The Rich Roll Podcast - How To Be A Minimalist: Joshua Fields Millburn On The Power Of Living Deliberately & Contributing Beyond Ourselves

Episode Date: October 31, 2016

I thought it would make me happy. So, I studied hard. Nailed the grades & aced my college applications — 7 for 7. Even Harvard gave me the green light. I snagged a degree from Stanford, eked my way through Cornell Law School, bagged the fancy job, worked ridiculous hours in overpriced suits and rode the elevator all the way up the corporate ladder, hammering impressive paychecks along the way. Prosperity? I guess. Security? Maybe. Personal satisfaction? Not so much. Don't get me wrong. The American Dream is a beautiful ideal. An egalitarian proposition I bought into wholesale, forging a life trajectory premised upon material well being. But the dream is not without it's fissures. Nowhere does it promise personal well being. Nowhere does it promise meaning. Nowhere does it promise happiness. But this is on me. Because at no point did I take action on anything of personal importance. What do I want? Who do I want to be?  At 30, I lacked the maturity and self-awareness to honestly answer these questions. But let's face it — I didn't even ask. At first, my dissatisfaction was barely noticeable. But as my disquieting malaise progressively escalated, I compensated with all manner of unhealthy habits. Blackout binges that landed me in jail. Horrendously noxious food that left me atrociously unhealthy. Spending sprees that escalated my debt to almost un-fixable levels. Nothing worked. So I drank more, ate more, spent more, consumed more. Yet no matter how overindulgent my insalubrious habits, how desperate my accelerating efforts to medicate my discomforting dis-ease of self became, that hole in my spirit just grew. Deeper. Wider. Darker. Until it's sheer vastness swallowed me whole, leaving me lost, despondent and utterly alone. Hoping to die and unable to live, all that remained was the realm of the hungry ghost. I honestly don't know how or why I survived. But I do know my rebirth was not by my hand. My divine moment was just that – divine. A faint whisper from the dark recesses of my rootless, discomposed consciousness: You don't have to live this way anymore. This week's guest knows a thing or two about what I'm talking about. Because not that many years ago, Joshua Fields Milburn was blazing a similar trajectory. Mired in the corporate grind, he chased the American Dream banking six figures managing 150 telecom retail stores, expiating for the satisfaction his career failed to provide by doing what we do — accumulating. And when that didn't work, he accumulated more. In fact — much like me — the more Joshua measured self-worth via the barometer of externalities like job titles, condos, and big screen tv's, the more his hole darkened, dilating in depth, width and scope. Joshua's divine moment was delivered in the sudden passing of his mother, followed quickly by the dissolution of his marriage. A devastating succession of events that forced him to take a long look in the mirror. Despondent with the guy being reflected back to him, a whisper began to echo: You don't have to live this way anymore. Hence was born Joshua's search for a more fulfilling and personally satisfying way of living and being. A search that ultimately illuminated a beacon in the darkest of nights. Minimalism. It began with unshackling his relationship to material things. But it culminated in something far more profound: freedom. In Joshua's words, freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around. Real freedom. Enjoy! Rich

The material possessions were simply a physical manifestation of what was going on inside. This external clutter was just a representation of all this internal clutter. Emotional clutter, spiritual clutter, mental clutter, just inside clutter. What's going on inside me? And so by dealing with the stuff that I had been so focused on, I was able to start looking inward and actually just being more aware of what was going on inside. I'm Rich Roll, and this week on the podcast,

it's all about minimalism with author, speaker, documentary filmmaker, and Christopher Walken lookalike, Joshua Fields Milburn. The Rich Roll Podcast. podcast, the show where I have the great privilege, the great honor of spending quality time with extraordinary individuals, going deep along with some of the most inspiring thought leaders and positive paradigm-breaking change makers all across planet Earth, people who have devoted their lives to making the world a better place, all in the interest of helping people like you and me just live and be better.

So I've got a really fun conversation for you today with Joshua Fields Milburn, who along with his childhood friend, his best friend from fifth grade, Ryan Nicodemus, comprise something called The Minimalists, which is basically two guys who write, they speak, they make films, and generally espouse the virtues

of focusing their experience, their journey, on life's most important things, which actually aren't things at all. But before I get into all the great prefatory stuff that I want to say about Joshua and what's in store with this conversation, can we take care of a little business? Let's take care of a little business. little business. Let's take care of a little business. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life.

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step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, you guys, thanks for indulging me. On to today's show, Joshua Fields Milburn, minimalism. What can I say about this from an introductory point of view? I guess I would say that if there's one thing I can really relate to, it's that relentless pursuit of the American dream. Because I'm a guy who spent years chasing that big, high-paying job and then slaving ridiculous hours, but without any real meaningful conviction about what I was doing

or why I was doing it, of course, only to one day wake up and discover that I was pretty miserable and wondering, how did I get here? What happened? What am I doing? And that empty hole in my gut and my spirit that I realized was only going to get filled by changing how I was living, by completely altering my lifestyle and pursuing a more personally meaningful way to really live more deliberately. And I think this is a really common thing. And it's definitely the path of today's guest because Joshua is a guy who really not all that long ago was mired in the corporate grind. He was banking six figures and chasing happiness by doing what we do, you know, accumulating lots of stuff. But the faster he ran, the further away it was, the more it eluded him. And that bottomless hole in his spirit just continued to grow deeper. And for Joshua, everything came to a head in 2009

when in rapid succession, his mother fell ill and his marriage dissolved. And he was forced to take a look at himself in the mirror. And what was reflected back at him didn't exactly please him. And he made this decision that it was time to change. It was time to change everything. And his search for a more fulfilling way of life ultimately led him to this lifestyle called minimalism, which of course is what we're going to talk about today. And the rest is history. Today, Joshua and his buddy Ryan are the dynamic duo behind TheMinimalist.com which is one of the internet's go-to destinations for living a meaningful life with less stuff. I think they've got over 4 million readers at this point so really a great resource

for this subject matter. Together these two guys have written several books and they've been featured on basically every major TV network and major publication, everything from Time to the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal. They've given TED Talks. They've spoken at places like South by Southwest and Harvard Business School. They created a publishing imprint. They launched a podcast. They opened a coffeehouse.

And they most recently made this really great documentary called shockingly minimalism, which I recently shared in my weekly roll call email. It's, it's really great. And you guys should all check it out. So this is obviously a conversation about Joshua's life path. And it's also a conversation about minimalism, what it is, but also what it isn't and how owning less can actually make room for more, more meaning, more time, more passion, more experiences, more growth, more contribution, more contentment, and ultimately more freedom. And it's a conversation about, to coin Joshua's phrase, why we should love people and use things, because the opposite never works. I'm good to go if you're good to go. Let's do it, man. Let's do it, brother. How you doing?

Outstanding. How you doing? Welcome to Los Angeles. Yeah, thanks for having me in your beautiful city. Yeah, we're doing this podcast in your airbnb which uh ironically or perhaps uh sort of serendipitously just happens to be a very minimal pad it's uh it's very appropriate for you know we kind of dragged the little table out here and you brought your whole setup but this is this is beautiful thanks for having me well uh i'm thrilled to be talking to you i've been following uh your journey and and ryan's journey for quite some time and really love everything that you guys have been putting out into the world. So it's just cool to be talking to you,

man. And I want to like kind of kick this off by saying at the very outset, your documentary freaking rocks, man. It is so good. I mean, it's really good. You guys should just be so proud of what you've created

and i think going into it i watched a lot of documentaries and it wasn't that i didn't expect it to be good but i was really pleasantly surprised at just how beautifully shot and and how well well kind of um organized and orchestrated the story is. It's like much more emotional than I expected it to be. And I think it did a phenomenal job of achieving what I imagine your purpose and intention behind the movie is, which is to convey a very real sense of what minimalism really is, behind the decluttering aspect of what everyone seems to kind of want to talk about initially,

to really talk about what's going on socially and culturally, this cultural malaise, this, I would go so far as to call it a dis-ease of, you know, material compulsive consumerism that has come to define how we live our lives. Well, first off, thank you. We worked really hard on it and had a great team that really helped us put this together. I mean, we've been doing this for about six years now. We started in December of 2010, and we spent the better part of three years on the documentary just because for a while it's been the Josh and Ryan show. And that's been fine. We started writing a blog and then we wrote books and we started a podcast.

We have TED Talks and social media. And there are different ways for us to communicate. You're doing what you do when you build a brand. Right, right. And it sort of started unintentionally at first. I didn't even know what a blog was when we first started it. You know, I thought a blog was where 83-year-old ladies catalog pictures of their cats. It turns out those are...

That exists. That's part of blogging. Yeah, well, those are just the really successful blogs. But no, we wanted to... I think, as you were saying there, it wasn't just about the decluttering. I mean, the how-to is compelling, but only so much. We all understand how to declutter our closet. It's why you never see me and Ryan write, you know, here are the 67 ways to clean out your kitchen.

I'm much more focused on the why-to than the how-to. What's the purpose behind it? And so for me, it started with a question, how might your life be better with less? And that was the question that the documentary sort of centered around or circled around because we wanted to show that minimalism wasn't a radical lifestyle, right? We wanted to show that it was a practical lifestyle and the thing that was so appealing to me with minimalism when i when i first started was that there were all these different recipes whether it was colin wright who's in the documentary and everything he owns fits in his backpack he owns like 52 things and he travels to a new country every

four months and in fact he doesn't even pick the country. His readers at his blog, Exile Lifestyle, they pick the country for him. So he sort of outsourced even that decision in his life. Because decision fatigue is part of the malaise that leads to minimalism, right? It's not the stuff, it's what's in your mind as well. I think so.

So I think the stuff is the initial bite at the apple. For me, the material possessions were simply a physical manifestation of what was going on inside. This external clutter was just a representation of all this internal clutter. Emotional clutter, spiritual clutter, mental clutter, just inside clutter. What's going on inside me? And so by dealing with the stuff that I had been so focused on, I was able to start looking inward and actually just being more aware of what was going on inside. And I mean, that was a whole process, but yeah, it started with this stuff. But it's not like just renting a dumpster and throwing all your stuff in it is the

answer here you could do that and still be utterly miserable go home to an empty house and sulk after removing a bunch of pacifiers right there's a lot of uh analogies to addiction recovery i think i'm in recovery and i know addiction is part of your background and your story and Ryan's. But as they say in recovery, you know, the drugs and the alcohol, that's not the problem. That's the solution, right? And when you take that away, that's just the first step of addressing the underlying cause of whatever was leading you to that compulsive behavior. similar way, the accumulation of stuff, you know, on the extreme, whether it's hoarding or living ostentatiously, is really just symptomatic of what's important to you or what's going on internally. And the removal of that stuff is just the first step on, you know, what I would characterize as a journey to greater self-knowledge of really, you know, wrestling with and wrangling

with what's important to you and getting to the bottom of that. Yeah, I think most of us probably aren't candidates for the show Hoarders, right? I mean, that is an extreme mental illness and there are a lot of problems around that. But there is, as you said, this sort of dis-ease going on. The average American household has more than 300,000 items in it. It's a stat from the LA Times. That's not me going around counting people's stuff. Which is absolutely insane. That's the average. That is the average. And, you know, most of us are average. We like to say that, you know, I'll be different. But really, if I follow the same recipe, I'm going to bake the same cake as you, right? And so I certainly

had achieved a lot by my mid to late 20s. And it was after a very humble beginning. Ryan and I grew up really poor, food stamps, welfare, drug abuse, alcohol abuse in the households. And I thought for me, the reason we were so discontented growing up is, well, we didn't have a lot of money, right? And that was certainly an ingredient there that that will lead to some discontent if you can't fulfill your basic needs and even these sort of basic comforts. And so by going the other direction, you know, when I turned 18, I skipped the college route, went and got a sales job and started climbing that corporate ladder. And I realized you can make pretty good money if you work six or seven days a week, 70 or 80 hours a week.

And by age 19, I was making $50,000 a year, which in Dayton, Ohio is unbelievable. It's more than my parents made. And of course, I was spending $65,000 a year though. And so I had my first encounter with debt. and and then I said well maybe I just need to adjust for inflation it's not fifty thousand dollars a year that's going to make me happy it's seventy five thousand and when you get there of course you're spending six figures when you start making six figures it's this cycle that is never ending I'm always spending toward the next promotion buying the next thing that is supposed to make me happy in some non-existent hypothetical future. Right. And despite the self-understanding,

intellectually, we all understand that the stuff doesn't make you happy. The important things in life are free. All of the things that we hear growing up, we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that doesn't apply to me. Secretly secretly deep down, I don't really believe that because I think if I can just get that, if I get the new Tesla with like the insane mode, like that's going to be the thing, right? Sure. And it's pretty cool.

Yeah, and it is cool. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's your relationship to that. And of course, if you are lucky enough to get that, then you look around and you're like, oh yeah, but that guy over there has that. And you chase that like a heroin addict looking for that first high again all the way to the grave. And as somebody who lives in Los Angeles, I'm surrounded by a lot of very wealthy people, very successful people, but also a lot of incredibly unhappy people.

So what do you take from that? And much like yourself, you know, I was on a similar career trajectory and, you know, partnership track on a law firm at a big law firm and that whole deal. And, and, you know, had that moment of looking around and, and even like sort of surveying all the partners in the firm and their crazy success and knowing like, I really don't like, not only do I not want to be them, like, I don't really like them. Like these are not people I would hang out with, you know, had I had my choice, but still relentlessly pursuing it and the 80 hour weeks and the, you know, you're a loser if you're not ordering takeout dinner every single night and all that kind of stuff that I know, you

know, you relate to. It's so difficult for people to actually, you know, embrace that there is another way. And, you know, when, when someone like yourself or, you know, Leo Babauta or the other people that are kind of blazing this path, um, step out and say, Hey, over here, like there's another way. Let's, let's like re-examine this american dream from a different perspective uh you're considered like some crazy murder outlier who's like breaking paradigms and that's makes it very uncomfortable for other people when we hear about someone getting rid of their stuff that it's supposed to be a telltale side of suicide now oh this person is getting in

fact people ask me when i first started sort of shedding the excess stuff are you okay are you okay um james do you know james altucher yeah yeah so james you know he's doing this crazy experiment where he's just living in there he gave away all his stuff and yeah he owns essentially nothing basically you know yeah but he's also super successful and he's just a real he's an amazing guy i just i absolutely love him but he says the same thing everybody's calling him up saying, are you okay? Everything must be terrible if you're doing this. There's something wrong. It's interesting that that's the direction we go

when we're trying to get things out of the way. People think that because we're trying a different template. You mentioned the American dream. I think we've sort of been sold this meme of the American dream that if you achieve this, then you'll be happy. And so we're constantly chasing happiness. But I think that's part of the problem is that chasing of happiness. I don't think happiness is a thing that we can chase. And it's making us miserable.

I think happiness isn't the point of all of this i think i think happiness is even the wrong word to use yeah i think it's you know finding meaning and purpose in your life i agree you know long-term satisfaction and and happiness is a byproduct is a byproduct yeah like chasing happiness will avail you nothing. Right. And in your movie, um, I mean, Sam Harris says it as eloquently as any human being possibly can because he's Sam Harris, but I can't remember exactly what he said, but he's like talking about, he's like, it's very interesting how the human being is on this, you know, sort of gestalt of, of, you know, always accumulating more and, and perpetuating the delusion that that's leading

to some greater sense of self-satisfaction when in fact all evidence is to the contrary. Yeah, it is. And yet we think we're going to be different. You mentioned the partners in a law firm. And I experienced the same thing. I was in the retail world. I was director of operations for 150 retail stores, which I know is really ironic with the whole minimalism bit. But as I climbed that corporate ladder, I saw these guys who I emulated,

who I wanted to be like. But the closer I got, I realized they were kind of miserable. But of course, I was going to be different, even though I was following the same path. And I had a boss who had a second heart attack at age 50. I had a co-worker who was 30 years old who had a heart attack. I mean, these guys were unhealthy, as was I. I weighed 80 pounds more than I weigh now. You're a super skinny dude. It's hard to picture you, 80 pounds. I think you even said like you first hooked up with Ryan when you guys were little kids because you were both the fat

kids. I was literally the fattest kid in school. I have like a really hard time. I know. Thankfully, I have photographic evidence that I've put on social media occasionally. But I was, I mean, I had, not only did I have the mullet, just so we could sneer at that, but I had just the double chin and the gut. It was, that's, I mean, I was all chin and gut, basically. Yeah. Now you're rocking like the second coming of Christopher Walken. I've gotten that once or twice. Yeah, so I found that as I was climbing that ladder,

it's not that those people were innately bad people, but they didn't share my same values, right? Or maybe they do or did, but it's on lockdown. Or they were like me and I didn't even know what my values were. I didn't know what was important anymore. Disconnection. Yeah, and so if you don't know what's important to you, how could you possibly pursue it?

And that's where I was in my life, where I was successful in a very narrow sense. Age 27, achieved everything I ever want just to realize that everything I ever wanted wasn't actually what I wanted now. And then, of course, I talked about it in the film. My mom died. My marriage ended both in the same way.

All right, but let's slow down here. I want to backtrack it a little bit i mean first of all to kind of you know parse uh what it was like for you growing up you know living in a household with a mother who is a practicing alcoholic and kind of where you're on food stamps you're on welfare right so both basically you know very poor and that's a trauma, you know, that's a very traumatic, um, on some level you could characterize it as, you know, abuse, not conscious abuse, but like, you know, that, that had its toll on you. So I don't think anybody would put it past you, uh, for you to grow up thinking, I don't want that. Like I I'm, I'm going to be wealthy. I'm never going to be in this situation of being in welfare like I'm gonna stay away from drugs and alcohol I've seen what that

does so it's not like anybody would say like well wouldn't you know that you know of course you're gonna of course you're gonna go out into the world and say I'm gonna try to make the most money that I possibly can to distance myself from that experience yeah I I didn't know we were poor growing up necessarily man think you know it when you're in it. I lived in a neighborhood where everyone else was poor too, and that was sort of the status quo. By high school, you start to figure it out because cliques form

and people take different paths and different groups are in vogue and you can't be a part of them if you don't have a particular identity or status or whatever. And the weird thing is that we weren't poor simply because of lack of money. We were poor because of repeated bad decisions in our case. And part of that was my mom being an alcoholic and constantly losing jobs and going through the whole process. But what I figured out as I sort of rose the ranks throughout my 20s and I started making money is that money just allowed me to make worse decisions if I was still making bad decisions.

It amplified those bad decisions. And so I was discontented growing up because of repeated bad decisions. And I was discontented as an adult throughout my 20s because of repeated bad decisions. And so money isn't inherently bad. It can be used for great things. I'm certainly not allergic to money, but I'm far more deliberate now, even with less money, than in the corporate world making several hundred thousand dollars a year. Well, I think what happens, or I should say, in my experience, this is what happened. And tell me if this resonates with you. what happened and tell me if this resonates with you. But, you know, I, when, when you're working 80 hours, 90 hours, a hundred hours a week on a job that you don't really like, or isn't sort of

consistent with your values, whether you're conscious of that or not. Um, you know, when, when it comes to 10 o'clock and you're finally going to go home, like, what are you going to do? Like go home, go to sleep and wake up so you can do it all over again. In my case, I made bad decisions that led to a lot of self-destructive behavior, but what you see a lot is, and what I did was overspend like, well, yeah, I'm unhappy here, but if I lease that car, you know, that's going to make me happy. And so very quickly, you know, as you kind of ramp forward, you're in over your head all over the place. And then you're like, well, I guess this is just my, now I'm stuck. And this is just the way I'm going to have to live my life, like all the way to the grave.

Maybe next time I'll figure out a way to live with more satisfaction. And I see that a lot with people. They get mortgages that are just a little bit out of reach. Everything's just a little bit out of reach that keeps you stuck. And there's that great example of the banker in the documentary um wall street and got that promotion and he realized like if he took it that was going to be it for him right right yeah he he really he got to this point in his life where he had achieved this level of success that he knew that if he if he didn't walk away now he'd never be able to walk away from it and I think you and I experienced that and most people who have that level of success and are still discontented by that because

their short-term actions don't align with their long-term values they they experience this stuckness and they're trapped by lifestyle by acquisition by identity as well and we really get wrapped up in that identity that's the most powerful thing i think i think so and in fact when we go out and tour do events and stuff people ask like what was the hardest thing for you to give up and like i, I'm going to say a throw pillow or a TV or something. My identity. It was definitely because the first thing we ask someone is, what do you do? The story you tell yourself about who you are. Right.

And being able to give it in a soundbite too. Like whatever fits on your business card, that's who I am as a person. But when you flip that question around and really think about it, I do a lot of things. I drink water. I go for walks. I watch movies. There are a ton of things I do. But when we posit the question that way,

what we're really saying is, where do you work? How much money do you earn? So I can compare you to me on the socioeconomic ladder. It's a terrible question. You know what I mean? It's like, why isn't the question, what gets you excited? Or what are you super into what are you passionate about but how do you answer that question now you do so many things so do you have a stock answer

or do you switch it up or like i never know how to answer it sure well that's a cool thing like that's awesome to not know how to answer it i think that's actually a good answer though right i don't know how to answer that. For me, it actually shifted. So, I was still in the corporate world. I was 28 years old, and for the longest time, I wanted to write literary fiction. That was always my thing. I had done it. I was an aspiring writer for a very long time, which really just means I didn't write that much. I aspired every single day, though. And as I started to shift and realize that I don't want to be as tied to this identity, because people ask me all the time at networking events, what do you do? What do you do?

What do you do? And then I would just recite what was on my business card and then ask them what they did. And we'd spend the next 10, 15 minutes talking about things we weren't that passionate about. And so I didn't experiment for a year. Anytime I was in an event, people would say, what do you do? And I'd say, I'm really passionate about writing.

This is while you're still... I was still in the corporate world. Yeah, I was still in that world. And notice I didn't say I'm a writer. I used the verb instead of the noun. Because if I said I'm a writer, then you get the accusatory questions, right? Who's your publisher? Have you published?

Because then it's still like a contest of trying to measure your social value. Right, right. And I didn't want to answer, have you read anything that I, or written anything I would have read? And the truth was no, at the time, no. Not unless you're reading, you're breaking into my computer and reading, you know, Microsoft Word files or something. And so, no, I just wanted to shift the conversation a bit. And so I say, I'm really passionate about writing. And then I just flip the question around. I say, what are you passionate about?

And occasionally I get the deer in headlights stare like, oh, like, my job? What's my answer here? I was prepared to tell you what's on my business card. And so most of the time, though, once we got past that initial awkwardness, it changed the trajectory of the question, of the conversation, so that we talked about something that we were interested in. Some of our desires or passions, and some women, instead of telling me they're an accountant, they would tell me they were passionate about snowboarding or they're passionate about playing basketball, whatever it may be. Just because it's something you enjoy doing, it doesn't mean you have to do that for a living necessarily.

Right. Well, I think that that's interesting. I haven't heard you speak about that before. Cause the way I sort of look at these things is there's usually some kind of inciting incident or, or painful moment that triggers this you know, change in trajectory, like the wall street banker guy getting, it was actually a good thing that happened to him by most accounts,

right. That triggered this change in his life, but usually it's something painful, right. And in your case it was your mom contracting lung cancer and then you know you visiting her and kind of you know taking care of her stuff and and what i get out of that is that was a real moment in which you really had to kind of uh do an inventory about about how you were living your life and that

kind of set in motion everything that's followed but But the fact that you were prior to that going around talking about what you're passionate about tells me that it was percolating there, right? You were getting ready for a change and that's like a manifestation that you were thinking about these things earlier. Yeah, I was thinking about, for me, it was like I said, writing fiction. And this whole path that we've taken since then has been a really beautiful accident and I have published a novel that I wrote in my 20s and and I've had the opportunity to to write a lie and write non-fiction write memoir and and it's that's the only thing I'm passionate about and I've transferred the skill a little bit but

but it's the thing I'm most passionate about even though we have all these different vehicles now with the documentary podcasts whatever the thing I'm most passionate about. Even though we have all these different vehicles now with the documentary, podcast, whatever, the thing I'm most passionate about is writing. Around that time with my mom, and I haven't really talked much about this. I don't actually know if I've ever talked about it, but in retrospect, my biggest regret in life has been i didn't spend more time with her after i found out after i found out that she you know she was dying and we all knew she was dying and and yet

man i was so damn busy right yeah well she was when she was diagnosed it was stage four lung cancer right so you know by all accounts there's not going to be much time anyway. Right. Right? Yeah. And so you visited her at the very end? I spent a lot of time with her in 2009. So December 2008 is when she found out and she called me.

It was two days before Christmas. I was in my corner office, Cincinnati, Ohio and I got the phone call and actually it went to voicemail and several calls from her throughout the day and I called her back at night. I was still in my office 7 p.m. at night and called her back and I could instantly tell she had been drinking again and she had been off alcohol for at least a few years, several years. And, you know, when you know someone that well, it was like, oh, my goodness, something wrong is going on. And then not only was she drinking, they get this news on top of it.

And so I spent a good chunk of the next nine months until she passed in October of 2009. I spent a lot of time down in Florida with her. She was down in St. Petersburg. But I didn't spend enough time. In retrospect, I wish I would have just up and left the job right then and at least spent more time with her. We didn't have a great relationship ever since I moved out. It wasn't a terrible relationship either. It's just it felt strained from the first 18 years of my life. And so being able to go back and repair that, I don't think I didn't do a very good job of that. But when you do go down there, you start to kind of look around at how she sort of collected material possessions throughout her life and the clutter that she had surrounded herself with. And my impression is that

that got you thinking about how we relate to the items that we surround ourselves with, right? Is that correct? It didn't really hit me until she did pass. I had to make one last trip down there. So I went down there seven times over the course of nine months. Oh, wow. I spent a few days here, a few days there. But even then, it wasn't that much time. Not as much time as I would have liked to have spent. Do you have brothers and sisters? I have one brother, yeah.

And, yeah, so when she passed, though, I had to make that last trip to deal with her stuff. And then I get there, and she has a tiny one-bedroom apartment. But there are about three apartments worth of stuff crammed in there. Now, it's not like she's a hoarder. I mean, she was like me, honestly, or I was like her, more likely. I mean, it's anybody who's downsizing from however she was living in Ohio to Florida, right, and just bringing all your stuff with you and realizing, well, it doesn't quite fit in this one-bedroom apartment,

but I'm not quite ready to let go of it either. Right, right. She's like, that's everybody. And a lot of it's, in my case, and I think in her case as well, it was well-organized hoarding, right? There weren't items strewn throughout the house on the floor and everything else. It was an ordinal system of boxes and bins and drawers and shelves and a very organized way to sort of hide the stuff that isn't just not adding value to her life, but in many cases getting in the way for many of us. I know for me, because the price tag is there, you buy the item, but then you don't think about the other sort of embedded costs.

the item, but then you don't think about the other sort of embedded costs, the environmental costs, but also the cost to store it, to take care of it, to put gas in it, to charge it, whatever the thing may be, and realizing, okay, the cost goes way beyond the price tag. And there's also the mental clutter that goes along with that, the emotional clutter, this other clutter that is harder to put a name on because you don't see it as a physical artifact. As a way of trying to empathize with her, and maybe this is playing devil's advocate a little bit, I would imagine it sounds like she was kind of alone, right?

Like down in Florida? I mean, yeah, but she had so many friends. She was an amazing extrovert. But at the same time, too, is there an argument that a rationale, a reason for keeping a lot of this stuff around is because it's a way of externalizing memory, right? Like each item is an association that when she sees that or touches it or smells it can trigger something, you know, maybe pleasurable about something that happened or you know i would imagine she had a lot of your stuff there too to help her you know kind of connect with you even though you weren't present so it's a very human thing i think it's more maybe it's a little more nuanced and complicated than just you know throw everything out yeah i think so and and really i

mean only thing i can do is project my own assumptions onto her experience as well. And so it's not me speaking for her necessarily or saying this is how she was living her life, but I'm projecting my own experience onto her. So it's a bit of a narrative overlay in that sense. But I think that when I went down there that last time to deal with her stuff, you know, I did what basically any good son would do. I decided to rent a U-Haul. In fact, the largest U-Haul they had.

It was a 26-foot U-Haul, so I had to wait an extra day for that. And rent a storage locker back in Ohio. Because I realized I couldn't co-mingle my stuff with mom's stuff or her stuff with my stuff. I already had the big house with, you know, three bedroom, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two living rooms, all the, I already had a house with a full basement full of stuff basically. And so a storage locker though, that would let me hold on to everything just in case I needed it. Right. Right. And and and hold on to all those memories right and and so i i did that and i'm packing all this stuff up and then i looked under her bed she had this this tall bed with a bunch of boxes under it

and there were these four uh printer paper boxes like kind of heavy and they were just sealed with just a ton of packing tape. And all they said on the side of the four boxes was one, two, three, four. And I'm like, what the heck could be in these boxes? And I realized it was my old elementary school paperwork. It was grades one through four. And then I'm like, well, why was mom holding on to all this stupid paperwork, right? There's something very sweet about that, too. There is something sweet about it. And that's what I realized the next moment as I started rifling through it. And I was like, all these memories came rushing back to me.

And then I realized, well, she wasn't just holding on to the paperwork. She was holding on to all the memories that were in those boxes, right? But then I thought to myself, wait a minute. Those boxes have been sealed for more than two decades. Right, it's that thing of like someday I'm going to look through this. Yeah. But that day never comes. And they had been not only sealed for two decades, but had been moved from several different residences without being opened at all.

And I think we all experience that in some level. The huge carbon footprint of your fourth grade math test. Yeah, and so it's there, it's being stored, but it's not being accessed. And that moment actually made me realize something important for the first time. Our memories aren't inside our things. Our memories are inside us. And I realized that

mom didn't need to hold on to those boxes to hold on to a piece of me because I was never inside those boxes. But then of course I looked around at all her stuff and I realized I was getting ready to do the same thing, except instead of her her memories in a box under my bed i was getting ready to cram it all into a giant box with a padlock on it just in case yeah just in case and and and that point is illustrated you know quite beautifully in the film where you talk i don't i can't remember who the expert is but there's a guy who comes on he talks about how the average size of the American home is kind of swelled over the decades. So now that the square footage that we're occupying is much

grander than, you know, it was maybe in the forties or the fifties. I can't remember exactly, but at the same time, this explosion of the storage industry that's occupying, you know, I don't know, however many thousands of square miles of basically land across the U.S. where people are doing just that, right? Just taking all this stuff and locking it away for that very same reason. Yeah, $22 billion storage industry that's out there. And the guy you're talking about is Graham Hill, I believe.

And he has one of those tiny apartments in the film. But it's not like a tiny house in the traditional sense. I was so compelled by that living space because it's so functional. I mean, it's 420 square feet, but it sleeps seven. You can feed dinner to 12 people at the same time. It has an office and a movie theater. But it's because it's all sort of modular and you're able to move move things around and uh it's just a more appropriate use of space basically right

there's this really interesting coalescing of so many variables and factors that have conspired to make this movement of minimalism and tiny houses and sort of stripping your life down to its core and what it really means that is having this very interesting moment in mainstream culture right now. And it makes you think like, why now? Like what's going on? What led up to this moment where you're not the only person who's thinking about these things and then acting on them? There's all kinds of people doing it in very interesting and unique and creative ways. So, you know, what has contributed to that? And, you know, in your movie, you talk about the housing crisis and you talk about, you know, this, we've already talked about this sort of, you know, people who are pursuing the pursuing the american dream and finding you know finding that it's not leading to all these things

that we've been promised it would but what else do you think it is that is making this such a thing right now well i think it's an old idea that is a response to a new problem so so he throws writing about this like crazy right like he's trying to tell us back then. Yeah, and even 2,000 years before that, you go back to the Stoics. The Stoics, of course. Or any sort of major world religion. There are certain aspects of simple living or intentionality or whatever you want to call it. a lifestyle is is a reaction though to this post-industrial post-marketing post-tv age of of overindulgent consumption never before in world history has the everyday consumer using that word

deliberately here had the opportunity to be so overindulgent, and not even just the opportunity, but almost the expectation now. The average American sees 5,000 advertisements a day, so it's over a million a year. And when you're exposed to that repeatedly, I mean, none of us are immune to it even me the guy who is you know the minimalists i think we all get we we see this barrage of discrete bits of input and and realizing that we have to find mechanisms to be able to deal with that otherwise we're just constantly grasping. Yeah, I mean, I think that's very accurate.

And I think that as we've sort of exported our manufacturing to China and these products are coming back to us, they're like basically they're essentially free by comparison to what they would have cost when I was a kid, right? Like everything is so much more accessible than it once was. Sometimes they're less than free. It's like meaning... Well, I think, I mean, some things are subsidized.

So like you can buy things from Amazon where you're actually getting... This is way cheaper than it should be. Right. It's cheaper than Amazon pays for it in some cases because they're trying to acquire new long-term customers. And the average value per user is really what they're going after as opposed to losing a few dollars on this small ticket item here. Right. And as demand ramps up, it creates these incredible economies of scale with these big box stores and all of that, which leads to – I mean, it sounds weird and it's a little uncomfortable to call it a disease, but when you see that footage of people

going bananas on what's that Friday called? Black Friday. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like people getting in fights and clawing all over each other and trampling each other. Like people getting killed. I'm sorry. That is a disease. That is something seriously wrong with our priorities and how we're perceiving how we should live our lives. It's just absolutely crazy. Do you know Andrew Morgan? No. He made a movie called The True Cost.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen True Cost. Fast fashion. So I had Andrew on the podcast. We talked all about it. But he used some of that same Black Friday footage in his movie. You should check. Yeah, so you've seen it.

Yeah. It's a great movie. Yeah. So it's sort of, it's a, it's kind of, his movie is about an aspect of what your movie kind of addresses more globally. So when people think of minimalism, they think, oh, you're going to tell us how to clean out your closet. But it's really about, you know, these cultural misperceptions and these, these sort of bizarre

mandates about how we live our life like we have to be compulsively consuming at such a level and you know screw the consequences on the environment and my soul and everything else that comes with it yeah it's so insane yeah well i you're right the decluttering is that important first step. And I don't even like to use the word decluttering. I think the easiest way to organize your stuff is to just get rid of most of it. It doesn't mean throwing it out necessarily. It means finding a new home where someone else can actually get value from it. Just because I don't get value from something doesn't mean that someone else won't. But my mom's stuff was a really good example. Like letting go of much of that, if I'm honest

with myself, most of that was just going to sit there locked away in perpetuity and I wasn't going to get any real value from it, but someone else certainly could. So I donated a lot of it to her friends and local charities. And the few things I was able to sell, she had some nice antique furniture that she had had for years. And I took that money and gave it to the two charities that helped her through her chemo and radiation and trying to find a way to sort of pay it forward or pay it back. And when does that spill over into you thinking about your own life?

Shortly after that, less than a month later, my marriage ended. And you could argue that it had been ending for a while, right? And I forsook the people closest to me, and especially my wife. And because most of my time was spent with networking buddies and executives and acquaintances and customers and and again people who aren't necessarily bad but they didn't share my same values and even the ones who did they were getting most of my attention and so my closest primary relationships suffered and of course I always thought well they'll understand I'm off being successful and they love me and they care about me. And they did. But I wasn't showing that I cared about them.

I wasn't, you know, every relationship sort of has an us box. And I was taking much more than I was putting into that box. And I would have been able to put more had I reprioritized my relationships and my time. And so when my marriage ended, I just started looking around and saying, what has become my life's focus? And it really turned out that I was so focused on a so-called success and achievement. And I was especially focused on- And that meant what to you? Like if you had to define it at that time? Climbing the corporate ladder

and the accumulation of stuff, the trinkets of success, being able to show your trophy. It's weird. If you play in the NBA and you win a championship, you get the ring, but if I were to come across the ring, that doesn't make me the champion. It just means that I found someone's NBA ring.

And that's kind of a weird way. I was trying to show that I am a champion of really this thing that is nonsense anyway. But beneath that, that worthiness of love significance yeah I think significance plays a big part of it and I wanted to be significant

because because I didn't I certainly didn't feel significant growing up. Yeah, that's weird to even think about. But I, the weird thing is you can't measure significance in that way. There isn't a meter.

Like I'm going to get these, you know, I own two Lexuses. I'm not sure why i own two lexuses but i guess having two would make me more significant than having one but by that logic then you know of course you need a fleet of rolls royces then right and then you and it's never ending and it took your mom's passing and the dissolution of your marriage for you to be able to see how you were living more objectively and take action to redirect. Yeah. And really just uncovering what was important in my life. What are my values?

Because I wasn't focused on my health. I wasn't focused on my relationships. I certainly wasn't focused on this craft that I was passionate about. As I said earlier, I aspired to be a writer, but I didn't put in the time. It's one of those weird things where I guess we think that via osmosis, we're going to learn how to write. But you don't hear that about just about any other profession. There aren't aspiring carpenters, like people who want to be carpenters, they go to a trade school and they figure out how to do the thing and then do the thing and and so i didn't put enough time into

that i didn't feel like i was contributing to the world in a meaningful way i mean there's the part in the documentary where ryan talks about so ryan and i worked at the same corporation we kind of he like yeah like you kind of brought him on but below you right and you guys rose up together yeah i mean we we had known each other since we were 10 years old and um he he climbed the ranks with me and i hired i was a store manager and hired him on to be an employee and then as every time i got a promotion he he would get a promotion and he moved somewhere else in the company and basically we're climbing the the ladder together and it's telecom you're selling cell phones basically yeah i mean and internet and home phone service security system stuff like that but but yeah telecom and and he had a light bulb moment for him when he realized

like he he was encouraging his employees to sell cell phones to five-year-olds. And I said, what am I doing? Like, whoa, is this really what it's about? But it wasn't until you had already stepped out and kind of made some changes and rearranged your life in a certain way and he was able to see you as a different person, like you were like a happier person. Yeah.

And that created some curiosity in him, right? Like that didn't, maybe he was feeling that, but I'm not sure he would have done anything about it had you not gone first, right? And kind of led the way and said, here's what I'm doing. And this is what's making me happier. About a week after my marriage ended, which was about a month after my after my mother passed, I stumbled across this thing called minimalism, thanks to Twitter, and sort of fell down that... How did you stumble upon it? I mean, you must have been looking.

No, actually, I hadn't. I mean, someone had retweeted a video from Colin Wright, and his story was really sexy and interesting. He travels all over the world. Yeah, it's kind of a superhero story. It really is. And he's 30, I think he's 32 now, and he's written 35 books. Because every country he travels to, he tends to write something while he's there. And he's a very prolific writer.

And I admired his story but i didn't want to live his life i don't want to be a peripatetic writer and and but he said this thing called minimalism allowed him to pursue what he was passionate about and i'm like oh that's that now that's interesting i don't want to own 52 items that all fit in my backpack i like having a kitchen table i like having you know sofa whatever. There are certain things that add value to my life that aren't going to fit into the overhead bin on an airplane. And that's okay, because then I stumbled across Leo Babalta, who has six kids and is sort of the ultra-minimalist in his own respect

and brought his whole family on board. I know. He's just amazing. Isn't he? I started reading his stuff quite some time ago. I have a funny story. I've had emails with him i've never met him in person uh but when my when my first book came out i really wanted to send it to him just because i was such a fan of his writing right and you know he's a vegan and i know he was getting into running and i was like he you know he'd be interested in what i'm writing about like I just want to get this to him as a gift.

And we had a mutual friend. So I was like, because I didn't know Leo well enough, I couldn't contact him directly. Sure. Because he's living so minimally, he doesn't let any of that in. Yeah. Good for him. Yeah.

So I told my friend, I was like, just see if he'll, just can you get me his mailing address or whatever? He doesn't have to talk to me. He doesn't have to read it. I just want to send it to him and he would not do it he's like no because he won't accept anything any kind of physical you know material thing into his home i was like wow that is walking the talk way more than i even thought that he would i was like i respect that that's amazing yeah no i i really admire him and every time we've had the chance to to sit down and talk i mean he he's been the the

the probably the biggest inspiration in terms of minimalism for me because i saw now i didn't aspire to be like colin and i didn't aspire to like be like leo either who has six kids i didn't want six kids either. He's a minimalist with condoms even. Right. And we should say Leo's site is zenhabits. Zenhabits.net. Yeah.

And he does a great job with these little personal experiments in his life. And I admire that. But after digging into his life and seeing that, then I stumbled across Joshua Becker, who's in the film, and Courtney Carver, and Tammy Strobel, and all these different people. And what I realized is, oh, wow, there are a bunch of different recipes for minimalism. You don't have to live like Leo. You don't have to live like Colin. And you don't have to live like any of these other people. You can sort of just tweeze ingredients out and figure out what your recipe for minimalism is. And I mean, ultimately, it's about living a more intentional life, living a more meaningful life. And that starts with less stuff. But then, ultimately,

minimalism, I think, has to do with the benefits we experience once we're on the other side of the decluttering. And that's why I start with with that question how might your life be better with less because that helps you identify what what the benefits are as opposed to just like i'm gonna have a cleaner closet like that that's nice yeah it's it's less about how many pairs of shoes you have and more about how complex your life is, right? So I think technology is a big contributor to this movement when we're so distracted by messages being bombarded at us or by choice through our cell phones. I think you say in the movie,

there's a guy who says we look at our cell phones 150 times a day and Sam Harris talks about it as well. We're so easily distracted and allured by that little hit of dopamine that we can get by constantly refreshing all of these sites and this supercomputer that we have in our hands. And it leads to the inability to just be with ourselves, to carve out space, to invest in our imagination and remove all these decisions that ultimately make us busy, but aren't necessarily productive and less and less related to life satisfaction.

Have you had Cal Newport on your show? Do you know Cal? I know who he is. I just saw something about him recently. He wrote a book called Deep Work and the book before that was a book called So Good They Can't Ignore You.

He was just on James Altucher's podcast. I think I just got an email about it. I'm not that familiar with him. He's a great guy. He's 33. He's a tenured professor at Georgetown, a computer scientist, really smart guy. And he just did a TEDx talk, I think within the last week or so, that got published. It's just called Quit Social Media.

And he comes off at first as almost like this weird sort of a young curmudgeon in terms of like, almost like a Luddite. But he's not saying that the internet is bad or connectivity is bad, but he gives a really compelling case. Now, full disclosure, I'm on social media and I try to use it to add value, not just to my life, but to other people's lives. But it's like anything else, right? It can become problematic. And you're right, that dopamine rush. I mean, the founder of Instagram called it visual crack for a reason. And so we can certainly get addicted to it. And I find those tendencies in me, and I'm constantly questioning because I'm so far from perfect. I find that minimalism isn't about deprivation for me, but sometimes I need to temporarily deprive myself of something to see whether or not it truly adds value to my life.

That's how you get clarity. That's how you get clarity. You know, the interesting thing about what you and Ryan are doing and kind of this, you know, the way that you have formulated your messaging to the world is interesting and unique in the minimalist space because it's very accessible, right? And it's very relatable. Like you can get up in front of any kind of person and share your story and people can find themselves in it and they can find inspiration and tools to make changes in their own life as opposed to um you know someone like leo it's like that's like wow i don't know that i can like it's so extreme for most people that it it it prevents people from being able to really tap into it like and also do you know um what's her name b johnson no um uh what's her um blog called it's called uh no waste home no waste like you know so

she i've seen her give talks right and she's this beautiful woman she's got a family really nice they live in marin they have like kind of a cool little house, but they're very minimal. And it's all like, you know, you get so many shirts and even their kids, like it's very regimented, but her garbage for the entire year can fit into this Mason jar. And so she holds it up when she gives talks or whatever.

And that's like amazing and inspirational, but also like, I don't, you know, like, I don't know how, I don't know where to begin with that because it's so like, she's living her life so extreme, like it seems unattainable, creating their own shampoo and all this kind of stuff that most people aren't going

to do. But so it's not about living in a cave. It's like, how do you live in the world? You know, in a way that allows you to be connected to other people and share your message, but, way that allows you to be connected to other people and share your message but but shift your priorities in a way that's healthier yeah i think we all we we try to search for the binary answer you know because it it's easier i wish there was a a guide for here are the thousand things you should own as a minimalist and you'll be happy because that would be so much easier but but the truth is that if you it's like every blog here are the five things that you know whatever it's like yeah anyone does do any of those posts ever change anybody's life in any meaningful way yeah i i doubt it um and yeah i i struggle with the only time i've written any sort of list,

whether I guess they're called listicles or whatever, is when it's ironic, right? Just because, yeah, the list in and of itself is, it's kind of vapid. Reductionist, too. It is definitely reductionist. And for me, minimalism isn't about living an easy life uh it's certainly not like the the the perfect life either it's really about about living a a it's reducing the complexity and making it a simpler life but there's this idea that you're sacrificing, that on some level there's part of you that's being a martyr, right? And that's not the case.

Every aspect of your life, from what I can tell, has gotten better, and you're happier, and more functional, and more productive, and more imaginative, and more creative, and more grounded, and all of these things, more mindful, etc. The list goes on and on and on. creative and more grounded and all of these things, more mindful, et cetera. The list goes on and on and on. Um, and I think the best way maybe to describe it, and I'm interested in your thoughts on this is it's that feeling there's almost a dopamine or euphoric feeling that you get when you do like give away a bunch of your stuff, right? Like it feels so good to like get,

like clear that out. So why is that? Why is it that that makes you feel good? I think it's unsustainable though. I mean, you're right. There's a weight. But there's something to that that is worth paying attention to and unpacking a little bit, right?

I think it's when you're making a radical positive change in your life, you tend to experience the the requisite your positive feelings go along with that when you start you know changing your health and making radical changes in your diet or exercise or whatever you you feel these uh a certain kind of clarity to use the word that you used earlier and And I think that feeling isn't necessarily, maybe the positive side of it is definitely sustainable, but you don't, yes, you get the weight lifted off your shoulders right away,

but I don't think you experience the long-term happiness by just getting rid of the stuff. I think it's the ideal place to start, stuff. I think it's the ideal place to start, but realizing that it's just there to make way for what you're going to bring into your life. What are you going to replace the stuff with? yeah so i think of it that's exactly where i was going with my thoughts i was thinking nature abhors a vacuum and by removing all these things you're on some level creating a vacuum and what gets filled with that is the potential for freedom right and i think freedom is is the real gem that exists you know kind of embedded in this idea of living more minimally my the favorite thing i domain and control over your time for for me freedom and my favorite thing i've ever written is an essay called The Things We're Prepared to Walk Away From.

And in that, I talk about the willingness to walk away from anything. And at first, it sounds kind of cold and even counterintuitive. But I think real freedom is the ability and the willingness to let go or walk away. The movie Heat with Robert De Niro, do you remember that movie? Yeah, from the 90s. He plays the bad guy in the movie, Neil McCullough. And there's a scene in there, he says, never bring anything into your life that you're not willing to walk away from

in 30 seconds flat. And while I certainly don't aspire to be like a bank robber in an action thriller uh that line stuck with me and i think it's apropos for this minimalism thing because it's not about just letting go of the stuff it's also being willing to walk away from anything else that i bring into my life, including relationships. I think our willingness to walk away, even from a relationship, is the most sincere and best form of commitment to someone. Because yes, we can sign a marriage certificate that says, I'm married to you, and we're till death do us part kind of thing. But, but real commitment is being willing to show up every day and reassess this

and say, I'm still a hundred percent in this with you. And, and my partner, Becca and I, we're constantly assessing that and making sure that is this the best fit? And if not, how can we change that?

Because we want to be with each other how long have you guys been together uh about a year and a half yeah and and you make it work when you go away on these long tours and all that kind of stuff yeah and she she comes with me from time to time she has a three-year-old so i've become a parent by proxy in the last couple years which has added another layer of complexity and and and uh variety in in my life and responsibility and and gravity too i mean that's that's not a small thing no and it's in all honesty it's the most difficult thing i've had to deal with but i think it it makes in a weird way it makes minimalism even more important because before it was for me and and yes my personal freedom and

and regaining control of my time my finances my lifestyle whatever and but now it's it's not just about me right and so even that willingness to walk away means the time that i put in strengthens everything that i do whether it's the business that I run or our website or whatever else it may be. It makes me constantly go and ask, is this still the right path? And be much more deliberate with those sort of everyday decisions. You mentioned Heat, but isn't the most emblematic minimalist movie, maybe in a punk rock kind of way, Fight Club. Oh, absolutely. I mean, Fight Club's the ultimate minimalist movie, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that hits every button on what your documentary talks about. There's, on our website, I think I posted a whole list, like 25 or 30 different quotes from Fight Club. The title of the essay is, Tyler Durden is a minimalist. He's definitely, he's the king, he's the leading minimalist.

Right, right. But then again, of course, while Ryan and I may be somewhat slightly subversive, it's also not our intent to- Explode, like blow up everything around you. Yeah. That's why I say punk rock, because it's very anarchistic. It is. And it's weird, because we're not even out proselytizing. I don't want to convert anyone to minimalism necessarily. I mean, I don't think that's even possible. There's no document or baptism I can give you to be a minimalist. I wasn't a minimalist

until I said I was a minimalist, right? And really what we're doing is sharing a recipe. And with the documentary, it's sharing a bunch of different recipes in hopes that some people can find value in it. Most of the people who come to our events probably won't identify themselves as minimalists, but they identify themselves as being sympathetic to the idea of simplifying. And even people who get dragged to the events, they're like, my wife or husband or sister or brother, whomever, dragged me to this event, and now I finally get it. They were talking this minimalism stuff, and that's why we made the film,

is we wanted to make it more accessible. Because you hear that term minimalism, and when you look at extreme versions of minimalism, whether it's minimalist architecture or you see photos online of the 15 things someone owns, that's fine. If you want to do that, minimalism will certainly help you get down to the 15 items you want to own. That's great. But you can also realize that you could also have a house in the suburbs like Joshua Becker with his wife and two kids and live that kind of minimalist lifestyle. And it's just about being more intentional with the decisions you want to make to live the life that you want to lead. Yeah, it's almost like minimalism is almost the wrong word. It's really about living deliberately it's about it's about making

conscious choices uh you know informed by your values to you know live in a way that is going to maximize your your short experience here on earth in terms of satisfaction and service and all of these things and it's not going to be found at target or at best buy yeah right well and there's nothing wrong with the stuff right yeah it's your relationship to these things right i mean i think you say at the end of the movie you have that great quote uh uh love the people in your life not the things because it doesn't work out the other way or something like that yeah love people will use things because the opposite never works never works right and well you're right a second ago you said minimalism seems like the wrong word and i think it's exactly

the wrong word and exactly the right word for two separate reasons it's the right word because it piques people's interest they hear minimalism and at first it sounds subversive or extreme or radical or stark. But that opens the door. And then people realize it can be stark. Honestly, my house with me and Becca and Ella, a three-year-old, it's fairly stark personally. But you can have art all over your house. You can be really passionate about collecting angel statuettes and still be a minimalist because if those things add value to your life, that's great.

And being willing to acknowledge that, you can focus more time on it and deal with the thing that you're actually passionate about. The stuff isn't the problem. We are the problem. And the meaning that we give to those things, they don't actually have a meaning except for the meaning that we give to it. I know that sounds tautological in a way, but really that's it. The things don't mean anything unless we say they mean something.

it the things don't mean anything unless we say they mean something one of the beautiful things about you know what you and ryan have done is cultivate the community around these ideas right and and you know what started off i would imagine your first blog post i think you said like oh wow like 52 people read our blog this month and being like super stoked. Yeah. Like anybody read it. But now it's like you got like 5 million a month or something like that. Yeah, so you have to think about it this way, though. So I spent most of my 20s, the only people who read my stuff were people who told me no. It was potential agents or publishers or whomever.

I was writing these things. And so to have 52 people in one month read and at least ostensibly like the thing, not like in the Facebook sense of the word, but as an internal emotion. And then 52 turned into 500. And to me, that doesn't scale. It's not like when you get to 5 million people, you're like, now I feel 100,000 times better. 52 was like this pinnacle for me where I couldn't believe that people were actually reading my stuff and commenting. And then a few dozen people started following us on Twitter. And that was unbelievable because it wasn't about developing a following. It was I write for two reasons, to express myself and to communicate something.

And I was finally getting to do that. Without an audience, you can't communicate anything. It's the beautiful thing about the democratization of content creation and distribution that the internet has created, right? You don't need the approval of that gatekeeper. You don't need some editor in New York City to check a box and say, you're worthy of, you know, your ideas are valuable enough for me to vet them and put them out to the world. Yeah, the gatekeeper thing, there's a reason that that was important once upon a time, because there was a limited ability to publish a certain number of books, and that was it. But now, with the technological advances, we have the opportunity to sort of be our own gatekeeper.

The only person who needs to give you permission is you, in a way. And in a weird way, then you start getting the permission that you didn't even ask for no longer. We get so many offers for publishing deals and other stuff now where we're not even asking for that stuff because I finally decided to give myself permission instead of waiting for someone else to say yes. Right. You don't need that anymore. And I would imagine, you know, part of living minimally is

learning how to be very effective at saying no. And I would imagine now you're in a position where saying no is something you have to do a lot. I've gotten good at saying no, but it's because I know what I want to say yes to. And I think that's what's important. And if you're saying yes to something, it better serve the greater good. And that's how I tend to look at things. So with Ryan and me, we tend to focus on one project a year. So like getting the documentary out this year is the one project that we're focused on. And every year we'll focus on one main thing.

And then everything else that we do tends to serve that project in some way. And if it doesn't, then I have to be willing to say no, even if it's really cool or exciting or whatever. We had a guy who bought this like compound in south dakota who wanted us to create this whole minimalist compound and it was amazing this building was built with all these government funds from the uh stimulus package but the building just didn't work out for whatever reason this community center and And it was a middle of

nowhere, South Dakota. And he wanted us to create this because it had a hotel in it. I mean, it was this beautiful building and it was a great opportunity, but we had to say no to that. And dozens of other similar projects, which are really exciting, but it doesn't serve the greater good. And so you could have a watered down version of everything you're doing or you can have something that's meaningful that you really focus on right looking back it looks like all these pieces line up perfectly to create what you guys are doing now like you're like of course like this happened and that led to that and like it all makes absolutely perfect sense but you said early on you kind of slipped it in at the beginning of our conversation

that you didn't know you were going to be doing this. There was no plan. This organically evolved. And that's certainly been the defining kind of characteristic of how I've gotten to be sitting in front of you right now doing this. This was not like, oh, here's my five-year plan. I'm going to quit my job and then I'm going to do this and then this is going to happen. No, it was sort of doing what was right in front of me to do and learning how to...

Basically, everything that I'm doing, and I'm saying this because I want to hear your version of this, is a result of me further investing in myself and acquainting myself with myself and then trying to bring my actions in line with my values and trusting my intuition and having faith that that was going to lead me in a direction that would, you know, not just bear fruit, but really be the best path for me, right? And it seems to me that that's similar to how you've kind of birthed this thing that you're doing. I think the definition of success for me is exactly what you just said, aligning my short-term actions with my long-term values. I don't have any long-term goals, per se.

I also don't have a five-year plan from now. Right, like where do you see the minimalists in 2020? Yeah, no idea. from now on. Where do you see the minimalists in 2020? Yeah, no idea. I look slightly toward the horizon occasionally. The metaphor that really resonates with me is if you're driving a car, most of the time we... I know I did this for many decades, and I still do it too often, for sure. Most of us are just constantly looking in that rearview mirror, just staring at that rearview mirror and what has happened in the past, and then they're roasting over what happened in the rearview mirror.

Well, the truth is that if we continue to look at that rearview mirror, we're going to end up getting into a car accident. But the opposite is also true. If we're constantly looking off on the horizon, the 10-year plan, the 20-year plan, whatever, then we're also going to crash because we're not going to see what's going on right in front of us. And I strive to be looking at what's going on in front of me. And that means right now in the moment and then slightly ahead within the next year. And then, of course, occasionally glancing in the moment and then slightly ahead within the next year.

And then, of course, occasionally glancing in the rear view and occasionally looking off at the beautiful sunset or horizon or whatever. And anytime I find myself glancing too long, I try to correct that, right? Because if I don't, then I'm just living for the past or living for some hypothetical future. And really, I want my values to, I want my actions to reflect my values. And the more decluttered your life, the more minimal you're living, the more space you create to be present, right? I think so. And that allows you to be more able to make better decisions. Is that accurate? Is that fair to say? It is absolutely fair to say, because once you start being more intentional with the stuff, which in

our culture is the surface level, the physical things that are the things that we're constantly acquiring or wanting to acquire, desiring. And so once you start being intentional with those things, then you start being intentional with the smaller, more sort of esoteric decisions as well and making better decisions about the relationships you have or the food you consume or how you spend your time and your mobility. And just things that before seemed like sort of innocuous decisions, they become a lot more profound.

You realize that the way that you spend your days affects the moment that you're in, but also affects the rest of your life. And the opposite of intentional being compulsive or reactive, right? increasingly ever present technology that's in our lives right now, it's never been, uh, more difficult to be nonreactive. Like in other words, it's, it's more challenging to be deliberate and to be conscious because,

you know, we have that compulsion that we, you know, as human beings, you know, to constantly be refreshing our phones and be distracted. And, and,

and so I think it, it think it makes it even more difficult. Like you have to make almost a much larger commitment to that process than maybe you had to in 1970. Yeah, I think so. And I think that we'll always be distracted. We've just created better ways and more ways for us to distract ourselves, to pacify ourselves. And virtual reality isn't even quite here yet.

Wait till that happens. Right. This is the direction that we're heading in. Yeah, I mean, we're going to have virtual reality pornography on the horizon, and we're going to have to find a way to develop mechanisms to not stay locked in our houses and use our smartphone or whatever to order the food that gets delivered to us and just pacify ourselves all day. Because I think we all know that we don't find a lot of purpose in that. We find momentary blips of happiness, honestly. And that's why I said I don't think happiness is the point of all of this because it's empty.

They're empty calories. One of my favorite books is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. That's a tough one to get through. Talk about having to make a commitment. That is quite the book. It's easier the second time. I'm still working my way through the first, I'm like two-thirds of the way through it,

but I'm on like year two of trying to read it. Well, I read it first when I was 26 and didn't totally get it. Read it again when I was 26 and didn't totally get it. Read it again when I was 31. And yeah, it took me an entire year to get through it the first time. But it is, you know, it's quite the tome. But there is a metaphor in there about eating candy. And it really resonates with me.

If you have a piece of candy, it's not good for you obviously sugar is not good for you we all know this by now right it's also not going to kill you but if your entire diet consists primarily of candy you get sick really quick and i think that's where we're going with with a lot of the technology it's not that the technology is, just like the piece of candy isn't bad, but when we're constantly filling ourselves with these empty calories, there's no nourishment. And I think that metaphor is apropos for our lives. We need to be able to nourish ourselves with meaningful experiences. Otherwise, we're just eating the equivalent of candy. We've been sold this lie that happiness or satisfaction comes from security, comfort, leisure, and the accumulation of stuff.

And this equation is faulty, right? And the trick is trying to get people to understand that you can find greater satisfaction and these things that you seek, but it does require you to get out of your comfort zone and get uncomfortable. And that is so at odds with all the other messaging which is about let's be comfortable you deserve it you earned it right and it's the it's the actual getting uncomfortable that gives you that value and that that sense that thing that you're looking for that's missing in your life that hole in your soul in your spirit? I call it a discomfort zone. Whenever I find myself getting too comfortable with something,

I will intentionally make myself a little bit uncomfortable. Not suffering or in true pain, but putting myself in a place of discomfort because I know that's the place from which I grow the most. In 2014, Ryan and I went on a 100-city, eight-country tour, right? And we basically donated 10 months of our lives. And I say donated because all the events were free, and so you could show up and just come out. And that's part of the documentary, this kind of like road trip that you guys are on yes yeah which looks super fun it was super fun yeah but but i'll tell you there are three things i hate i hate travel public speaking

and crowds of people don't don't like you know but the minimalist isn't is supposed to be the guy who's going to visit every country right this travel and that is not me at all so so travel public speaking and and crowds of people. It's not that I truly hate them. I don't actually hate them. But all three of those things make me a bit uncomfortable. And so getting out there and doing that for 10 months, it was an incredible growth experience for me

because those things were not things that I gravitate toward inherently. Yeah, naturally. So, so I, it's much easier for me to be, to be locked in a room with a blank piece of paper by myself. It's great in the beginning where you show up at like South by Southwest, it's like no one comes to see,

you know, like, but then it builds. I mean, I don't want to, I'm not going to give it away. I try to get Matt to add crickets there, but he wouldn't do it.

No, that's a little cheesy. The point is well made. But you see this like, you know, this thing building as you guys go. And it's really cool to see how it unfolds. And like, look, if you want to create a movement, like you got to get out there and do that. You know, like you got to go and be with the people, man. And you met so many cool, interesting people that would show up like people that you wouldn't,

like you expect a bunch of bearded millennials to show up in Brooklyn, but like just average people who are looking for something a little bit more meaningful in their lives, who don't quite understand who you guys are or where you're coming from, but there's something about you

that they had to show up and hear what you had to say. I've been really surprised by who this message resonates with. So the tour before that, our first tour for our very first book, which is a book called Minimalism, Live a Meaningful Life, we went out and, I mean, a big crowd for us was having 12 people in New York City at the time. And in fact, we had one stop in Knoxville, Tennessee, where no one showed up. And right as we were leaving, right as we're leaving, like this couple came in and they're like, hey, you're the minimalists. And so we just sat, had an hour and a half conversation with two

people. But really, that was a learning tour for us. And we learned a whole lot about what resonated with people, what stories we would tell that resonate, and that actually led to Everything That Remains, our second book. Because I figured out all the things I thought were really profound, people were like, eh, whatever. And then other things that really resonated with people, like Ryan's packing party or discovering those boxes under my mother's bed. Those things really resonated with people in a way that I thought

those were just kind of throwaway stories for some reason. Yeah, but it's human. People have to be able to emotionally connect with what you're talking about, not just academically or intellectually understand the concepts, but they have to, like I said at the beginning, they have to see themselves in you. And I think that's what you guys do a great job with. I appreciate that.

And I think it bears bears it's worth noting that Beneath all of this like it at the very core is this unbelievable friendship? Yeah, like you get to do this cool thing with this guy You've not like fifth grade like when you guys become friends 25 years ago really quite, you know, that's quite something Yeah, and so and work Five years ago. And that's really quite, you know, that's quite something. Yeah, and we're almost exact opposites.

In fact, if you look at the Myers-Briggs, we are opposites in terms of personality. He is an extrovert. I'm an introvert. He's very in the moment. I'm very planning. Like, just we're exact opposites. But if you also look at our, if you compare our two personality types, we have a pedagogical relationship. We're both mentors and mentees toward each other. And that has made for a really great friendship. And being able to get out there and see different people who, Ryan's story will resonate more with

one person, mine will resonate more with someone else. It has been an opportunity to share these different perspectives because my recipe is different from his and also sort of attack the same message from two different sides. And we've had 13-year-olds bring their parents to events. We've had great-grandmothers. You saw one in the documentary very briefly. She was a 93-year-old great-grandmother in San Diego who brought four generations of daughters with her. And so you have these people where the same message is resonating with people from all over the spectrum. A CEO and a factory worker came to the same event in Atlanta and you realize, okay, like these people are asking the same question. They manifest differently, but ultimately we're all asking,

how do I live a more meaningful life with this life that I've been given? It's super cool, man. I'm sitting here as you're talking about that, and I'm thinking about what does minimalism mean to me, or what's beneath it that resonates with me? And I think one of the things that keeps coming up in my mind is this idea of attachment and non-attachment right it's it's not the things it's not the TV it's not the car it's your relationship to it and and beneath and and what is that relationship and that brings up you know attachment and non-attachment and in my own experience in my own kind of like evolution and trajectory I have learned that the more I can detach from certain things like my expectations for an outcome in a situation, my attachment, my detaching from the meaning of whatever that material possession is, detaching from how I think things should play out or how I think other people

should behave, the more I can change that to, you know, pull back from that, understand that I don't have control over these things to detach, is kind of almost a mental minimalism that I think is, you know, kind of seated just beneath the surface of cleaning out your closet. kind of seated just beneath the surface of cleaning out your closet. I love that word, although it's so weird that we use it as a pejorative. He's so detached. I want to say thank you. If someone were to say you're so detached, because what's the opposite of that?

Attached? You would never describe it as he's so attached. You're living through it like you're so invested in what somebody else is going to do or say or whatever, like that you have actually abdicated your life. You've given control over your well-being, your emotional state to some situation or person or event or object. Yeah. And that's disempowering.

It absolutely is. And I think once we realize that, once we realize that the stuff can augment our experience of life, and that's a very good thing. I'm not an ascetic. I don't want to go live in a cave somewhere. I want to own things that bring value to my life. They serve a purpose or they bring me joy.

And get rid of the excess that doesn't do that. Right. You're not wearing a hair shirt. You're actually super styled out. Actually, I'd like to find out where you get your clothes because they're pretty cool. So yeah, you're not, you're not living in a cave. You're like a dude in the world, you know? Yeah. Well, that's really the intention is I want to be able to live in the world and do a better job of that. Whereas before I was sort of living this box life where everything fit into a box. You know, even I was stuck in a box all day and quite literally being in an office somewhere and and everything about that life was going with the flow and the problem with that is eventually you end up at the rapids or the falls

and if you keep going with the flow and you don't realize that's where you're headed you're in for a world of hurt like i was yeah and you know And I had my version of that in my life. I had to suffer through some things that I don't wish upon anybody. But that was my, you know, my wife calls it your divine moment. Like that painful thing that happens that shakes you to your core and gets you to reevaluate your life. You had your divine moment. and gets you to reevaluate your life. You had your divine moment.

And she always says, like if someone's suffering or they're in pain, our natural inclination as a human being is to rush in and make it okay or solve it. And she's like, it's very wise. She's like, always be aware that, you know, this is their divine moment. Like don't necessarily intervene. Like, because this could be the thing

that's going to change who they are it could be the best thing that's ever happening to that ever happened to them right we don't know maybe not always but but there's something to that i think and and so i'm always thinking about not that you not necessarily how do you sidestep that but not every you don't have to suffer to change your life or make this different decision like it's just harder right like what would you know you you could have any day in your job you could have woken up and said you know what i'm gonna i'm not doing this anymore i'm gonna do this other thing without having to you know sort of suffer the loss of your mother and the divorce and all these other things it just doesn't usually happen that way yeah yeah i mean sometimes some of us need to be be shook yeah awake because you got

to wake up from it's like it was so severe in fight club that he actually developed another personality that had to shake spoiler alert for him yeah yeah exactly you know his personality split in half yes yeah well it's funny though because that's another reason that ryan's story resonates with with people is he didn't have that that divine moment other than he saw that i was happy and he sat me down one day it wasn't like there was one epiphany though right he just sat we went out to lunch one day and it was about eight months after i'd started simplifying so eight months after my marriage ended and i'd gotten rid of about 90 of my stuff but like and he had been over my house and stuff and he just looks tidy whatever like he just didn't he wasn't like i

never jumped up and said look at me i'm becoming a minimalist and you need to too because you've got a lot of stuff that never works no i mean he in and uh he sat me down he said why the hell are you so happy and that opened the door for me to start talking about what i had done and and him being the very type a the guy that he is he's like you spent eight months getting rid of stuff like i want to do that now like i i can just make this happen now see that's awesome like that's harder yeah it's easier to kind of make that choice when your back's against the wall and you've been stripped down and all this and suffered and all of that but just to wake up one day and go i like what that guy's doing i'm gonna do that too right i'm

gonna try it out simple but actually i think that's the much trickier thing to do and he did it in a way that he knew he could go back he did this thing called a packing party. And we did a whole TEDx talk about it. But basically, the short version is he boxed up all his stuff as if he were moving. And he spent the next three weeks unpacking only the items he needed. So that first night, his toothbrush and toothpaste and whatever. And clothes for work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He goes through the whole process, 21 days, unpacks the furniture he actually uses. I mean, he boxed up everything as if he were moving because he knew that the time you're

forced to deal with your stuff is when you're moving. You have to confront every object you own when you're moving. Well, he wasn't moving, and he had this 2,000-square-foot condo with two living rooms and three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and it was full of stuff but he didn't know what was adding value to his life anymore and so he did that experiment for three weeks unpacked only the items he needed and at the end of those three weeks we were we were in his second living room together he had all these boxes stacked halfway to his 12 foot ceiling ceiling. And he's like, Josh, I can't even remember what's in most of these boxes. Like, I know that one says bathroom or living room or

whatever, but I don't remember what the contents of the boxes are. And all these things that are supposed to make me happy. I worked so hard for these things to make me happy. They're not doing their job. And that was his light bulb moment for him because he knew that at the end of that experiment he could just unpack everything and sort of move back into his condo right being but having it in a box and not being able to see it really hammers home this point of like i've done that i've put stuff in storage and then you forget about it and you're like why did i even care? Like, you don't ever want to go back. Right. Right. Get it like you never go back and unpack it and put it back in your house.

Yeah. But I think behind that, too, is that is still easier than like letting go of the stuff is easier than letting go of the idea of who you are. And I think that's really what minimalism is. It's challenging you to reevaluate not just your relationship with material possessions, but that story you tell yourself about your identity and who it is that you are and what you do and what's meaningful to you. Quite often, though, I find that a lot of those things make up a large chunk of that identity, or at least so we think.

Because I remember when he was— So changing, getting rid of that stuff is the beginning process of getting you to change the other aspects of who you are. Yeah, yeah. When we were going through that packing party, he had a bunch of President's Club awards, the equivalent of trophies, basically, these really nice glass awards that you could hurt someone with they were so heavy and he was a really good at what he did and i

remember him like having a really hard time with getting rid of those because he's like well these aren't adding value to my life in any way like i don't even like the way they look i mean they're these true but I've displayed them because that's who I am, basically, and they are part of my identity. So I think letting go of some of those sort of trinkets that we tie success to. For me, it was books. I had 2,000 books. Now, I'm not telling anyone to get rid of their book collection, but for me, by the way, I had read some of those books, but you know how it goes. You go to the bookstore, I'll buy this one and this one and this one and this one.

And you aspire to read them. Now you probably get sent books all the time, right? Yeah, we get quite a few. And so I had this huge, beautiful bookshelf with 2,000 books on it. And I realized, oh, I never went to college, and I'm displaying these so everyone can see them, so I appear to be smart when friends or guests or whoever comes over. And they aren't really serving much of a purpose.

I'm not reading the vast majority of them. And in fact, by letting them go, maybe they could add value to someone else's life because they're not going to get read here. I've dealt with other people who, while we've been on the road, say, I can't get rid of my books. I just love the way they look and smell. I share them with my friends. We have great conversations with them. And I'm like, great, you should keep your books. Sounds like you get a lot of value from those books. And I wouldn't want you to deprive yourself of that. And I think the point is that those things for me were sort of trophies of,

of my identity. And, and there were a lot of things that were, were similar to that. Right. There's this beautiful idea, uh, in the movie that I think encapsulates, you know,

everything that you guys are and do. And it's a question. And the question is, what if everything you ever wanted isn't what you actually want right and i think that in a nutshell kind of says most of what you guys do is there any additional thoughts that you have on that yeah i think we we strive for a thing that we don't we don't ask ourselves why we're doing what we do. I know I certainly didn't.

I was following a template because I believed that success was always right around the bend. Happiness, achievement, whatever you want to call it, was always right around the bend. But of course, once I got there, I was already moving toward the next achievement marker or whatever. moving toward the next achievement marker or whatever. And by stepping back and asking why, why do I want this? What's the purpose behind this? That will help me in one of two ways. It'll help me realize maybe I don't actually want the thing that I want.

Or if I do want it and I'm able to formulate a good why, well, that gives me much more leverage to continue to pursue the thing instead of just blindly going down the path toward toward the thing so asking myself why has helped me has helped me figure out that that i can it gives me the the motivation or or the inspiration that i need to to continue to pursue the thing I want to pursue. That's beautiful, man. I think that's a great way to end it here. But I think the last thing I want to ask you before we completely wrap it up is, you know, somebody's listening to this and they're digging where you're coming from and are interested in perhaps, you know, maybe doing their own packing party or at least entertaining the thought of getting more minimal?

What are the suggestions that you make, you know, as initial first steps? Sure. Well, I think there are a bunch of things you can do. The packing party tends to be too extreme for most people. Although I can tell you, we've had dozens, if not hundreds of readers who have sent us pictures and they've done their own packing party. Also, a lot of people do like a one room packing party. So you're like, I've got that third bedroom, the guest bedroom that's become really a guest storage closet. You can start with that. The thing that I really recommend because it gives you the momentum you need is something called the 30 day minimalism game. And you can find it at theminimalists.com slash game but here's how it works real quick

basically you decide to let go of some stuff with a friend so over the course of a month you decide we're both going to let go together it's to inject some friendly competition into decluttering because i think decluttering is kind of inherently boring and so at the beginning of the month you each get rid of one item on day one. Day two, two items. Day three, three items. So it starts off really easy. You get that momentum you need. But by day 15, you're like, oh, 15 items today. Day 16, 16 items. Day 20, 20 items. Whoever goes the longest wins. If you both make it to the end of the month, you both won because you've both gotten rid of about 500 items. And I think it's a really good start but it's also a great way to help keep you accountable and make it a little

bit more enjoyable right make it fun and i like how it builds it starts off easy and it quickly starts to get tough yeah it it definitely it builds but but it also it gives you it gives you that the ability you need to start somewhere because most of us don't know where to start or how to start or it's overwhelming 300 000 items what am i going to do well we're going to start somewhere yeah and i think that's that's the important takeaway if nothing else cool man thanks so much for doing this yeah thanks for having me i really appreciate it yeah the the documentary is just i'll say it again it's just fantastic i absolutely loved it um and next week it's coming out on itunes and amazon september 30th it is and i just got to say thanks to to our director matt diavella is just a

genius how'd you find that guy we we did a book trailer for everything that remains we hired him for it and i was just really impressed by it. And so he agreed after much arm-twisting to go on the road with us for a large chunk of our tour and go out and interview people. And he had done a bunch of commercial work that was really beautiful, but he had never done a feature-length film. And he was really wanting to do something that was more meaningful. And this was just a good opportunity. It was great, man. Yeah. Very cool. Uh, so the best place for people to connect with you and your mission, the minimalist.com, uh, and the minimalist on Twitter and Instagram. Yeah. And Facebook and Facebook and you personally, what are your like social media? on twitter i'm at jfm on instagram i'm at joshua fields milburn and i think it's about jfm on twitter yeah that's some good real estate yeah it's also

appropriately minimal did you get that before you were a minimalist or did that come with being did was there was that a conscious choice yeah i just asked twitter for it and they said yes yeah someone was parked on it right on man and uh and after the launch of this documentary what's what's next for you guys i don't know yet 2017 we're still looking at the thing we're going to focus on i'm suspecting we we may get back to basics uh there's also some TV stuff we've been working on but I don't have a theme for 2017 yet so stay tuned right on man best of luck to you and shout out to Ryan next time

maybe I can sit down with both of you guys or maybe I'll have to go out to Montana and sit down with him oh that would be awesome love to have you anytime thanks brother peace alright we did it hope you guys enjoyed that i totally dug joshua super cool please make a point of checking out their new

documentary minimalism it is really great i thoroughly enjoyed it i got a ton out of it and i can't recommend it enough as always please refer to the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com for all kinds of links and resources about Joshua and Ryan and the books they write and the things they do. We put a lot of time into those show notes and it's really definitely well worth your time and attention. Thank you for sharing the show with your friends and on social media and your colleagues and spreading the word. I love you guys for that. Thank you for leaving a review on iTunes. Please take a moment and do that if you haven't already. And also click that subscribe button

if you haven't already on iTunes. Mad love, of course, to everybody who has made a practice of using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. And also to everybody who has contributed to the mission through Patreon. We love you and greatly appreciate that. You can find the Amazon banner ad

and the Patreon banner ad on any episode page on my website. Also, for those of you who are new, I thought I would mention that every week, every Thursday, I send out a free short email blast that has a few, maybe five or six tips, tools, resources, documentaries, books, articles, products, things I've enjoyed, things that have inspired me, I've found useful. I'm never going to spam you. It's totally free. It's up to you guys, but people that have been receiving it have been really enjoying it. I've been doing it about 13 weeks at this point.

And I don't share any of this information on my blog or anywhere else. So if you want in, just subscribe to that on my website. Plenty of places to enter your email address. Thank you, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production. Thank you, Sean Patterson for all the help on graphics. Chris Swan for production assistance and all his help compiling the show notes and finding the quotes from the episode. Thank you. And Theme music by Analema. Thanks for the love, you guys. I really appreciate it. Here is your final thought. Over the next week, I think it would be really cool.

I think it would be very productive to do a simple inventory of your possessions. I think that would be very informative in helping us get in touch with what we really use and need. What's just taking up space? What about that storage locker you haven't visited in five years? And what are the things you're holding on to that you've never used but you keep around anyway because one day you might want to use them? And whether you end up giving up some of this stuff or not, I think it's a worthy exercise in evaluating your relationship to your material possessions. And then when it's all said and done,

maybe you'll gather a few up, donate them to charity, and then you can observe how much better it's suddenly going to make you feel. See you guys soon. Peace. Plants. Thank you.