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Again, that's longangle.com. Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited you're here today. For a while, I've been fascinated by minimalism and I knew I wanted to do an episode about it.

While I don't think I'm anywhere close to being a hoarder, I definitely struggle with getting rid of things that I might need or want to use one day. Well, a few weeks ago, I got connected with Joshua Becker and I knew that our conversation would make for a great episode.

For those of you who don't know him, he's the founder of Becoming Minimalist, a website that's helped inspired millions of visitors around the world. He's also the best-selling author of The More of Less, The Minimalist Home, and most recently, Things That Matter, Overcoming Distractions to Pursue a More Meaningful Life.

It just came out last week, and it's a fantastic read. In our conversation, we'll talk about what most people get wrong about minimalism, why owning less can bring more meaning to life, ways to get started without jumping straight into the deep end, and the big distractions outside of just stuff that get in the way of focusing on the things that matter in life.

So let's jump in. Joshua, thank you for being here. Well, thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure. So I'm going to jump right in. What do you think most people get wrong when they think about minimalism? Well, I've been writing about minimalism for 13 years or so, and I think when I first started, the misconceptions were this was going to be a barren, empty...

I think we kind of shaken that misconception quite a bit. The misconception that I fight against the most is that minimalism is about checking out of life. That minimalism is about quitting my job as soon as I possibly can, not contributing anything to the world, and just laying on a beach for the rest of my life.

In my mind, minimalism is about removing physical distractions, removing possessions so that I can live a bigger life that accomplishes more good for the world than if I was carrying around a bunch of stuff that I didn't need. Why is it so important, especially right now, for people to think this way?

Because never at any point in human history have human beings owned as much stuff as we do now. Things are cheaper than ever. Things are more accessible and more available. And with a click of a button, I can get things delivered to my home in an hour. The stats are pretty fascinating.

The average American home has tripled in size in the last 50 years and still 10% of Americans rent off-site storage. The LA Times one time printed that the average American home has 300,000 items inside of it, and I think the more you accumulate, then the more of a physical burden, the more of a mental burden, just the more time all of our things take from us.

I think it's probably more important than ever to be intentional about the things we're allowing into our homes and lives. I'm thinking as you say that, "Gosh, how many things are in my house?" I don't even know if I want to know the answer. But you write a lot about the how of decluttering and minimization.

But it seems like the why, the internal work you have to do is almost more or maybe as much as important. Is that true? Yeah. Certainly the how. Owning less is better than thinking about owning less. So it's one thing to be introduced to the idea, to be drawn to the idea of removing distractions.

It's something completely different to actually begin walking down that road. Whenever I help people go through this process, the first thing that I always have people do is sit down and answer this question, "I desire to own less so that I can blank." You fill in the blank however you want.

What is the goal? What is the purpose? For me, it was a Saturday morning, cleaning out my garage while I wish I was playing with my son. I could just see how all the things I owned were distracting me and taking me away from spending time with my family.

I literally just want to spend more time with my family. But other people, they want to own less so you can travel more or you can retire early or get out of debt or there's environmental reasons behind your pursuit. But nailing the why I think is pretty important because the goal of minimalism is never just to own the fewest amount of things as possible.

Minimalism is always just a means to an end of some sort. And so, knowing that, number one, I think provides the motivation and the momentum. For most people, decluttering their possessions is hard work, requires physical work and emotional work and mental work. So, I think having that goal, knowing why they want to do it is helpful.

When I wrote my first book, The More of Less, I learned a little bit about publishing pretty early on. We met in the Denver airport for lunch with some of the vice presidents and publishers and editors and they asked me the question, "What do you want to name the book?" And I said, "Well, I thought I'd name the book Becoming Minimalist".

And she said, "Well, you can't name the book Becoming Minimalist". And I said, "Oh, I can't?" And she said, "No, Becoming Minimalist is the process that gets you somewhere". Like what is the promise of minimalism? That's the title of your book, not the process, make it the promise. I like it.

The promise of The More of Less. The More of Less, Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own was the first book and that then became the title. That's the promise, right? I don't think anyone's desire in life is just to own as much stuff as they possibly can.

We certainly have bigger dreams for our lives than that. Of course. When it comes to the how, what are the hacks to actually do that? So, let's say I've decided, okay, now I don't want a lot of stuff. Do you have any advice to someone who's gone through the process to find their why?

Do they do it gradually or all at once? There are some people who can do it all in a weekend. I know a friend who, as soon as he heard about minimalism, rented a dumpster and was like done by the end of the day. But that's a pretty small percentage of people.

Although if you can pull it off and if that's your type of personality, then it's certainly better than taking six or nine months to declutter your home. But if you're married and you got two kids and you got 15 years of stuff in your home, then it probably takes a little more time and a little more effort.

The strategy that I use, the method that I have found to be the most helpful for the most number of people is to work through your home easiest to hardest, starting with the most lived in areas. So, some folks would say category by category, but I think room by room.

And don't fall into the trap of starting minimizing possessions by going to the hardest room that you'll ever have to complete. Because a lot of people hear about decluttering and they're like that's right, I got to go through my garage, I got to go through my attic or the basement.

And then you go spend an hour and a half in the basement and you don't see any progress at the end of the day and you feel frustrated, throw up your hands and give up, this is never going to work for me. But you could go spend 15 minutes in your car and totally change the inside of your car the very next time you get in it.

Or you could spend an hour and a half in your living room or your bedroom or your bathroom and you could notice a change by the end of the day. And that mental movement of seeing progress and seeing that you're making changes then motivates you to go tackle the next space and the next space and the next space.

So, easiest to hardest, most lived in areas first. And by that I mean, maybe the guest bedroom is the easiest thing for you to declutter in your home, but you're never in the guest bedroom, so you never see the progress, you never feel like you're making any changes. So, I would tell people to go start in their car, just take everything out of your car that you don't need.

The next time you get in your car, see how it makes you feel. I can guarantee you'll love it a lot more than having the empty water bottle rolling around in the back seat the whole time. I like that. I will take the car on as a project. There you go.

This weekend. I've heard you talk about the concept of staging your home for living. I heard you say the final moments of owning your home is when you finally try to make it look exactly right. And some of the principles of staging you've applied to staging your home for living.

Is that something you could talk about a little bit and walk people through that mindset change? Yeah. I've moved several times in my life and with each of the times, literally you're like doing all the things in your home that you wanted to do all along and your home is like the best place that you've ever had it since the day you moved in, the day you move out.

And so, trying to incorporate some of those thinkings of not always major renovations, but if you got a leaky sink, like you got to fix it at some point. So, why not just fix it now? So, you don't have a leaky sink because although the housing market is a little bit different these days, but typically you're going to have to fix the sink before you're going to move out anyway.

So, you might as well do it. The reason I have this phrasing and I like to talk about this is one of the things that almost every realtor will have you do before you go sell your house is take out a third or two thirds of the possessions in it.

Like literally tell you to go rent a storage unit and just get all this stuff out of the house so it feels more peaceful and it feels more calm and it feels more spacious for when someone is going through it. I think that we need to apply the same things to the way we live in our homes today.

I talk a lot about home in The Minimalist Home, that's the second book. Like what is the purpose of home anyway? I remember my editor asked me that while we were writing the book. He said "Joshua, what is the purpose of home?" and I thought that is a good question.

I don't think most of us ever sit down and really ask what is the goal of my home and just talking it through with them, there's the part of home should be a place where I feel accepted and loved, it should be like a respite from the crazy world out there, it should be a place that helps me find calm and peace rather than add stress to my life, but the goal of home isn't to stay there forever.

I don't want my home to be calm so that I can just stay in my home for the rest of my life. I want home to be a place where I can rest so that I can go live my best life out in the world, accomplishing the most good for the most number of people.

So, how do I create a space that accomplishes that both as a port for my ship but also a launch pad to go out into the world? And not just for me and my spouse, but my kids as well. Has any of the changes in the last few years from the pandemic and working from home changed any perspectives you had on your home and what you should do and how you should think about it now that lots of people ended up working from home and maybe some will forever?

My overriding thought of going into the pandemic back two years ago now was I'm glad I found minimalism 12 years ago. I'm glad that I had done the work of creating a home that was calm and peaceful, a home that I wanted to be in, a home that wasn't adding stress to my life.

Not to mention, I felt like I had saved a lot of money by pursuing minimalism and buying less stuff. I felt freer, I felt less tied down to the place that I was confined to be in and I think some people early on were like "boy, I bet you're regretting becoming a minimalist now that you're stuck inside your home" and I'm like "no, just the opposite".

Like I feel free, like I feel like we could get up and move if we needed to. I felt like I had saved up some money along the ways. It's not that my home is empty, there's still things to do in my home. I thought I brought a lot of intentionality into my life over the last 10 years about how I spent my time and certainly I think the pandemic upended a lot of that in a lot of ways and a lot of unhealthy habits that emerged, but I thought that I was in a much better place to handle those and overcome them once the world slowly opened back up again.

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You didn't buy stuff all the time and that this was easy? Or how was the transition for you at the kind of genesis of your approach to minimalism? It wasn't something that I started out doing. I'd been married 10 years. My son was five and my daughter was two at the time where I was introduced to minimalism.

Pretty typical, middle-class, suburban lifestyle. I always tell the story how we had gotten three pretty significant pay increases over those first 10 years of marriage and yet, for some reason, we're never able to get ahead financially. It always seemed like, well, now that I got that pay raise, I should be able to save everything new that was coming into my life, but it never worked out that way.

It seemed like the more money came in, the more money went out. And then it wasn't until - yeah, my son was five, my daughter was two and literally on a Saturday morning, we were living in Vermont at the time and just our typical spring cleaning, I went out to clean the garage and it ended up just taking hours of organizing stuff and getting rid of stuff and cleaning things out and my son was in the backyard asking me to come play and I kept pushing him off.

Just this constant "no, no, one more minute, I'm almost done, I'm almost done, we'll play. We'll play as soon as I'm done". And it was my neighbor who introduced me to minimalism as I think I was complaining a little bit about how much effort had gone into the garage.

She says "you know, that's why my daughter's a minimalist, she keeps telling me I don't need to own all this stuff". Looking at the pile of things in my driveway and there's my son swinging alone on the swing set in the backyard and suddenly realized all the things I owned weren't making me happy, which we would all say but even more, all those things were distracting me and taking me away from the thing that did bring me happiness and joy and meaning and life and so, that was it.

Was it difficult for me? No, it wasn't. I saw the bigger picture right away. I could see pretty clearly how owning less stuff would free me up to invest my life in things that actually matter. It took about six or nine months, so there was certainly effort that had to go into it and tough decisions that needed to be made but I certainly wasn't drug into the lifestyle kicking and screaming.

I was pretty excited about the opportunity right away. I imagine most people listening are thinking "I'm on board, I've already thought for the last 10 minutes about what my why is". But I feel like when the rubber hits the road and you're like "Okay, now I got to start getting rid of things", I can already run through my head the story I'd have for almost everything that I probably should get rid of and haven't.

And in my particular life, there's one thing that between my wife and I is like this. She's much more the "throw everything away" or "give it away" or "we don't need this". And I have maybe a common attitude of like "Well, one day, what if we want this thing?" And the one that comes to mind every time is someone gave us a raclette, just like a little grill on the top and it heats up cheese and you'd use it when you have your friends over for dinner.

And we have this thing and in 10 years, we've maybe used it once. And she would make the argument "If we don't use this more than that, it's got to go". And I'm like "Well, we have the room in the house and maybe one day we'll need it. I'm going to be really bummed when I say we should do this one time and we don't have it.

Then what do I do? Do I buy it? Like, I imagine I'm not the only person that has this challenge of like "I might want this thing one day, so I shouldn't get rid of it". Well, this specific one, heating up cheese, you are the first one ever, by the way.

I don't even know what this is. There's no other way to heat up cheese except for this one little tool. It's a device you would put on the table to eat with people and cook food together versus something you'd use in the pantry. But it could very easily be a fondue set.

So we could pretend it's a fondue set. Got it. This would be a classic example of "I'm in for owning less and my mind races to the hardest thing in my home that I would ever have to get rid of". And I don't want to shirk the responsibility of this question here, but honestly, what I would tell you, what I would tell anyone else is I would say "Don't start by getting rid of the hardest thing in your home that you would ever have to get rid of".

I just did an interview earlier with someone who had like a Pringles can that they got from their grandfather who taught them how to invest money and this was where he saved his money. I'm like "Well, you don't start by getting rid of the Pringles can, let's just find some things in your home that you know you don't need, you know you don't use, maybe you have duplicates of the item, maybe you have something else that could accomplish the exact same thing, maybe it's something that was from a different season of life that you no longer use anymore, like let's find easier wins, let's make quicker progress and then start noticing how owning less frees up your life for bigger and better things and just notice the change that's taking place in what happens when you walk in your home, how much less time you have to spend cleaning or organizing, how much money you're saving by not buying stuff that you don't need, how much more life is enjoyable when everything you own is your favorite of something rather than a closet full of clothes that you only wear 20% of them anyway.

Like start noticing some of those benefits and then when you get to the fondue set, you'll be in a better place and maybe you've decluttered a lot more and now having people over is something that's becoming more important to you and your home is cleaner and so, it's easier to do and you're like "No, showing hospitality and having people over is an important value to us and this fondue set allows us to do that" and so, you're going to keep it or maybe you're going to be like "You know what?

This is kind of stupid that I was holding on to this thing and now that I think about it, I do have a friend and I could borrow his if I desperately needed it at some point in the future". What you just said about borrowing something comes to mind with the most common objection I would think of going through my house.

There are a lot of things that I don't actually have an attachment to, but I think in the back of my mind "Well, one day what if I need this thing, a basketball. It's like I own a basketball. I don't play basketball a lot, but I know there's a park down the street with a basketball.

If I wanted to play basketball one day, I don't really want to go buy a basketball". So what about when it's not that it's an emotional attachment? It's not a hard thing to get rid of, but it's just something that you think "Well, one day I might need this and I don't want to buy it then, so I want to keep it".

One option you just gave which is maybe someone you know has one to borrow, is there anything else to help people get over that hurdle of "I might need this someday"? Yeah. I mean, there's just some math that we can do in our heads like "What are the probabilities of me needing a basketball?

How hard would it be to replace? How much really would it cost if I needed to replace it? What is my financial situation if that was required?" The question we typically ask ourselves is "Yeah, but what if I need it someday?" And I always think there's another side to that question.

And the other side of that question is "What if I hold on to everything for the rest of my life and never end up using it?" There's more than just a financial cost to the things that we buy and the things that we own. Like everything we own takes up physical space in our home and it takes up mental space in our mind.

Randy Alcorn says "Every increased possession adds increased anxiety onto our lives". Even if it's just like a little bit in the back of your head "Oh yeah, I've got that basketball, I gotta decide what I'm gonna do with it at some point". Once we start making these changes, maybe there's some kid down the street who could be using that basketball every single day if he just knew that there was one out there.

And so, there's a cost to holding on to things that we don't always consider. I'll share a story that goes in the positive for my clutter lifestyle which I wouldn't say I have necessarily, but we got rid of a lot of stuff when we moved and we moved into a house that had a lot of storage in the garage and we realized we maybe didn't need all of it.

And so, by getting rid of a lot of the storage in the garage, we thought "Wow, we actually have enough room here that we could put a spin bike in the garage and now we could exercise more". And so, for us, getting rid of some stuff enabled us to use the space differently.

In a weird way, it almost like gave us an extra room in our house. So, I'll just share that as something that for us worked to our advantage to getting rid of stuff. Do I have a ways to go? I'm sure. This is another struggle I come to. I know you have a perspective on this is "Gosh, I have this thing.

I could probably sell this thing on eBay and it's worth more than zero. So I should probably make sure that I sell it." But the overhead and actually selling something is really high and I don't want to go hire someone at a sell it again store because now they're gonna take 20% and I'm perfectly capable.

And so, 6 years later, I still have this iPhone that now is worth $50. It used to be worth a few hundred dollars and had I just either given it away or sold it at the time, it would have been a better outcome. But the overhead of dealing with it meant that it just piled up.

Yeah. What do you tell people who are trying to optimize "I have all this stuff, I'm down to get rid of it. I've gotten over it emotionally, but I want to sell it and that takes up so much overhead"? Yeah. Generosity brings benefits into our lives that money doesn't.

And if the question is "should I be donating all these things or should I be trying to sell everything?" My advice is unless you desperately need the money, just donate the stuff. Find a local charity that's supporting a problem that you want to solve in the world, if it's homelessness or refugee resettlement or battered women's clinic or foster children in the system, there's a benefit that comes to just donating some of that stuff.

If you're trying to declutter a lot of stuff, then selling everything just adds time and energy and stress to an already pretty difficult process. And we don't typically make nearly as much money as we think we're going to. There's a time and a space if you're getting rid of something really valuable or something really big and you don't have a truck to haul it away, but if you don't desperately need the money already, I think it's better just to donate.

I actually find that when you start donating things, it tends to almost prompt more and more minimizing of things as opposed to trying to sell it. So, like when we started, my son was five, my daughter was two, we were done having children, and we had a basement full of maternity clothes and like baby things and crib and a high chair, like stuff that my daughter had just outgrown.

And I remember we tried to sell it at a garage sale and like hardly any of it sold. And so, I called my neighbor who I knew worked at the Care Net Pregnancy Center in Burlington, Vermont, just down the road from us. I'm like "hey, we have all this baby stuff, I was just going to take it to Goodwill, but is this stuff that you could use?" And I remember like I'll never forget it, she's like "yeah, we can use that, that's exactly what we do.

Like we work with families in poverty, we work with single mothers and we give them maternity clothes, baby clothes, high chairs, cribs, bottles, blankets, like the whole deal". And I was like "man, I guess I never knew what you did or I never knew how much of a need there was in the community".

And we went into our basement and we found more boxes of stuff that we didn't need. And we're like "man, if there's someone in the community that can be using this stuff like right now, why in the world would we let it just collect dust in our basement?" So, I think generosity and donating can help us to get rid of even more and more.

If anyone listening has probably already heard me talk about the book Happy Money, which it now turns out I learned there are two. So, the one by Elizabeth Dunn, one of the five things that I guess science has shown that at least this is spending money on, but I think the principles apply is spending money on others and giving money away.

So, certainly the same principle I think would apply to things and... What are the other four? Because I always just list three things that science says we can spend our money on to make us happy. But do you remember? I shouldn't be putting you on the spot. So, there are ways that you can spend money.

So, one is making things a treat. So, if you buy a latte every day, maybe consider buying the latte once a month or buying it once a week to make it a surprise. One is pre-paying for things. It's kind of like pay now, consume later. If you're going on a vacation, see if you can call the hotel and pay for the entire stay in advance so that when you end your hotel stay, your final experience isn't looking at this bill that was a few thousand dollars.

I said invest in others. It's fun. I love being put on the spot. One is buying time. So, if there's a thing you don't love, if you hate cleaning your house, spend money. I imagine that's one that you've done. And then the last is probably one we've all heard, which is buying experiences.

All right. I have the bottom three. Whenever I talk about the three ways you can spend money that increase happiness, experiences over possessions, buying time and being generous with our money. But I have... Yeah, the other two. First two. Pay now, consume later and make it a treat. All right.

Let's talk about it. Those are a lot of the roadblocks. And I appreciate talking through them because I imagine a lot of people have come to this conclusion. The last one I want to ask about, which is interesting, because we're having another child in a few months. And we were thinking about a trade-off here, which is time is of the essence.

We just talked about spending money on time is a good use of money. One of the things that takes up a lot of time when you have a child, things get dirty all the time. Burp, claws, bibs. So we went through this conversation at lunch today. In advance of having this conversation, and we're like, "Gosh." Our instinct was let's overbuy the bibs so we can underspend time on laundry.

But you could make a case that we could buy three or four bibs and wash them. Or we could buy 20 and do laundry once a week. You just said you recommend spending money on things to buy time, but you also like owning fewer things. Does the temporal nature of something like a burp cloth that you might only need for a year have kind of a carve out in the need for owning fewer possessions?

Oh, that would be an interesting one. I don't know how you'll know until you're actually in it. What is enough? How much underwear should I own? How many pairs of shoes should I own? How many towels should I have in my home? How many square footage should I have in my home?

I get asked everything. And the answer is, you really just need to experiment in your home to find out what is going to work best for you. My hope with possessions or my goal with possessions is that my possessions are not a burden to me, whether in too few or in too many.

And most of us live with more possessions than we need. And so, it has become a burden to us and a distraction from things that matter. But there is the case that you could have too few of something and it also becomes burdensome. If I have to visit a laundromat and I got to go there every two days, then at that point, it's becoming more of a burden to have fewer burp claws or fewer clothes than it would be to have a week's worth that fit into one wash.

I suppose I could make the case that yeah, we're not going to use burp claws for that long and can donate burp claws probably, I suppose, if they're clean. So I don't know. I love the - what is the normal laundry routine in your family? How often do you do laundry?

Is it once a week? Then what's going up once you add a new human into the family, or at least there's going to be more of it. But what makes sense? What gets us through one cycle? I know there are a lot of trends in kind of minimalism and everything.

A lot of people in the past few years have talked about Marie Kondo, only keep things that spark joy. Are a lot of these different things? Do they work together? Are they different paths, different sex you have to pick one to follow? Can you mix and match? Do you have favorites?

Or do you think about all that's going on in the kind of broader space? I think we're all having a similar conversation, but getting there a different way. I tend to like the questions that I have people ask and the approach that I have people go. I tend to think, what is my purpose in life and do these possessions help me do that?

Or are they distracting me from it? I tend to think that's a better long-term question than does this item spark joy in the present moment or not? But that being said, I've said this before, I'm for anyone who can help people own less stuff and if does it spark joy is the question that allows me to start making progress in my home.

Marie is very much category by category as opposed to room by room and if that works for you, then I think go for it. I tend to think that the way I encourage people to do it tends to work a little bit better, but I think different people can do it in different ways.

I think generally, we're all talking about owning just the things you need to own to live your life the best way that you possibly can. Probably what that looks like in the end differs from person to person, but that's fine. We're all coming at it from different viewpoints and we're all different people trying to do it anyway.

Are there a few examples of the question you like to ask and particular items that you've talked to people about that might bring an example to light for people? The questions that I have people ask, number one, do I need it? Which is pretty common. Number two, why do I have it?

Number three, what would I use if I didn't have it? Tends to be very helpful. The overarching philosophy for me is, does this item help me fulfill my purpose? What are my greatest goals in life? Who do I want to be? What do I want to do? What are my values?

And then, what things do I need to own to help me accomplish those values and accomplish those goals and what are the things that are keeping me from it? I learned it really early on. There's a couple up in Portland named Logan and Tammy Strobel and they had moved out of their home into a tiny home and there were two of them and they just had two plates and they had two cups and two forks and like a hundred things between them.

Meanwhile, we were a family of four and we lived in the suburbs of Vermont. I was working at a church at the time and we loved having people over for dinner. I was doing weddings, we'd have future newlyweds over, not just to plan the wedding but to talk about marriage and how to make it successful and we would always have dinner.

And so, I remember looking at the plates and the cups and the forks and remembering Logan and Tammy just owned two, like well, we're a family of four, we need four. But also, having people over is pretty important to us and something that we want to do even more of not less of and so, it became well, let's keep eight plates and let's keep eight forks and let's keep eight coffee mugs.

We only need three or four sets of eight plates and eight coffee mugs but if this is something that we're going to do more of, then certainly we need to have the things in place to accomplish that more. Were there a few hard items where you kind of got on the fence about, "Gosh, this one I don't know" that maybe went the other way?

I learned a lot about clothes, like really changed the way I dress. I tend to wear the same thing every single day now, V-neck t-shirt and pants and I just - I never imagined going into this that I would wear the same thing every single day but now that I do, I love it and would never go back to having to decide every morning what to wear because it's just one less decision that I have to make.

I feel like I could do that and probably do. I think my wife would struggle with that a lot more. I learned it from Courtney Carver, she writes at bemorewithless.com and she lives in Salt Lake City and I learned that whole idea from her, so I hear a lot of, "Well, that's easy for you because you're a guy" and I always respond, "Yeah, but I learned it from a woman", so that's always my approach.

Certainly different personalities look at it different ways. So, I want to move on to your new book, Things That Matter and you wrote it to help people overcome distractions. How do you think all of the work you did in minimalism and all the learnings you had brought you to this moment?

- That's a super helpful question because minimizing possessions was what sparked this thinking of, "Hey, how did my home fill up with all these things? Like, why did I have boxes full of stuff that I didn't need? Why did I have minivan loads full of things that I could take to Goodwill or the pregnancy center?" I never set out to just spend my life buying a bunch of stuff that I didn't need.

So, how did this happen? It just struck me that I was just living a pretty unintentional life. I never would have said my goal was to own a whole bunch of stuff, but that's how I was living and that's what I was thinking about and that's what I was doing.

And so, I started owning less stuff and seeing how that freed me up to focus more on things that actually mattered. And it occurred to me that possessions, that physical things aren't the only distraction that can slowly creep into our lives and things that very subtly begin to shape the way we live or become the things that motivate us rather than longer lasting pursuits.

And so, the book lists out eight distractions that keep people from things that matter. And ultimately, I think that we get to the end of our lives and regret some of the decisions that we made. How do we overcome that regret? How do we get to the end of our lives feeling the most satisfied and the most fulfilled?

And I think we do that by identifying what is most important and then by daily removing any distractions that keep us from it. So, you highlight eight distractions. I would highly recommend anyone listening go and read to dig into those eight distractions. But could we kind of run through at a high level what they are so people can get a sense of ones that might resonate with them and kind of inspire them to want to go pick up the book and start with the chapter there?

Let me give you the eight distractions that I cover in the book. Each is a listing of the distraction and then how we begin to overcome them. Not that there's a three-step approach to overcoming all these things. These are lifelong pursuits in a lot of ways. But the distractions are fear, past mistakes, happiness, money, possessions, accolades, leisure and tech.

Those are the eight. Okay. Or trivial. I like to say trivial more than tech, but same thing. And is there one that's the most important one to think about or if you looked at them and said "God, I have a little bit of all of these I should tackle first as one to try to kind of overcome"?

I think that probably we all have each of these to some degree or another. I did a nationwide survey for the book and I would say the most heartbreaking response that we got back was 60% of people say that they are held back from the future they want because of past mistakes they've committed in their life and 56% of people say that they are held back from the future they want because of a past mistake committed against them.

It really shook me. I was pretty emotional when I saw that and that's just the people who would recognize it and articulate it, but that is a lot of potential that is being bottled up because of a mistake. 60% of us would say it out loud that "I can't live the future I want because of something that I did in the past" or "something that was done to me in the past".

That's always a big one that I think comes to mind. Money is a huge one. Over 80% of us think we'll be happier if we have more money and 77% of us say that our desire for money affects our decisions every single day and money has a role in our lives, but when the desire for money becomes the thing that dictates our decisions, this is when I think we get to the end and like "what did I waste my life for?

I spent my whole life always needing more and more money all the time when in reality, I had enough to live the life that I needed and could have been living instead". We talk a lot about money on the show, so I'd love to dig in a little bit there and say I imagine a lot of people resonate with that.

My wife and I have this conversation all the time. It's like "oh, you know, we got to get to this milestone or this milestone" and as we think about it, we reflect and say "well, maybe we don't". And it's easier to say "you know what, maybe money is not going to actually make us happier and maybe we don't need that milestone", but that doesn't always change how you feel in the moment of seeing something or wanting something or hearing your friends talk in a certain way.

So, how do you go to that next step of "I've acknowledged that maybe money isn't the end all most important thing to my happiness, but it still gives me angst or distracts me"? Ninety percent of Americans say that they have financial related stress. This was probably the stat that really sent me down this road when I read that.

Ninety percent of us have financial related stress and I'm like "we're the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, like why are ninety percent of us stressed about money? It's not because we don't have food, it's not because we don't have shelter, it's not because we don't have clothing".

Certainly some of us don't have those things, but not ninety percent of us. And so, I started wondering like "why is it that we're constantly stressed about money?" and I've just come to the conclusion that it's because we keep expecting money to provide something that it's never going to provide.

If we think more money is going to make us happy or that we're finally going to feel secure with how much money we have, and we get this picture in our head of how much we need, how much we think people who make that money are happy or feel secure, and then we get there and we don't feel secure and we don't feel happier, then the thinking never becomes "hey, maybe I'm just not going to find security and happiness in money".

Instead the thinking becomes "I just had the wrong number and actually I need this much money or I need to be making that much money and then I'll finally feel satisfied or secure or happy". Eighty-seven percent of millionaires say that they are not wealthy. And so, the reality is that we need to realize that we're not going to find those things in money.

Harvard did this just fascinating study, 100,000 people I think they did in this study and they were like trying to figure out finally does money bring happiness. There's all these debates of oh, $50,000 a year or $75,000 a year or money never really brings happiness. How do we solve this whole thing?

And they came to the conclusion after interviewing 100,000 people that the thing that trips us up is when money becomes the priority in our lives. Or more specifically, when we start sacrificing time for money or when we start sacrificing other things that are important to us for the sake of making more money, that this is when life satisfaction really begins to drop.

And so, coming to the conclusion that "hey, I have enough money coming in to support my needs or I don't have to spend my entire life constantly pursuing more and more and more, but I have enough to meet my needs and my life would be much better served investing my time into other things that actually matter".

I'm not sure if that answered your question, but I got to say a lot of things that I like to say. No, no, I think it's helpful and it sounds like it's really more a process of having a conversation whether it's with yourself, your partner, your family, but there's no magic bullet to stop wanting more money as much as there is a conversation you need to keep thinking about.

Yeah, although I could give you a bullet, give some money away. Give away $100, give away $50, give away $10, whatever it is. Give something away or give away a little bit more than you already do and do it every single week and find out if you still have food and you still have shelter and you still have clothing and you will and the greatest benefit of generosity I think to ourselves is that we realize that we already have enough.

Just give away five dollars a week and when you realize that you've given away five dollars a week every week for two months and you still have food and you still have shelter, then we realize "okay, not only do I have enough money coming in, but I have so much money that I can actually give some away to someone else who needs it" and I think this then begins to reframe not just how much money we need, but just the joy that comes from helping someone that's in need from finding a problem in the world that we want to solve and not just thinking about it but actually being a part of the solution even if it's just to a small degree.

I think this is how we begin to reshape this constant need for money all the time. Okay, Joshua just challenged us to all start giving some money away to help overcome the distraction of money and find the joy that comes from helping someone in need or from finding a problem we want to solve in the world and being a part of the solution.

That kind of a challenge is exactly why I'm so happy to be partnering with Daffy today. Daffy is an amazing company that Amy and I use for all our giving and they're on a mission to help people be more generous more often. They offer an account that makes it easy to put money aside for charity.

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Then whenever you're ready, you can give to any of more than 1.5 million charities, schools, and faith-based organizations in a matter of seconds. So head on over to allthehacks.com/daffy if you want to start giving today. And for a limited time, if you visit that link, you can get a free $25 to give to the charity of your choice.

Again, that's allthehacks.com/daffy. I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals. So please consider supporting those who support us.

You talked a lot in the book about being generous and how generosity helps and how acts of service help towards focusing on things that matter. Are there things other than giving that can kind of help focus less on yourself and more on others? Yeah, getting out and doing something, getting dirt under your fingernails, as what I say in the book.

Stop just reading about problems in the world and give something to it or get out and do something concerning it. But you can even take it beyond this. It's just a whole mindset, even going to work on any given day. Like what is my goal for the day ahead of me?

If my goal for the day ahead of me is I need to earn the raise or I need notice by the boss so that I can receive the praise or the accolades. If every day at work is all about what can I get out of this, that's a completely different way to approach work than hey, how can I just bring benefit to the people around me?

Like who can I help today, who could I serve today, who could I invest into today? Not because of something that I'm going to get out of it, but just because it makes the world a better place by giving or serving or helping. It's just a very different way to approach life.

I love it. So, I want to get to the last distraction you had, which was around technology or I think you said earlier, trivial things. Let's talk about that a little because I think technology and the internet and our phones have really become a distraction. I did a whole episode with Nir Eyal, who wrote this book about becoming indistractable.

So we don't necessarily need to go down the "How do you notice in the moment that you're about to use your phone?" and maybe not do that so you can spend time with your family. But how is technology preventing us from finding our purpose, from finding the things we care about or as you say, the things that matter?

I like to use the word "the trivial" because we're here today because of technology. Like the technology in and of itself isn't the distraction, I get to do what I do every single day because of technology. Am I using technology to create good into the world or am I just being used by technology for whatever the platform or app is trying to do?

I think that's what becomes the distraction. So I think it's important to remember that this distraction of the trivial isn't necessarily new. I can remember even reading from ancient Rome, the arguments of not going to the Colosseum because it was a waste of time from things that actually matter and things that are more important.

And I'm sure we had the same conversation when television started or radio or even books probably to some extent. Like there's always been that distraction of less important things, tyranny of the urgent I think as someone once called it. Our tech is certainly much more available than it was ever before and certainly around us all the time.

The way we think about technology and trying to recognize I can use this for good or I can be used by it to separate creation from consumption online and start to notice, am I using this to serve my purpose or am I being used by it? You do mention the concept of taking a digital detox.

If you feel technology is coming on strong, are there things people should think about when that's relevant or when it might make sense and what is it? I recommend it for everybody. I think everybody, certainly anyone who's around technology and feels like it's becoming a distraction in their life, to take some time away.

Take 30 days, take 29 days. For me, I've done 40 days different times or a couple weeks. Pretty much every year, I try to get away because it just helps us understand how much time we were wasting on some of that stuff and then when we return it back to our lives and re-engage it, we do it in a much more intentional way, like what did I really miss about being away from social media or what apps actually were helpful on my phone and which ones were just distractions.

I really think it's the way to reorient. It's certainly I think a pretty important first step for people. I'm all for take all the apps off your home screen or wrap a rubber band around your phone. Like I'm all in for different hacks and stuff but really the work that we need to do is reorient entirely.

The summer I think is the best time that you can do that, unless you live in Phoenix like I do everywhere else, it's pretty nice. Take a month and don't watch any television for a month, don't use your phone except for anything but phone and text and your email when you're at work and do it for a month.

See how it makes you feel and what you notice and what you missed and what was actually essential and what wasn't. Wow. For someone who kind of lives multiple jobs on the internet, it seems impossible but I sometimes commit to on the spot to things. I committed to a month of cold showers in an interview, I am not going to commit.

There you go, there you go. So one thing before we wrap, I try to ask everyone for wherever they are in the world or a city they know well to give everyone some recommendations, maybe for their summer travels if they end up in that place for where you think they should get a bite to eat or have dinner, meet a friend for a drink or a coffee and something they should do.

You can pick any city you want and I'd love to hear those three things. Sure, I forget the three things because the whole time I was thinking we probably shouldn't come to Phoenix in the summer but if you're in Phoenix, which you should totally come to but maybe just not in June, July or August.

There's a little Mexican place called Barrio Cafe and I would send people there. It's a great little Mexican place, probably going to be a long line to get a seat at the table but it's well worth it. Barrio Cafe, you got to go hiking when you're in Phoenix, hike up Camelback Mountain.

There's two routes up Camelback Mountain, there's a really strenuous one that literally has you climbing up boulders and then there's a much more peaceful one but that's the hike to do if you're going to be in Phoenix. That's great. I will put that on the list and before we wrap, we've talked about the book a few times, Things That Matter.

I definitely think people listening should check it out. Where can people stay on top of everything you're up to online and get in touch? Yes, Things That Matter, overcoming distraction to pursue a more meaningful life. You can find it everywhere. My home base is becomingminimalist.com. Anything and everything I do runs through there.

I should be on a speaking tour through what I'm calling the Midwest from Omaha and Chicago, Nashville, Louisville, Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, all the way over to Austin. So I'll be doing that this summer so people can come join me in July. Sounds great. Thank you so much for being here.

Wonderful. Thanks for having me. This has been great. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it. And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me, or just want to say hi, I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

That's it for this week. I'll see you next week.