect knowledge. Not the physical books but what’s written in them, what they are trying to convey. Now this isn’t a collection for everyone obviously. Some people just don’t like to read and learn. The least useful would be collecting coins, sigar bands or even those little toys you get with a happy meal. Yes there actually are people collecting that.

Combining minimalism with collecting severely limits you in what you can collect. I’d suggest you start collecting knowledge and true usefulness. If it’s not useful it doesn’t belong in your collection and applying this to knowledge; don’t fill your mind with useless knowledge. Of course you’re going to ask me what I mean by usefulness. And I’m going to leave that entirely up to you! The only suggestion I’m going to do is that you take a good honest look at your collection.

Take a step back and have a good look, what do you want to collect?

A long time ago I wrote about the 100 items challenge and as you might know it’s one of the things on my “Freedom list 2010″.

In a nutshell it’s about getting rid of all your personal possessions save 100 items. Not only does this offer great potential to minimise clutter, it also lets you re-evaluate what really is important enough to keep. But there are some issues to deal with along the way. I’m going to take a closer look at the problems and options you have because I’m experiencing first hand all the problems of taking this challenge.

The problem

It sounds so simple, just take a piece of paper and write down the 100 things you want to keep. Get rid of everything else. But that’s just theory and as you know:

In theory practice and theory are the same, in practice however, they are not.

It’s not the actual selection of things to keep that is hard -well, actually it’s very hard, but that’s a different blogpost- it’s the getting rid of all the others things. How do you get rid of them, especially if they represent a significant value? You could sell them via Internet which is the obvious choice. But doing so will leave you waiting for buyers. Alternatively you could just toss them, but that’s like throwing away money and would be stupid. You end up with stuff you want to get rid of but are waiting for people to buy from you.

That’s exactly the situation I’m in right now, I have a lot of items that can just go, but almost everything represents some value. A problem that can be solved in four ways:

Choose your solution

1. Trash it
2. Sell it
3. Give it away
4. Keep it

Trash it

Not always the best option of course. But there comes a time when you have to realize that nobody is going to buy (or even want) your old bookcase or that collection of Christmas sweaters. You can keep it though but I’ll get to that option in a few lines. If all other options fail this is what you will have to do. It’s tough but when you finally get over this hurdle it’s one of the best feelings in the world. Your possessions no longer own you.  But let’s consider the alternatives first.

Sell it

The best option of all of course. Converting all those items you no longer need to cash so you can spend it on more stuff you don’t need, Oh wait, that wasn’t what we were trying to do. What can you do with the cash? Keep in mind that you don’t want more stuff, you want quality. A clear pitfall here is that you start buying better things all the time to replace the few items you keep. And then you;re stuck with the old thing you can’t find a buyer for. Your buyer wants one of two things: What you have to sell, but dirt-cheap or he wants what you want, the best of the best. And you are selling an older model because you upgraded. If you find a buyer, you’re lucky, but don’t forget: The value is not determined by what you’re asking, it’s what people are actually willing to pay, disregarding catalogue values and whatnot.

Give it away

Giving your stuff away is very liberating and grateful. It’s a great way to be frugal as well. In stead of buying a new gift you can give away what was once yours. The obvious pitfall here is that you give something that the receiver gave to you in the first place. A very painful mistake. Also you might want to check if what you are giving either seems new, or make it very clear that the gift is pre-owned   but still very usable. If it’s not as a gift, you don’t have to bother to much with these things however. Just make it clear why you’re giving it away.

Keep it

This is exactly what happens with most things we want to get rid of. Broken things we plan on mending, once useful things that we haven’t used in years like the spare spare spare bicycle in the shed. (I’m Dutch, there are 18 million bikes here, and one 16 million inhabitants.) Old clothing we will never wear again and why are you keeping those old magazines you’ll never read again? Keeping things you’ll never use again is clutter. If you can’t sell it or give it away you have one last choice to make:

• Will I keep this item that I will never use;
• or should I just trash it.

That’s all you can do. As I already said, things have no value other than what people will actually pay you to buy them. Nobody wants your clutter.

The other approach

I started this blogpost with the idea of writing down everything you want to keep. Let’s turn it around a bit, it just might help. Select 100 things you want to get rid of. Decide how long you will give yourself to actually achieve this and for every item determine if you’re going to trash it, sell it or give it away. Don’t make keeping it an option if you can’t sell it or give it away. You wanted to get rid of it so you know what to do!

After those 100, select a further 100 and keep at it until you have reached your goal. The 100 items challenge actually doesn’t have “keeping 100 items” as goal, it’s all about “getting rid of everything but..”. It’s a huge difference in state of mind. If you don’t feel like getting rid of things but want the minimalists life, you’re going at it the wrong way round. Wanting to get rid of things and living the minimalists lifestyle as a result is the way to go.

A quick edit: I stumbled across a blogseries over at simpleorganizedlife.com with a version on my blogpost. It’s called the 10 Things Challenge and David has been at it for weeks on end. Selecting 10 items each week and getting rid of them, A real inspiration there!

Before you read this take a look around…

Did you have a quick look around the room, your desk area and perhaps even your desktop? Is it cluttered? Are there things there that you haven’t used in 2009? Things collecting dust that somehow just keep put but have no actual use?

Seriously, is there anything there you just spotted that you didn’t use for a whole year? The obvious question to ask as soon as you spot something like that is “Why is it still here?”

At least, that’s what the minimalist would ask himself. Always striving to make things less cluttered and as an added bonus easier to keep clean and tidy. I did that very thing this weekend and it resulted in the removal of two bookcases from my room, books included. That’s 2/3 of my shelf space and of course a drastic reduction of things to dust.

To keep things from looking to empty I rearranged what was left and added a two-seat sofa. Although I live in a single room at least now I have proper seating which means that the bed (which was also my sofa) can now be used exclusively for what it’s meant. The TV is no longer easily visible when sitting at my desk and it’s impossible to watch from the bed.

What happened here is something that might seem very insignificant but actually is nothing of the sort. We humans tend to combine just about anything we do and most of the time it’s not very productive at all or at least we aren’t mindful of what we are doing:

• Eating and watching TV
• Trying to fall asleep and watching TV
• Studying behind a PC…. with Internet (social media etc.)
• Studying with the TV on
• Working and playing

Now all of those save one are things you actually don’t want to be doing to often. Very soon you’ll have the habit of eating while watching TV and don’t notice you’re emptying a whole bag of crisps. It’s just suddenly empty. I’m sure you’ve had that happen at least once. The same goes for trying to fall asleep with the TV on. Your retina keeps getting bombarded with light. A great way not to get restful asleep. Sure, most people claim they can’t sleep without the TV to “help them”. But that’s because they have a different problem: The bed is not the exclusive domain of sleep.

The Pavlovian Bed

Humans are creatures of habit and as such we associate things with one another. We get Pavlovian reactions to things. When I was young my parents didn’t allow me to have a TV in my bedroom. A very wise choice when I think back, of course at the time I couldn’t disagree more. You see, my bedroom was used for but a few things and my bed for only one. So as soon as I went to bed my body knew it was supposed to go t sleep and so triggered all the necessary responses. My eyes closed and I was asleep within 20 minutes or less. Reading wasn’t part of the sleeping ritual, or rather it was but not while having my body in a horizontal or half-seated position. Bed = sleep and nothing else.

In later years I got that TV I wanted, now I could watch TV from the comforts of my bed. How wonderful. My body disagreed of course because now it got it’s signals mixed up. Was the bed for sleeping or for watching TV? Or should it do both things at the same time, and not doing a very mindful job of either. The bed was no longer the exclusive domain of sleep.

Distractionless Internet

The same goes for your workspace, your desktop, your sofa. Is a sofa meant to be used for a quick nap? Why not use the bed for that one, at least you won’t fall asleep during the movie because sleep isn’t triggered by the sofa. Homework/studying and your RSS reader or Internet browser? Though far more subtle preferably these two shouldn’t mix either, unless you need the Internet to study. And be honest here (talking to myself) do you really need social media, IRC, music and the TV on to study? Nope, most of the time all you need is your textbook, a piece of paper to make notes, previous notes and in some cases a computer to write something. (or in my case, write code). There are but few reasons to keep connected to the Internet while studying and all of them have an inherent danger of distraction. Wikipedia for instance is a great resource to help clarify things, but it’s all to easy to become distracted and before you know it you’ll be reading about the history of bonsai trees. IRC is a great way to keep in touch with fellow students and ask questions when you are stuck. If you can use it exclusively for that purpose, brilliant. If you get sucked in to idle chatter and random uselessness, better examine what it is you had planned and if what you are doing is part of that plan.

It’s hard to keep things separated, to have a clear idea about what something is for. Is your bed the place to sleep? If your desk the place to work and your sofa the place to watch TV? Or is eating at your desk, sleeping on the sofa and watching TV from the bed the way things go.

Books and Dust Bunnies

So what do the bookcases I mentioned have to do with it? Well, the bookcases were not only holding books, there was other stuff in there too. And everything in there hadn’t been used for at least the whole of 2009 and I had the dust bunnies to prove it. Getting rid of the bookcases made room for proper seating and relocation of the TV. Now watching TV is a major time suck mind you. So what better way to notice that than to make it impossible to watch from anywhere but the designated seating.

Concluding I’d like you to have another look around for two things:

1. Are there things there that you didn’t use in 2009, if so ask yourself why they are still there.
2. Do you have designated (preferably exclusive) area’s for your most important your activities?

I challenge you: For this month, use your bed only for sleeping – if you’re not sleeping, don’t be in bed – and please do tell me about your experiences.

In English the quote below can with some imagination be interpreted as: “when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is usually the best”. Almost anyone who’s interested in math and/or logic has heard of Ockham’s razor. It’s a principle named after William Ockham (c. 1285–1349) , a student and later teacher of Theology at Oxford University (He never became professor, but that’s a different story which has to do something with Oxford’s chancellor John Lutterell). Although he wasn’t a sceptic he was a great critic and applied the principle later known as Ockham’s razor frequently and ruthlessly. An interesting combination with his Theocentric world view.

Although it’s origins trace back much further, all the way back to Aristotle (384–322 BC). According to Wikipedia the first time the principle was described as Ockhams Razor was back in  in 1852 in the works of Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856). It’s named after Ockham however because of the efficiency and frequency of use by him in his works.

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate – William of Ockham

That’s a bit of background for you, now on the the goodness.

With a slight adaptation you could apply the Razor to anything in life although I don’t know if my teacher would agree with me on that one. (I know he’s a subscriber to my RSS so I’m sure I’ll get some feedback *grin* )

If we interpret things a little more casually we could say that “having two ways of doing something, the simpler is the better choice.” Okay, very casually… Minimalists are always searching for ways to make things simpler. The power of less indeed. Applying the Razor to what I just wrote we get “Simpler is better” or “Simplest is best”.

Having several ways of doing things is an often occurring event in every day life. We could brush our teeth with our dominant hand and our subordinate hand but we always choose the dominant hand. That is, unless you might be thinking of this blogpost when brushing your teeth and deciding to switch for once. This is a very clear example and of course not all examples are that clear to us. It’s exactly this reason why minimalism blogs seem to be flourishing on the Internet. We need others to tell us where we can simplify our lives, where we can apply that razor and cut away the uselessness.

Cutting away useless things actually is very liberating in life. It saves time, money, space, stress, frustration. All well known and documented theories on why minimalism is so attractive. In these times of abundance we’re looking for those things that really do matter in life and try to experience them to the fullest.

Do you have an experience in the liberation minimalism has brought you? Please do share it and inspire others to identify where they can make a cut with Ockham’s Razor.

As you might now I ride a rather old motorcycle that’s not very fuel efficient (Roughly 42 miles per gallon if I converted it correctly.  18 km/l). As I was riding on the highway last Saturday my fuel ran out, thankfully I have a reserve in the tank so I switched to that. An additional 3 liters of fuel (0.8 gallon) to get me home. More than enough range but as I rode off to uni today I was feeling a bit uneasy as to how much fuel was left, I didn’t fill up yet. Would I run out halfway and have to walk?

This wasn’t the case, but after class I walked back to my motorcycle wondering if I could make it to the gasstation. I can tell you, it’s very unpleasant riding like that. Anyone driving a car with the fuel light on can tell you that.

Well, now something interesting happened: I started holding back. Easing down on the throttle, trying to predict/time stoplights and even shutting down the engine entirely on a long stretch downhill, all in the name of fuel economy. This huge change in style got me thinking, how much effect can you have on your mileages if you change your driving style. I usually tend to gun it a bit.

A short internetsearch later I ended up with a frequently used term on the internet although I’ve only found it in combination with cars (and hybrids in particular) “hypermilers”. A phrase used to describe those people who try to squeeze every last inch out of every gallon while using street-legal production cars.

Although not all tactics are usable on a motorcycle there is one main tactic that is more important than all others combined: stay calm and relaxed. This means no sudden changes in speed or direction, also described as “Foot control, hand-eye coordination, and anticipation”. One study found that jackrabbit starts and hard brake stops reduce travel time by only about 4 percent—that’s 75 seconds on a 30-minute trip. And we didn’t even factor in tire, engine and brake wear. A few tactics applicable to motorcyclists  are:

• Stay off the brakes
• Accelerate as slow as you can without causing problems for other road users
• Idling is zero miles per gallon…. stay moving if possible
• Stay out of puddles and grooves
• Uphill: gather momentum to take you over, you’ll slow down at the top. Time it so you barely roll over and start gaining momentum again on the downhill.
• Turning off the engine and rolling (Can be illegal, check local laws)
• Tailgating/slipstreaming (Again, can be illegal)
• Get your tuires up to proper pressure, perhaps even a bit harder
• Clean out the air filter
• Check and clean your oil regularly
• Keep the chain properly lubed and at the right tension
• Try to minimise drag
• Try to minimise weight

Try these tactics at your own risk of course, and please do put on a high-vis vest, you’re vulnerable as a motorcyclist even without doing these things. And of course, if you can do something on a bicycle or by walking, don’t use something with a combustion engine.

Now if you’re wondering why I would like to save gas, I have exactly one reason for it: Frugality. If I calculated this correctly I filled up my gastank today at the cost of $7.31 per gallon. (€1.32 per liter). Thankfully it’s a small country and my average trip is just over 40 miles but still, it’s no fun seeing all that money just evaporate so some frugality is in order. I’m not one for extreme green thinking, I wouldn’t mind solar panels on my roof and a windmill in the backyard but it’s not a must for me. Just by being a minimalist I find that I’m greener than most, no need to overdo it and build a composting loo as well. When the time comes for a “new” car I’ll go for a prius or some other hybrid but for now, it’s an old ratbike and doing everything I can to save money on gas.

Stay calm while riding and control your right hand, slow down and enjoy the view at the same time. It’s a true challenge to get as many miles as possible, treat it as a game and constantly try to get the new highscore.

Good luck and remember: relax, focus and have fun!

Everywhere you look there are commercials, influencing us and trying to convince us to buy the next best thing out there. Where this used to work on a massive scale it’s now getting more and more personal with even directly addressed ads showing up on your doormat and tons of spam in your mail.

Not a single day goes by without coming under this influence. But there is a consciousness developing all around. People start to become insensitive to ads.
Just today I discussed this with a few fellow students. The perfect example came up. A “pop-up” stating you are the gazillionth visitor to a site and you just need to click the ad to claim your prize.

But what is this was a real prize and not a scam? Would you see the difference? I sure wouldn’t. Those pop-ups are just to common. As a consumer we’re starting to become defective. The ads are loosing their grip.

The dream

Well, so far the fantasy. Fact is that ads still work and sucker people into buying all sorts of things they never knew they needed in the first place. We’re also lead to believe that buying certain things will make us popular and grant us superstar status. Dream on kids, super star status comes from eating your vegetables, it’s not about what you own. So eat up and become a superstar.

Although I present a weak case here it’s just as likely that you reach stardom through your stomach as reaching it through buying that latest thing. We just don’t realize that very often it seems. I’m fond of my veggies but don’t want to become a star, I’d rather stay relatively anonymous. Thankfully there is no guarantee I’ll reach stardom through vegetables.

In my last post I talked about a problem with humanity, we’re lazy and if we can find a way around thinking for ourselves we’ll take that path.

Actually all it takes for ads to loose their grip and rendering you defective as consumer is to think for yourself and not to believe everything you hear/read/see. Smoking won’t make you an attractive cowboy, rough around the edges. Buying that latest fitness thing won’t get you that flat stomach. Or in the extreme department, taking that pill won’t make certain body parts bigger overnight.

Ignorance is what ads thrive on. Stay awake and think about things, before you know it you’ll be defective and on your way to saving a lot of money on useless stuff.

Now remember to eat your veggies.

Not to long ago I got a mail from Jean asking me how I handled food and eating. She herself found that “a simple (mostly raw) seasonal consumption of food works best”

I have just one guideline I try to follow in all food:

Concerning food that I buy/prepare myself. If I can’t tell what’s in there I probably won’t eat it.

I try to stay clear from processed stuff, canned things and anything in a plastic bowl you need to nuke for a few minutes. Come to think of it, I have a disliking for nuked food in general. Yes it’s flaming hot, but it’s also limp, tasteless and most times if there is any flavor involved everything tastes the same. I don’t read labels a lot (the only time I do is because my girlfriend is a vegetarian and they put meat in the oddest things lately.

If someone else is cooking I generally don’t look to close, I’m not a fussy eater at all and will eat anything you put in front of me. If we ever meet face to face, just try me.

In general, I eat because my body needs it, either food because my stomach is growling or something protein rich after running. I hardly ever eat because I like to or as comfort food. Needless to say I have no obesity issues. A nice “benefit” is that if there is anything that’s the opposite of a sweet tooth, I have one. I drink a lot, a lot of water and tea, no soda’s for me… hardly any coffee. To make sure I don’t have to buy drinks while not at home I always have a 16 oz Nalgene bottle with me, filled with water. I top it up every chance I get. A simple but very effective way to save money and healthy too.

Well, that’s it in a nutshell for me. If you have more questions, please do ask them.

In the mean time I have a question for you: What is your take on food?