2026-02-05
Minimalism helps think long term
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- writing this because I saw some people criticise minimalist lifestyle on the internet for what I think are wrong reasons
I seem to lead a fairly minimalist life, atleast nowadays. I periodically and actively delete things in my life that don't serve my main 1-2 life goals, where these "things" in question include everything from people to logistics to digital life.
- People
- I seem to have high standards for a cofounder or donor or research collaborator or similar, and basically ignore most other people.
- I seem to have high standards for hiring anyone, and prefer to avoid hiring.
- Logistics
- I avoid most my own logistics. I don't cook my food or own a car. I don't manage a house or any office space. I definitely don't have immediate plans to purchase any property.
- If I was slightly richer I would probably hire a PA full-time to handle whatever logistics I do handle right now.
- Digital life
- I seem to increasingly avoid social media, with careful policies for the few social media I do handle. Same goes for using dev dependencies, or consumer apps, etc etc.
Should everyone do this?
- I don't want to claim minimalist life is a universal good everyone should follow. I am not even sure if I should follow it in future or not.
- I will say however, that I think this way of life helped me a fair bit. In particular, I think I spend a lot more time focussed on questions that seem important long-term - for instance I have spent many months trying to figure out how trust in relationships works, or how to make money to escape college placements, or how to become famous online - as opposed to questions about day-to-day matters like how to repair the tap or whatever.
- I have not run a counterfactual experiment, I don't know what an alternate Samuel with more distractions in life would do.
- It is important that I eventually solve these questions though. Endless rumination is only worth it if I actually succeed at the end. I have some actual success to show for, in life, but not a lot compared to where I wanna be.
- I am sympathetic to the idea that focussing on the present makes you happy, and doing any long-term planning whatsoever might make you less happy in the short-term. I don't think my practice necessarily makes me happy. I endorse minimalism while I answer a few questions that I consider important enough that I spend more time on them.
- In particular, I seem to have not accumulated a lot of hobbies, or a lot of friends I want to hang out with, via this lifestyle. (I have friends but the minimalism or lack, was probably not the primary reason we became friends.) I can imagine a future Samuel being less minimalist because they have, let's say, a specific hobby they wanna focus on full-time.
- I can also imagine a future Samuel being less minimalist because they are even more productivity-focussed than I am now. I don't try to work 80 hours a week because I know I can't consistently keep that up over the long term. If I could however consistently keep it up, and knew that purchasing some logistical help was the only thing stopping me, I would immediately do it.
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