Short spoken talk encouraging simplification of life by reducing material possessions and financial obligations to gain freedom, creativity, and time. Speaker recounts downsizing when moving to England (everything fit in two boxes) and contrasts invention from necessity with invention from freedom; he introduces an upcoming '208080 principle' to be discussed later about extracting value with less effort.
Chapters
This week I'm going to talk about ways that you can work a heck of a lot less and have a much better life. And on Wednesday, I'm going to talk about a principle that I call the 208080 principle. It's a way for extracting the greatest amount of value out of what you're doing with the least amount of effort, thus freeing you up to do other things. Now, if you're going to use this general mindset of freeing yourself up, well, it's not just about making more money, but it's also about freeing yourself up from the current burdens that you may have in terms of lifestyle and some of the decisions you've made. Back in 1999, I was living in New Jersey. I had a three bedroom house. It was a gorgeous place. I had furniture, I had lots of great things. And then I moved to England. And when I moved to England, I ended up moving into a one bedroom apartment, fully furnished. And because I was moving across the sea, I didn't want to bring a lot of things with me. So I really got rid of everything. Everything that I owned fit into literally two boxes. My clothes, my belongings, anything that I needed. Now, of course, living in a furnished apartment was great because I didn't have to worry about furniture and dishes and things of that nature. But I owned almost nothing. And I discovered back then that there is this freedom, this liberation that comes from not having a lot of things, from being able to actually live the simplest life possible. There's less clutter around you, therefore there's less things to worry about. And because you're spending less money, you don't have to worry about making as much money. It gives you freedom. Now we hear this expression that necessity is the mother of invention. The reality, though, is that when you work out of necessity, your inventions are limited. When you come from a place of freedom where you're able to start living the life as you want to live, true creativity gets tapped into. So instead of accumulating, what you need to do is start appreciating. What you want to do is simplify your life. You want to be able to actually look at how you spend your money, look at your house, look at your car, and really ask yourself what would be the benefit of getting rid of them or downsizing to the point where you have less clutter, less financial obligations, and what you get out of that is more freedom. And if you do this, it actually will then free you up to make completely different decisions with your life, how you choose to live your life. How you choose to work. And I know for myself, having done this, it is a liberating experience. By getting rid of things, you actually add to the positivity of your life, to the energy you're able to create. Because you're not innovating and creating from a place of need, desperation or survival, but rather you're innovating from a perspective of freedom and pull and creativity and passion. So the first step of this is to really just take a hard look at your life and where you're spending your money, what you have, and really ask yourself, what do I really, truly need? Once you do this, you can move on to the next step, which we'll talk about on Wednesday, which is a process and philosopher philosophy for being able to not just free up your belongings, but free up your time. And when you free up your lifestyle and everything around you and you free up your time, then you have this incredible freedom to truly create some extraordinary things. So until Wednesday, I hope you're taking a look at your life, appreciating your life, rather than focusing on accumulating new things. And I will talk to you all very soon.
