Fossacesia, Italy by Drew Cole

We’ve all thought about it. Unplugging our computers. Throwing out the instruction manuals, stashed away trinkets, books you know you’ll never read. Have a giveaway fiesta, invite your friends, make your own liquor, and cheers the idea of materialistic freedom. Break off from oppressive capitalism and the temptation to update your iPhone every year. Yes, we’ve all thought about it, and some of us are starting to act it out. It’s called minimalism and it means stripping away the excess materials in our life in favor of the bare essentials. But if we strip down the stripping down and get to the heart of minimalist philosophy, we find that it offers more than just material discharge and lends a hand a to both personal and social progression.

It makes sense why this lifestyle of declutter came about in an age of noise. An age where Amazon, the reigning leader of capitalism, creates a streamlined method of purchase by inventing a button to re-up on household goods. An age where information leaks into our daily lives with such fervor that we can feel almost overwhelmed by the scope of it. An age when the grip of monetary efficiency strangleholds the layman on a daily basis. The rise of a minimalist lifestyle is not so surprising if seen as a cultural reactant to a society whirling with invention and progress at an unprecedented rate.

More and more Millennials are turning a blind eye to temptations of the consumer and adopting a lifestyle focused on limiting possessions to the minimum essentials in order to focus their mental energy on finding happiness.

And the spectrum of people joining this movement is dynamic. From Joshua Fields Millburn, a six figure director at a regional telecom corporation, to Courtney Carver, a forty year old mother in Utah, the movement is bringing in all sorts of perspective with different ways of throwing out the excess.

But their testimonials all share one thing in common, an increased appreciation for their experiences and a life lived deliberately.

Dropping luxurious salaries, building tiny houses with efficient storage, digital nomads who travel the world working from their computer, beds without frames, desks free of clutter, these are all things based on minimalistic principles of simplifying your life and the buzz brought about from acquiring unneeded items. The idea is simultaneously simple and grandiose. Save money using less space. Be more efficient with your stuff. Find what you value. Happiness will emerge through dedication.

As Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus put it on their blog “the minimalists”:

“Minimalism is a lifestyle that helps people question what things add value to their lives. By clearing the clutter from life’s path, we can all make room for the most important aspects of life: health, relationships, passion, growth, and contribution.”

It is not necessarily a movement that encourages uncomfortable living, but rather having a more direct relationship with your material possessions that allows a certain amount of honesty with the things you own and what you really need them for.

But as minimalists are apt to remind us, minimalism is not about throwing things away, but rather finding ways to make the most of the possessions we find truly necessary. Some will find value in a stuffed animal gifted to them as a youth and categorize that as a vital possession, others will not consider sentimental objects important, but appreciate a collection of books. Whatever your niche, minimalism is about defining what you value and ridding yourself of the things you only superficially care about. It is a way to reduce the distractions of the physical to allow yourself to focus on the metaphysical. To dabble in the realm of happiness, freedom and discovery.

Minimalism as a Social Reflection

It doesn’t look as though this movement gained ground randomly. We see minimalism reflected in the canon of technological invention. The iPhone appeared in 2007 and all of a sudden introduced a piece of technology that took a desk full of mechanics and stored it into the most universal (and arguably the most minimal) device the world had seen to that point. Apple’s constant innovation and commitment to simplifying user interface not only severely reduced the need for machina clutter, but promoted a lifestyle that probably could not gain ground without staying connected. Before the time of the Internet, the options seemed to be to either pursue a hermetical life or attend the church of stuff and stack your home full with enough items to stay culturally relevant.

As technology becomes smaller, it also becomes more efficient and more powerful. The possibility of working remotely armed only with a laptop is skyrocketing. You can make a decent living while keeping your world in a backpack. The doors to a minimalist lifestyle are unlocking at an unprecedented rate. Suddenly printers, mail, calendars, calculators, and much more are all disposable items. In theory, it sounds peaceful. To keep your possessions manageable and reduced. To break the consumer chain. To work toward pursuing mental freedom.

But when you dive into this world of minimalism, you find there is so much more to it than just a way to live. The aesthetic world of minimalism is rich in appeal with linear photographs, open room spaces, subtle color gradient paintings and advertisements reducing the amount of space they occupy. Even further, minimalism presents ways of being and interacting that allows us to relate to the world in a more honest and stripped down way. Because in the end, this process of decluttering is not simply an act of possession, but a mental and spiritual one that directs the mind toward finding the real goals in life.

Optimizing Communication

Considering minimalism as a way to maximize efficiency is not so mathematical as it sounds. It allows us to think of pursuing not just personal minimal lifestyles, but a minimal world that strips away all the noise of misinformation and unnecessary production and focuses on finding a balance between consumer and creator to speak honestly and openly about how the world should progress.

If we loosen up this definition and let it leak into daily interactions it can synchronize with the rise of progress and the efficiencies of technology. So how do we invite this into the workplace and make our relationships simpler and more refined? How do we streamline our interactions in our daily lives by achieving more with less?

We think it starts with communication. Communicating not just internally, but externally. Minimalism and honesty have a direct correlation. In material terms it’s about being honest with what you value and how that transcribes to your possessions. In our daily lives it’s about being honest with what you value and how that transcribes to the people you interact with and the work you do.

So maybe this idea of minimalism transcends a lifestyle and becomes a way of being. Consider the small talk at the water cooler, the time spent mindlessly browsing the Internet during your lunch break (or throughout the day, let’s be real), checking your phone constantly for new text messages. None of these things are bad. None of them are even necessarily hurting you as a person.

But then consider what you value.

If you value cheap laughs at a fat guy falling off the diving board, browse away. If the very moment your sweetheart texts you elicits a moment of euphoria, keep making sure that phone has service. But if you strip down the niceties and turn on the minimalistic bulb in your brain that tells you to dedicate yourself to learning a skill, have a meaningful conversation with your friends or take up meditation (the most minimalist practice of all) then perhaps it’s time to shift those gears and streamline the ways that you function. Perhaps it time to extend the idea of being a minimalist beyond the things that you own and into the fabric of your belief systems. Perhaps it’s time to be true to yourself.

The Next Steps

So how does embracing this ideology help us? If we quiet our brains and the distractions in our lives and start to cultivate simplicity, our human potential begins to expand.

We can be more observant. We can be more efficient in our decision making. We can shave our relationships down to the ones that we value and care for the most.

Life is about pathways and finding the right one to take. Minimalism offers a landscape to consider these pathways in a manner grounded in value.

We are lucky to have these opportunities. The Internet has opened a virtual channel of communication that looks boundless on the surface but also opens doors to honesty and fights manipulation if navigated properly.

Using this resource in a minimalist fashion, we start to streamline the people we talk with and the way we talk with them, thereby maximizing our own productivity and simultaneously leaving a trail of information for future people with similar interests to follow.

Let’s let the fuzz strip away and connect with people in a way we have not before. This is an unbiased, uncensored, unknown environment that we are all navigating together. Embrace the mantra of minimalism. The mantra of being as honest and efficient with our communication as possible. If we can do this collectively, we can harvest a society grounded in quality, not quantity.