In my last post, I talked about what it means to be part of the digital generation.

When I was growing up, I never had much technology, until at least my late teen years. I did all of the ‘childhood things’ – played outside, went to the park, learned to ride a bike. My toy box contained things like dolls, cards, marbles and lego bricks.

My little brother, over a decade younger than me, is growing up with handheld consoles, computer games and internet TV.

the digital revolution

In my opinion, one of the most exciting times to live is on the edge of a revolution – whether it be religious, scientific or any new and radical way of living or thinking. Right now, we’re on the border of the digital generation. I grew up without knowing the what the word ‘gadget’ even meant, and yet today I’m blogging on my laptop connected wirelessly anywhere I go, with my iPhone in my pocket and my Kindle in my bag.

We are the transitioning generation. We are the ones that are on the border, the frontier.

We lived behind the border, and now we’re living after it. We have a bit of both worlds – when I was little, I handwrote my journals, now I type them into the cloud. When I was a teen, I used to listen to CD’s on a stereo player, now I stream music wherever I go. When I was younger, I read paper novels, now I read digital ones.

My little brother never knew the days when handheld consoles only had two colors, or when cell phones were bigger than his head. And I’ll soon forget about those days too.

the minimalist revolution

Now, again, I’ve realized we are in the midst of another revolution – the one of minimalism. Our parents worked long hard hours at the office to get the nice houses we grew up in, or to fund those piano lessons or those expensive clothes we thought we needed to be popular when we were teenagers.

And now, things are changing with us. As much as we are grateful for everything our parents have given us, we realize that that’s exactly all that they have been doing – giving. My parents gave me so so much that I wonder, when did they have time for their own lives?

We are the generation that is changing. We’re not becoming selfish or self-centered, we just don’t want to see the good things that were done for us go to waste in creating another ‘just-ordinary’ life. I honestly don’t want to see my parents set up such a great life for me, so that I could get a good education and so on just for me to become another working zombie.

We’re taking life by the horns and living a life worth living. We’re taking it upon ourselves to help others, not waiting for somebody else to do it.

And soon there will be the next generation. Just like what happened with technology, perhaps in a few decades they won’t know any different. They won’t know that there were so many people that slaved away at jobs they hated, put ‘work’ before others, or that people gave up on their dreams so easily.

The internet and everything it can do seemed impossible just two decades ago. Let’s see what ‘impossible’ things minimalism can bring to the world two decades from now.

Minimalism is building momentum. This isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning.

In the last couple of posts, I’ve mentioned a few times that I will be going abroad this September. I’ve been keeping it pretty quiet so far, but now I feel I am ready to finally reveal where I will be going, and what I will be doing.

Firstly, I get a lot of people asking me what I study. I’ve been reluctant to reveal this previously because I wanted Minimal Student to apply to everyone studying anything. I feel that I’ve accomplished this by not focussing on a particular subject, and by giving tips, tricks and hacks that anyone can incorporate into their lives as they wish.

But many of you have been so supportive of me that I no longer feel I have to hold back. So here it is, drumroll please…

what I study

I am currently studying Japanese and Management at the University of Leeds, UK.

The reason why I talk about happiness so much is probably because of my awesome degree. It gets me up in the morning to go to uni and I love every minute of it. I love learning the language, reaching new levels and finding out new things about myself, my own language and my country that I’ve previously taken for granted. I love being able to communicate with people from the other side of the world. I love sharing ideas, opinions and cultural views on universal subjects. And most of all, I love the challenge of taking on a completely foreign language and building it up completely from scratch.

Thus far, I’ve been holding back this piece of me because I know that not everybody would share a love for Japan as I do. I think it’s an absolutely fascinating country, and many things from Japan has manifested itself onto this blog, such as Zen Buddhism and what makes an  ideal minimalist diet.

year abroad

On September 6th 2010 I will be flying from London Heathrow to Kansai International Airport (with a stop in Rome).

I will spend the year studying at Konan University in Kobe, Japan.

“What I propose is a spiritual revolution”
~ Dalai Lama

As political freedom spreads to more people and technology integrates into our lives, one would think that man’s quest for happiness is more obtainable than ever. And yet, there is still so much suffering in the world. There is still discrimination, war and violence. People are still hungry or ill when it can be prevented. Even those that seem like they have everything have their own stresses and worries.

Contrary to popular belief, money isn’t the answer to everything. We can try hard to fix the economy, invent new stuff to make our lives easier, even make environmental or political advances, these aren’t bad, but they’re not enough. What the world needs is a spiritual revolution.

By ‘spiritual’ I don’t mean in a religious way, rather that change needs to come to the hearts of people. We can try to fix external factors as much we like, but unless real positive change is made on an individual level, things will be different, but they won’t be better.

People need to want suffering to end. And they can start by trying to not create it for others. Even just doing a few little things can make a big difference.

Similarly, you can talk all day about how great minimalism is but without changing how you fundamentally think you’ll still be unhappy. Switching from consumerism to minimalism isn’t just a superficial act where you just get rid of stuff. It’s more than that. You have to be willing to change some of the most fundamental things you’ve been taught and really believe that the changes you have made were for the better.

Everybody has the power to change the world, even if for now it’s just their own.

Happy New Year everyone, may 2012 bring you the happiness and joy you deserve.

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Live simply so others may simply live
~ HH Dalai Lama

Six billion people live on this planet. Each and every one is worth just as much as the next. But many of them have to struggle to obtain basic human needs such as water whilst others are wasting it washing their cars.

According to the BBC:

The world distribution of wealth and income is highly unequal. The richest 10% of households in the world have as much yearly income as the bottom 90%.

Wealth – total assets rather than yearly income – is even more unequal. The rich are concentrated in the US, Europe and Japan, with the richest 1% alone owning 40% of the world’s wealth.

Individually, we may not be able to do much about this problem on a global scale, but we can do the best we can to be content with what we have, so that we may give some to others that may not be as lucky as we are.

We don’t even have to physically give. If we live a little more simply and just stop consuming as much, perhaps we can stop taking from the poor and giving it to the rich. Perhaps we can stop cutting down trees in undeveloped countries to make cheap furniture and paper we’ll end up throwing away anyway. Perhaps if we didn’t desire so many cheap electronics every Christmas, we’ll reduce the amount of stuff we end up dumping into Asia.

Perhaps if we lived with a little less, others can live a little more.

simple act

Grab a bag and fill it with things you don’t need: clothes, shoes, books, toys and anything else that’s gathering dust. Give it away to a charity that will sell it to make money for a poor country or better yet, will take your stuff and send there for real people just like you and me to get some real use out of it.

Simple Philosophies is a series of short posts about small things we can do to live a happier life. Please let me know what you think in the comments!

Two shoe makers go to a remote village.

One of them immediately gives up and goes home, declaring, “It’s hopeless! Nobody here wears shoes.”

The other, smiling, declares “What a glorious business opportunity! Nobody here wears shoes”.

Opportunity is something that you discover, not something that you wait for

Whether it’s new business idea, a new career direction, a new journey, or a new friend or lover, however you define it, the opportunities in life are endless. They surround you like air.

You don’t have to have an expensive education, or special training to see them. You don’t even have to go looking for them.

You just have to keep your eyes and mind open.

Right now, there are countless problems that needs to be solved, people who need help, places to go, people to meet, and so many things to learn and discover about the world.

Most people trundle through life, blindly, on auto-pilot. Like the first shoe maker, they may see a glass, but they can’t help but think it’s half empty.

It’s not complicated. If you’re waiting for a new opportunity to come to you, you should know, it’s already there.

Can you see it?

This is the final part of a five part series on Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life.

Read Part I – Finiteness, Part II – Protecting time and living in the present, Part III – Desire and life goals, Part IV – Learning.

A typical person living in the Western world is expected to live until about 70-80 years old. There are other factors that come into play, such as income, lifestyle, and access to healthcare, but all that aside, the average life span of a healthy adult is about 70 or so years – if you’re lucky.

Do you know how many days that is? Answer: it’s about 25,000.

That’s about 25,000 sunrises, and 25,000 sunsets for you to enjoy during your one and only time on Earth.

Sounds like a lot, right? But there’s a small catch. If you’re like me, in your mid-20’s, you’ve actually already used up about 9,000 of them.

Okay… so that leaves about 16,000 – still, not bad right? But that’s supposing you really are going to live until your mid-70’s… which, of course, isn’t a guarantee.

What if you only lived until you were 60, or 50, or even 40? (If you’re roughly my age and you only live until 40, that’s less than 6,000 days left). Sh*t.

Now consider how quickly, say, the last 7 days went by. Hm, pretty quick right? It seems like it was just a day or two ago that I was in spin class, but I only go once a week, so that was a whole week ago… Now that I think about it, the last month went by quickly as well… I can’t believe we’re halfway through the year already… and it seemed like it was just a few weeks ago I was living in Japan, but that was an entire year ago now… wow, where did those 365 days even go? 365 is a sizeable chunk out of 6,000! Sh*t. Sh*t.

… and so on. So far, I’ve realised two things:

1. That we all have a set number of days left, and,
2. They’re going by stupidly fast.

If this is a depressing subject to you, then you might be thinking about it in the wrong way. It’s only when you realise that your time is finite that you can start to do something about it.

Knowing this, what are you going to do in the next 7, 30, or 100 days? Would you live your life differently?

Well, if you are already making the most out of your life, then the answer would be, ‘Nope! Everything is perfect!’ and that’s fantastic. But if you’re unhappy because you’re putting up with a life/job/relationship you hate, then Seneca has something to say to that:

“How late it is to begin to really live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!”

How do we know we’re going to live until we grow old? We don’t! Nobody does. So I can’t help but think – why do so many people waste their precious time being unhappy? Why do people put up with jobs they hate for 40 years, just to save up holiday time for when (or if) they reach 65?

I’m no exception to this kind of thinking. We can’t always do the things we want to, and we’ve got to make a living somehow, but if we’ve really only got a few thousand days to live, why spend them doing things that our heart isn’t into?

I’m not advocating a hedonistic lifestyle in a ‘let’s-spend-every-penny-and-destroy-everything-because-tomorrow-might-never-come’ way, but even Seneca realised it thousands of years ago, when he said that,

“[Only when life] is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realise that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.”

The saddest thing is that most people don’t realise how much of their lives they had wasted until they reach the end of it. Usually, these are the same people who don’t like thinking about death at all, because they’re living in a deluded world where if they don’t think about it, it won’t happen to them. But by then, it’s too late to do anything about it.

all their labours were but for the sake of an epitaph

At the end of your life, if everything you did could be summarised into an epitaph, what would it say? What would you want it to say?

You might not get an actual epitaph, but no matter what, you will have a legacy.

Your legacy could be celebrated by millions, or remembered by no one. At the end of your life, it wouldn’t matter to you which one of those it is. You won’t be bringing it with you anyway, wherever you’re going.

All that will matter is how you feel about it. After all, how you feel about your legacy is how you feel about the life you lived. Seneca also wrote,

“Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.”

Which is true. But it doesn’t have to take your whole life – you could wait until you’re on your deathbed to lament on the time you could have spent on the people and things that mattered. Or you can start now, while you can.

Choose to spend today wisely, as if it was a single precious gold coin that you could never get back.

While we’re at it, we can do the same for tomorrow as well. And the day after, and the day after, until we reach the end, whenever that may be.

You could be happy from right now. Start today. Who needs a lifetime to learn how to live?

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Back when I was an aspiring career girl who thought the epitome of success was earning a Director’s title and a generous bonus package every year until I retired comfortably at 65, I used to be obsessed with productivity. How could I get more things done in less time? How could I fit more into my busy life?

After years of cramming more and more work and other commitments into each day until I barely had time to sleep, I became exhausted with the long hours and complete lack of free time I had to do the things I really enjoyed. I realised I had been going about it all wrong.

I used to think that doing more automatically meant living more, but that’s not true. Life shouldn’t be about fitting more of just anything into it. There will always be more things you can do to fill a thousand lifetimes. Instead, it should be about making time for the ‘right’ things and eliminating all the other stuff that doesn’t matter.

There is a difference between being efficient, versus being effective. One is about doing something that takes up limited resources (time, energy) with the least waste, and the other is about intentionally doing things that make an impact.

In other words, being efficient is about doing things right, while being effective is about doing the right things.

Productivity advice is too focused on the former instead of the latter. Doing things right is fairly easy. That’s what how-to books and productivity blogs are for. The harder thing is choosing the right things to do. We are swamped in work, meeting requests, invitations, the media, places to go, new things to try out, TV shows to watch… there isn’t enough time to do it all, even if you can do it all efficiently in the least time possible.

What counts as a ‘right’ thing? There’s no easy answer, but you’ll know deep down if what you’re spending your time on feels right. Is it important to you? Or important to someone you love? Are you enjoying it? Does it make you feel good? Are you making other people’s lives better? Is it short term or long term? Is it fun and challenging? Are you growing? Is it meaningful? What if you died tomorrow? Can you think of a better way to spend your time? Will you remember this day years from now?

If we pared down to the things that mattered the most then we would feel less FOMO, and wouldn’t need to be in such a hurry. There are some things that aren’t meant to be rushed. How unfortunate would it be if we didn’t have the time to take our time on things like making a delicious home-cooked meal, getting engrossed in a good book, or making memories with loved ones.

These moments are the stuff life is made of. Choose wisely, and enjoy every moment.

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‘On Productivity’ was originally published via Minimalist Meditations.

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Related Posts

• On the Shortness of Life – Part I – Finiteness
• On the Shortness of Life – Part II – Protecting time and living in the present