7 Ways Minimalism Makes Life Less Chaotic

I think more than saving money and clearing up your schedule, at its core the point of minimalism should be ultimately to feel better and live a less chaotic life. I recently made some very small changes that I'm still a little surprised how much better I feel after doing them. So in this video, I'm just going to share 7 of the minimalist changes that have made I made my life feel overall less chaotic. But first, if you're new to my channel, thank you for stopping by. Here we talk about minimalism, frugal living, tech, and things of that nature. So if that sounds good to you, and you end up liking the video, be sure to like and please force the subscribe button to listen to British rap. Let's get started. The first thing is to cut down on choices. I really want to emphasize this point because cutting down on choices is actually what inspired this entire video. Being able to communicate and play games with my friends was so important to me that I made the exception to not be so minimal with gaming, so I owned a PS5. However, a couple of us have recently sold ours, including me, and I have to say, after only now owning one console, and not having to choose between multiple and not feeling guilty about not playing one as much as the other, is very nice. I think this philosophy can be applied to many possessions that we own. I can't really explain how it made my life feel less chaotic, but it's probably the fact that I now have one less thing fighting for my attention. Or possibly that I now rarely ever have the paradox of choice, which argues that an overwhelming abundance of choice causes things like decision paralysis rather than liberation. I recommend identifying the things you own that may be redundant and seeing if you can eliminate or at the very least reduce the amount of choices you have to make daily. Stop multitasking entertainment. For me, this was the best way to go about being more intentional about the things I consume for entertainment. Instead of automatically reaching for my phone whenever I sit down, I'll take a second to actually decide what I want to do. If I put on a video or a show, I'm trying my best to fully buy into it. Same thing with a game or any form of unwinding I'm trying to enjoy during my downtime. Because scrolling while sort of watching something in the background, and just doing multiple things at once that are supposed to be relaxing on their own, would make that relaxing time not so relaxing. When it comes to minimalism, I always talk about how I stop multitasking things on my to-do list, or pretty much any task in general. And this point proves to me that almost everything is done and enjoyed better when it's focused on by itself. There's something especially nice about sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading something or playing a game without YouTube or even music in the background. It feels like I'm getting more out of the simple experience. The next thing is allowing yourself to be chaotic sometimes. This is one of those practical, less philosophical things that has helped me so much more than than I ever thought it could. Whenever I'm going through something bad or serious or stressful, or even if I'm just really sick, I allow myself and my areas to be a disorganized mess, essentially. It's like a subtle grieving period or something, but whenever that rough patch is over and I come out of it, resetting my areas and belongings and returning my items to their permanent homes gives me some sort of mental cue that I've moved on from that. What helps is knowing that I can sort of bounce back. Because everything already has a home, cleaning up doesn't require me to completely reorganize my life. I can just put things back where they belong, and suddenly that sense of chaos starts to disappear. Just like working too much, I can feel a sense of burnout if I'm just overly obsessed with fighting against a crazy day or week. And sometimes just being a bit more stoic about it can make the chaos feel less chaotic. Stop searching for the next potential purchase. This is something I would find myself in the loop of doing whenever I was bored with something I may have just gotten. I don't know why this is, maybe I was just always searching for that rush of brief excitement when I would click buy, but I knew deep down whatever I was obtaining was just going to be added to my physical baggage. Even just telling myself that I wouldn't shop anymore and catching myself doing research on something I knew I didn't really need was enough to make me completely stop. And it resulted in this chaotic cycle of research buy declutter finally ending. Consider decluttering more aggressively than you think. This can be a bit of a slippery slope, but for me, it's paid off more than I've actually had regrets doing it, if that makes sense. And I say it could be a slippery slope because I know that when I personally have had a lot of momentum decluttering, in those moments I would sometimes debate with myself decluttering things I normally never would. Just an example, my desk you see here that I've had for years and is all my videos might not be here much longer. These days I'm really just not sitting here too much and I prefer editing somewhere where I can be more comfortable and I'm sitting at a desk all day at work and I don't want to do it when I'm home as well. And when I'm gaming I prefer being on the couch also. So I'm possibly giving it to a relative or selling it to someone who can actually make good use out of it and appreciate it. This wooden stand here which is the only piece of furniture I've ever had sentimental value with Well, I've been testing just using this out as a desk and, quite frankly, I love it. There's no fuss, it's simple, and I won't need to keep a monitor here. Will I lose some of the aesthetic b-roll shots of my desk? Sure, but I'll try my best to get aesthetic b-roll elsewhere. So testing this over the past couple of weeks has me wondering how much I can and might feel better after a declutter that's more aggressive than usual. I definitely just recommend doing a little bit more of a test trial like I plan on doing here with my desk before actually getting rid of something. The next thing is understand the bell curve. And if you're unfamiliar, this meme I'm about to show explains it much better than I can. But basically what this means is sometimes the simpler the thing is that you start with usually ends up being the thing you end up coming back to. And my favorite example of this is with Apple Notes. Just like the meme suggests, I started using Apple Notes at the very beginning of my organization and minimalism journey. And when I wanted to dive deeper into the realm of productivity, I would try much more sophisticated systems and apps represented by the middle part of the bell curve. But then I would eventually just come back to Apple Notes because it was simple and it did everything I needed without the extra fluff. I eventually realized that the bell curve applied to so many things in my life in regards to minimalism, and my life always felt the most chaotic when I was at that middle part. I started as a minimalist who only owned a few t-shirts of a few different random colors, in the middle I got obsessed with finding all gray perfect t-shirts, and then eventually just went back to a few colored random t-shirts, realizing I'm back where I started and it was the answer all along. I think at the very least understanding how things can come full circle is very important in the context of making life feel less chaotic because for me it ended these unnecessary deep dives into optimizing things that were already simple and working in the first place. And finally, truly accept that less is usually enough. To end this on a bit of a philosophical note, I wanted to say that in most cases, we are probably living with much more than we actually need. One of the biggest changes minimalism made in my life was helping me realize that I didn't need to maximize or optimize everything. My wardrobe doesn't need to cover every single possible situation and my tech doesn't need to be the newest or best. The most content I ever felt in my life was when I accepted that everything I had already helps me function day to day and be happy doing so. Speaking for myself, I know I always felt like I needed more when I just had the least going on in my life. Like not having some sort of creative outlet or project to focus on. Or even just something to completely engage in. So maybe in the end, the real luxury isn't finally having everything you want, it's reaching a point where you no longer need everything you want. These were just a few things that I put into practice about minimalism that, overall, helped my life feel a little less chaotic, and I hope a few of these can help you out the same way they've helped me. Anyways, as always, I appreciate the time you spent here and I appreciate you watching. If you did like this video and you like this type of content, be sure to like and consider subscribing to my channel, and I'll see you next time.