Defining The Worldcentric View

Posted on Monday, 14 February 2011 by mikeschu

The last post I wrote discussed boundaries and how they are used to create an internal and external perspective.

By their definition, boundaries divide and create an an inclusive and exclusive perspective. When drawing a circle on a piece of paper, there is an “inside” and an “outside” relative to the circle.

Psychologists also note that boundaries reside in our psyche. These boundaries are not physically defined; there is no black lines on parts of the brain defining exclusive areas of brain activity. However, the boundaries become apparent when we perceive the world and interact with it. We may relate to a “self” and an “other” with a perceived boundary between the two. How each of us perceives the world we live in is what I call our worldview.

This animated clip of part of a talk given at the British Royal Society for the Arts in London, England, discusses how worldviews have changed over human history and what we may need to do to save the planet.

While the video offers insight on how communications technology changed the world and its possibilities in the future, it gives some crucial insight about how worldviews developed over time.

In the book Integral Life Practice, the authors describe four very broad (possibly too broad) categories of worldviews:

  • Egocentric: My mind or my physical body (or both) is the inclusive. Everything else in the world is considered the “other”.
  • Ethnocentric: The groups I am involved with is inclusive, while everything else is considered the “other”. The scale of the ethnocentrism ranges wildly, from local communities to nation-states.
  • Worldcentric: The world is inclusive, while everything else is considered the “other”.
  • Kosmoscentric: There is no “other”. Everything is inclusive with each other. This is typically the stage of universal enlightenment.

Most if not all people work to expand their worldviews and adapt over time in a relatively linear but not straightforward progression. For instance, as infants and children we may be very self-centered as we develop our own identity. Our family becomes our first identity point from an ethnocentric perspective. As we mature, we may also identify with sports teams, workplaces, states, cities and nations and the like. It’s true that all of us experience flashes of worldcentric views at points in our life, and we may drop into very egocentric states at different parts of our life. In this post I wish to focus the conversation about our worldview on an ongoing basis.

Our worldview comes up in inquiries and being in the world.  A good example of worldviews on a personal level is the question we ask regarding what “we” want:

  • Egocentric: What do I want?
  • Ethnocentric: What do my family/community/nation/group and I want?
  • Worldcentric: What’s the best way to handle this so that it suits everybody in the world the best?
  • Kosmoscentric: What’s the best thing that everything in the Universe wants me to experience?

From my perspective, a lot of us reside in the various stages of the ethnocentric view. This isn’t a bad thing – Maslow is right about ensuring our personal needs are met first, and our families are a specific group of people that we tend to give focus and priority to. I believe it is also necessary to go through the stages so that as we grow, we can see the states in others and respond compassionately to them. But if you look at modern history, the planet has survived two world wars and scores of international conflicts over the past century. We all know that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict divides amongst ethnic and religious lines. This doesn’t include other newsworthy events. For instance, consider terrorism as a violent act sourced from a very small, very ethnocentric group. Now and again you will also hear of fatal riots borne out of soccer or other sports matches. This doesn’t include the previous two or three millennium of armed conflict that can fill a lifetime of history lectures.

Fortunately, more and more people are starting to consider the world’s members and resources when making decisions. Consider the United Nations and the European Community. These two international organizations are hardly perfect, but they advocate multinational cooperation and give its members a platform to communicate that goes beyond national borders. The Kyoto Protocol and other global environmental agreements are examples of a worldcentric view coming into reality.

While the UN and the EC are multinational governmental organizations, it becomes clear that we can grow to realize the worldcentric view. This does not mean that we have to ask ourselves if eating is the best way to serve the world – that’s taking this concept a little too literally. However, we can ask ourselves how we can best serve our communities that is also great for the world, or what foods to choose to maximize their impact on our bodies and minimize the harm done to the planet.

There are several tools people can use to become more worldcentric in their mindset, and I’ll certainly discuss more of them as this blog evolves. For now I’ll describe three ways people can start on the path to a worldcentric view right away.

First, listen. I think Stephen Covey said this the best in the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with the chapter title “Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood”. (In fact, the second half of the book is a good blueprint for worldcentric success.) A lot of people prefer to spend time talking in conversations. However, when I listen and give people space to talk, their truth eventually comes through in a way that I can relate. By listening more in conversations and engaging with your senses, the world becomes more integrated with how you identify with it.

Second, ensure that you understand and integrate different perspectives. Other perspectives affect how we interact with the world. More information isn’t necessarily bad when it comes to finding the best deal at a department store. How is that different from understanding why your neighbor or the city has taken what is perceived to be a negative stance? By integrating the others’ perspectives in a situation, mutual understanding and resolution of problems happens with greater success.

Third, be present to how your ideas and questions are framed. This will help you identify what worldview you are operating with in the present moment and over time. As I said before, it’s not to be taken completely literally. However, if it feels like questions are framed to only satisfy what you want, perhaps it’s a good time to consider the other side before the next statement.

I understand that the transition to a worldcentric view on a global scale will take time. I didn’t state that it was going to be an easy proposition either. However, the survival of the planet may be at stake if we don’t consider how to best work together and recognize the relationships we have with each other in the world. Humanity has existed for several thousand years in spite of our fractured worldviews. It’s time to start understanding and integrating these worldviews to realize a better life for everyone.

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Lines Vs. Boundaries

Posted on Monday, 7 February 2011 by mikeschu

One of the earliest distinctions to make in Integral thinking is the difference between a line and a boundary.

To set the proper context, let’s view the definitions of line and boundary.

definition of line: a mark that is long relative to its width; a conceptual separation or distinction
definition of boundary: the line or plane indicating the limit or extent of something; a line determining the limits of an area

The difference between both is important. A boundary is a line that is determined to be real, while a line is just a concept. Ken Wilber makes this point in his book No Boundary.

Consider a circle drawn on an otherwise blank piece of paper. The circle is a closed line on the paper. By drawing the circle, there are two sections on the paper: what’s inside the circle and what’s outside of the circle. No other meaning is attached to the circle at this point. We can then attribute meaning to the circle. Attaching meaning to a line implies a sense to honor the line as something firm. Thus, the line becomes “real”. Making the line “real” makes it a boundary.

As an example, let’s take a look at the Super Bowl of American football. Someone who is not familiar with American football will look at a football field and say that it’s just a bunch of lines painted on a field. To football players and fans, the lines on the field have meaning. The lines dictate what is in-bounds and out-of-bounds, as well as the target areas to place the ball subject to the laws of the game (such as end-zones and goal posts). The laws of the game make the boundaries real and make the game have meaning. During a football game, hitting or tackling a player out of the boundaries of the playing field induces a large penalty to the offending team. However, the field lines have no meaning other than to mark distances if a football game isn’t being played.

Boundaries in Personal Development

When a boundary or a line is drawn, there are two sides generated. A drawn line indicates a difference in perspective, while boundaries imply an inclusive and an exclusive perspective relative to what side of the boundary you are on.

Boundaries are imposed on us from a variety of sources. Our parents are the first to draw boundaries. Friends and social groups draw boundaries. The use of social groups includes religious affiliations and places of employment. Governments also draw boundaries on what people can and can’t do through the application of laws. We can even draw our own boundaries as we attach meaning to events. Boundaries and lines can be physical or mental constructs.

Consider your elementary school teacher or parent imploring you to “stay within the lines!” when you were coloring with crayons as a child. Your parents and teachers assume that the lines are boundaries when in actuality they are not. You can certainly color outside of the lines on the page. You can even color outside of the page, as parents that have experience with kids, walls and crayons know. The perception of meaning attached to the lines (e.g. bad grades, scolding by parents, good grades, your art posted on the classroom wall) is what specifies the lines on a coloring page as boundaries.

As I said previously, it is healthy to set boundaries at times. Your parents didn’t want you to experience electrocution as an infant, so they likely placed protective plastic plugs in the unused electrical sockets around the house. The protective plug acts as a boundary between you and electrical current. If you’re trying to break an addiction to alcohol, you may need to set up a mental boundary of not going into bars, liquor stores, and the liquor sections of supermarkets. There are good safety reasons why it is important for football players to not hit or tackle someone out-of-bounds in a football game – they may be unprotected (like coaches), innocent bystanders (the fans and media), or the tackle may cause injury when someone makes contact with a wall, steel pole, bench, or another person.

Yet at some point in your personal development, some boundaries may no longer serve you. Most of us eventually understand that electrocution is a bad thing, so once that lesson is learned the plastic plugs can come out of the wall sockets. It’s silly to keep using the protection plugs when everyone knows not to stick improper items in electrical sockets. Similarly, your parents may have told you to avoid certain people or certain neighborhoods when you were growing up, but people and communities change over time.

The trick of expanding perspective for most people is to know that all boundaries are false – they’re actually just lines with meaning attached to them. For instance, many people cross the line between being an employee and an entrepreneur. However, it’s relatively common for people to identify with one side of the entrepreneur/employee preference and express negative opinions of the other. There is no “other side” when it is apparent that both perspectives answer the question, “How do you make money?” Similarly, you can drive a car off of a cliff. The cliff edge is a line between earth and air that should be respected, but it’s not a boundary. This last example states a good point: just because all boundaries are false does not mean that all lines and perspectives are false. Maintaining respect for lines and differing perspectives is very important, as I’ll discuss in a future post.

It becomes apparent that personal growth to expand perspective happens in one of two ways.

  1. Dissolve the boundaries by removing the meaning attached to the line. The civil rights movement and the abolition of apartheid are good examples of dissolving perceived racial boundaries.
  2. Expand the boundaries to be more inclusive of perspectives, people, etc….

By extrapolation, recognizing and experiencing that there are in fact no boundaries in the Universe is considered enlightenment by most of the world’s religions.

From my perspective, I cannot speak of personal growth in terms of enlightenment. As I’ve said before, you can’t count on instantaneous enlightenment happening during a lifetime. You might catch glimpses of it and have peak experiences that closely replicate it, but sustained enlightenment is something that very few people attain (or remember, depending on your point of view).

One of the goals of the blog to pursue and write about mechanisms of personal growth. By incremental expansion and dissolution of boundaries, we can change how we view the world. It’s unlikely we’ll be able to achieve complete enlightenment during our lifetime, but we can influence the world positively by adopting more perspectives in our decision making and worldview.

For this week, consider the physical and mental boundaries you experience. Consider how they may be turned back into lines that are to be respected (or not) and what perspective you need to take to make it part of your reality. I’d like to hear about your experiences in the comments.

image credit: drakelelane

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February Without Facebook

Posted on Monday, 31 January 2011 by mikeschu

Apparently a digital sabbatical wasn’t enough.

I’ve noticed recently that more than a few people have left Facebook. Most of the people who have quit Facebook report greater satisfaction and freedom in their lives by not maintaining a profile.

I noted that I spend a lot of time on Facebook after my digital sabbatical. Recently it became apparent to me that I have to do something about it and try to use Facebook differently. The first step is that I am ceasing most activity on Facebook and will not log on to the site for the entire month of February. I will explain how I will accomplish this near the end of this post.

Once I realized I had to take action, I looked into why I was getting sucked in to Facebook. I found an interesting mechanism that I’d like to share with you regarding this.

The Facebook Cycle

Facebook is pretty good about keeping people drawn in to the site. By default, your community can post anything to your profile (the Wall), and can tag you in pictures, notes and updates. As a user, you can contribute your own status reports, pictures, video, and Web links to your Wall. Users also have the ability to comment on posts and give it a “thumbs up” by the “Like” feature. External applications such as games also have the ability to contribute to your Wall.

On the surface, this is a good thing. There are few Web sites today that can boast the level of community and network interaction like Facebook. One unfortunate downside right now is that there is very little granularity to profile controls. Once people are friends in your network, they have a lot of liberty to tag you in anything or to post anything to your Wall without your permission. Most people are pretty good about using this functionality judiciously. However, each one of us has seen too many photo tags or Wall postings that do not contribute to any ongoing conversations. Hopefully Facebook does more to control Wall postings and tags, but it may not be in their best interest to do so. Why is that? It’s largely because of the notifications Facebook generates.

The Facebook cycle closes itself primarily through the use of notifications. E-mails, text messages and shiny notification lights are generated and used almost every time an action is completed that could affect your Facebook profile. Did someone post a comment on one of your updates? How about when someone else posts a comment after you posted your comment on a friend’s update? What if you are tagged in a photo, a link, or someone’s longer note? All of these circumstances typically trigger a notification and send you an e-mail or text to your phone. While some actions do not trigger a notification by default, and you have control over what notifications are sent, it becomes obvious that you have to deal with Facebook even when you’re not logged on to the service – as long as you have an active profile.

Facebook is also pretty good about requiring you to be actively on the site to use the service. There are some external applications that will display your Facebook feed, and some software will allow automatic posting to Facebook. However, the large majority of people will log on to the site or use their mobile application to answer comments and see others’ posts.

Facebook Hooks

Based on this cycle, there are a few situations that play out to keep you hooked into Facebook:

  • You contribute something to your Wall. Someone comments or Likes it. You get an e-mail (or the notification when you log back in), so you log on, acknowledge it and potentially comment or take action on it. You may also visit whomever posted to your profile to see how they are doing and participate in their discussions, potentially generating more notifications and reasons to log back into or stay on Facebook
  • You contribute something to your Wall. You check Facebook frequently to see if someone Likes it or has posted a comment about your contribution. You’re now effectively seeking external validation on what you’re contributing to the site.
  • Someone posts to your Wall. Sometimes you know what it is, sometimes you don’t. In most cases you have to log on, review the post, and take other actions if you so choose. Unlike a blog, there is no comment, post, or tag moderation on Facebook prior to it posting and triggering a notification as of this writing.
  • You are reading your friend feed and find something that you wish to contribute to. You send a comment, you tag someone in a photo, or post to somebody’s Wall. Not only do you get notification of comments when they respond, you get notification of every comment posted to that item for a specific amount of time. If someone gives a “thumbs up” to one of your comment (by “Like”), you can get notification of that too.

Suffice to say that Facebook generates a lot of e-mail, a ton of notifications, and a lot of reasons to log on to the site. This doesn’t even include just logging on due to sheer boredom, playing games, or to check how your friends are doing on a daily basis.

There is one other important and obvious item to mention about Facebook. It’s important to note that Facebook is a corporation that generates income by advertisement revenue. Your interactions on the site are monitored and used to eventually spit back ads for you to click on, misguided as they may be. (For a while I was getting lots of ads about marketing for dentists. I have no idea why.) Even though as of this writing they are a private company, they have large investors looking for a return on their investments. Whether or not Facebook will eventually issue shares on the stock exchanges is anyone’s guess, but the company could be currently worth US$50 billion or more if they choose to go public. That’s what happens when you have over 500 million people using the site and feeding it data. Even without trading as a public corporation, they have to make a profit to satisfy all parties, employees and investors involved. Ad revenue aside, the data that Facebook users generate has a lot of value, and who knows how they will use it (or send it off) in the future. But I digress.

What does all of this mean? It means that in order to reduce the dependency on Facebook, you have to break the cycle of contribution and notification as well as curbing the urge to visit the site. It’s one thing to log off, but as long as you are a member of Facebook, your friend network can contribute and generate notifications for your review without you actively contributing on the site.

Having said that, there are a few ways to reduce your Facebook footprint:

  1. Reduce the number of notifications you receive. This won’t solve all of the problem, but it is a good first step or something to implement in addition to the steps below.
  2. Stop actively contributing to Facebook. Essentially, you keep your profile available to others but you simply stop actively logging on to the site and contributing to the stream. It’s the least drastic action to actively take. It may not solve everything, but it significantly reduces your tie-in to the site.
  3. Deactivate your profile. You can deactivate your account, which means you are hiding from others and cannot contribute on Facebook. Your information is still available if you choose to reactivate your profile, so rebuilding another Facebook profile isn’t necessary in this case. This is more drastic than being passive in your Facebook usage.
  4. Delete your profile entirely. The so-called “nuclear option”, this permanently removes your profile and any attributions to you from the site. Pictures of you will still remain in others’ profiles, but they may not be tagged. If you select this, there’s no going back short of starting a new profile.

My February Without Facebook

Based on everything I’ve stated here, I will not log on to Facebook in February. I will stop actively posting on Facebook except for my blog feed postings through Twitterfeed and some select postings from Twitter. I will make an effort to minimize the number of contributions to Facebook as I reasonably can. This also helps me by potentially generating less notifications that I have to review later on.

If there’s something important that I need to know, please contact me using my contact form or any other mechanism that I have made available to you (e.g. e-mail, the phone, etc…). I’m on Twitter and I (eventually) review all messages directed towards me there, so feel free to send a message if you use that service.

For me, Facebook is a good way of friends knowing of my whereabouts and activities in a more personal way than my Web site. Therefore, I am still interested in maintaining a Facebook presence for now. However, I may remove myself from Facebook if it becomes less favorable to maintain my presence. I’ll report how my February without Facebook goes on the blog in March.

Ten Tips To Implement February without Facebook

For some people, extricating themselves from Facebook can be a challenge. Based on what others have said and my own experience, here are ten short tips to help withdraw from Facebook for February.

  1. Make it more difficult to log into Facebook. Don’t make Facebook your default/starting/home page, remove Facebook from visible toolbars and bookmarks. You need an e-mail address to log on anyway, and people will tell you if the URL to Facebook if it mysteriously changes.
  2. Log out – force yourself to log in to use the service. If it’s necessary, change the password to something you won’t remember, then ask a trusted friend or family member to store the password until you need it (or until March 1st).
  3. Remove Facebook from your phone and other electronic devices. You may need to adjust your Facebook settings to do so.
  4. Remove the ability for others to post to your Wall. Most e-mails from Wall posting just state “X posted on your Wall” without actually describing its contents. This is a Facebook setting.
  5. Make sure people know what you’re doing before going offline. People might eventually wonder if you’ve died, so leave a status message on Facebook first and/or tell your friends.
  6. Change preferences to receive less notifications. Notifications can be triggered by a multitude of events, so review these settings on a regular basis for improvements.
  7. If you use applications that post to Facebook, review and reduce the applications and their interactions to your profile before your hiatus.
  8. Make sure you can fill the time you were spending on Facebook. This kills the boredom bug that makes you want to check Facebook often. I’ll be using the time to write, improve my Web presence, do yoga, and read books to start.
  9. Make sure you interact with others outside of Facebook. As the musical Avenue Q states, there’s life outside of your apartment.
  10. Most importantly, relax in the space that you’ve created. The world isn’t going to end just by you logging off from Facebook for a month. The world most certainly could have ended before the time of Facebook, based on world history.

Hopefully I’ve inspired you to take the month of February off from Facebook. I’ve inspired a couple of my friends to take the challenge, and I hope you do too. Let me know in the comments how you are feeling throughout the month and what you are doing with your reclaimed time and energy.

image credit: margaritanitz

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Therapy Vs. Yoga

Posted on Monday, 24 January 2011 by mikeschu

Something a little different for my readers this week. This is a little scary for me to post.

Recently I’ve been thinking about how I have grown over the years. In particular, there is one way of looking at growth that I’m sharing today. This was one of the pieces of information I used when writing my goals for 2011, where I stated that personal development is no longer my primary focus.

I learned the distinctions I am writing about from David Deida. Note that this blog is not the place to discuss Deida’s primary work. I simply find this specific knowledge to be useful across most of the disciplines I engage in.

In his talks he describes three ways in which people can grow: through therapy, yoga, and enlightenment. My goal is to describe each mechanism so that they are useful in everyday parlance. I’ll start with a very basic definition of enlightenment first.

Enlightenment

Enlightenment in this usage is similar to what the Buddha went through; “universal awareness” is a good term to use. It can happen at any time to any person on the planet. I’m reminded of the story of Jiddu Krishnamurti, who by all accounts was a regular guy but was likely having enlightenment experiences starting in his twenties. Buddha was part of a royal family, but he eventually renounced that role and sat under the Bodhi tree, attaining enlightenment through meditation. I won’t discuss enlightenment in detail because I’m not the right person for that conversation. I certainly don’t feel that I’ve attained that level of universal awareness, and I doubt a lot of people have either. (My take: you’ll just know from every fiber of your being if you’re enlightened, but you may experience glimpses of it from time to time.)

In this entry I will focus on Deida’s interpretation of the difference between therapy and yoga. It all comes down to one word: boundaries.

Therapy

In therapy, you are trying to fix something that’s perceived to be broken. How do you fix something therapeutically? You set up a safe environment in order to expose the issue you wish to resolve. Only then can you resolve it. You may need to set up boundaries and have mentors or guides of various professions help you out. While fixing something can take a few minutes with simple guidelines and rules, most things take time to resolve. For instance, a therapist invests in a relationship that evolves over years or decades in order for someone to work through their deep emotional issues.

Therapy doesn’t have to be drastic. For example, if you are trying to reduce the amount of time you are on Facebook, that is a form of therapy. You set up a boundary to honor (say, 20 minutes a day) and work within its constraints. You may need to set up blocking programs or a timer to achieve this goal. You may need to enlist friends for advice, or as a sounding board, or for them to change your password and keep it in a safe place. Eventually the behavior is fully integrated into your bodymind, and thus the boundaries and therapy aren’t needed any longer.

Yoga

A really good painter doesn’t believe in boundaries. Think of artists like Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, and Andy Warhol. These artists defied the conventional boundaries in the world and they became famous because of it. They produced incredible works of art – but if you read about their personal lives, they were (relatively speaking) a mess. As examples, Van Gogh eventually cut his ear off and Picasso had a few mistresses in his lifetime.

“Yoga” in this context describes a practice or a set of practices you set up to create art, namely a product of human creativity. It typically involves breaking boundaries or pushing the limits of conventional wisdom, or potentially relinquishing the boundaries. It’s akin to “playing the edge” in life. There are times where it comes crashing down, and there are times where beautiful works are created.

Like therapy, yoga doesn’t have to be drastic. Learning a new skill or art form is sufficient. Yoga in this context describes setting up the practices and breaking through boundaries and perceived limits, no matter what they are.

Yoga in this case extends far beyond the fine arts and twisting your body. For example, a programmer uses the mediums of language and graphics to express his work. A truly yogic programmer will impact humanity through writing code, regardless if they’re sober and sane or frequently drunk, broke and living through a personal hell.

The Distinction Is Important

From the descriptions of yoga and therapy above, the distinction between the two is very important. Applying the wrong mechanism of growth to a given situation can be disastrous. If you’re trying to paint a beautiful picture, you don’t stay within the lines and conventional wisdom. You want to express your own self on the page, the canvas, or that space that is available to you. You don’t worry about the establishment in this case. On the other hand, if you are trying to instill a good habit or cure a bad one, boundaries are necessary. A recovering alcoholic who is undergoing therapy shouldn’t walk into a liquor store unless it is part of an exercise under the watchful supervision of a trained therapist.

Both therapy and yoga have their uses. I will use rock climbing as an example. If you have a fear of heights, I’m not going to send you to climb Half Dome in Yosemite. Instead I would set up a safe climbing wall with landing cushions and ropes. I would have you climb no higher than you are comfortable to start. On the other hand, if you want to create art or perform yoga through rock climbing, then climbing Half Dome may be a good idea (once you are ready for the challenge – let’s not ignore the risks of rock climbing).

The same distinction can be applied to stuff reduction. The people on the show Hoarders have issues related to stuff that need to be resolved by therapy. These people should not engage in the 100 Thing Challenge, as they would fall apart and break down mentally in destructive ways. Similarly, someone embracing minimalism doesn’t need to go to a therapist to talk it over. An aspiring minimalist needs to embrace the 100 Thing Challenge to push their limits. The former example is therapy, while the latter is considered a yoga.

Personally I’ve used both yoga and therapy in different situations regarding the same subject. I will use rock climbing as an example relative to my physical abilities. My expression of flowing over the rock is yogic – there might be suggested routes, but I push the edge of my own physical limits while climbing up the rock. When I pulled hamstrings or were otherwise injured, I had to undergo a form of therapy to heal. I couldn’t climb or work on the hardest routes when I was injured; instead I would work other parts of my body or just rest. This is a simple example of how yoga and therapy play out in a given frame of reference. You will have similar experiences in your own way with whatever you face.

The best way of determining if a situation needs therapy or yoga is based on your emotions. If something feels broken, or if you are experiencing a lot of fear, then apply therapy to the situation. If you want to push your limits, or want to try something new, set up a yogic practice. Hopefully the examples I’ve provided are clear, but you can leave a comment if you have specific questions.

In conclusion, be aware of the difference between yoga and therapy. What do you need in a given situation, and how will you go about it? Growth happens both ways, and it’s important to use both in the right ways. It’s in how you use boundaries to get the results you want.

image credit: kevsunblush

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The Minimalist Kitchen

Posted on Monday, 17 January 2011 by mikeschu

There is nothing like coming into a clean, uncluttered kitchen to make meals.

Last week I discussed a few reasons that the kitchen is one place that people need to declutter. But it brings up another question: What do you really need to have for a functional kitchen?

I’ve thought about it all week. I was initially trying to solve the problem by mentally paring down the kitchen I have. I realized after a while that downsizing is the wrong approach because I kept coming up with reasons to keep things in the kitchen. Instead I had to approach the question by stocking the kitchen from scratch. This approach is congruent with the idea of getting everything into the open before decluttering the kitchen.

With that in mind, I’m making a few assumptions about the minimalist kitchen I am suggesting:

  • You are cooking a standard American diet. I agree that it’s not the best diet in the world. However, most of my readers probably have an omnivore diet. Those who are into alternative diets may need to modify the setup a bit.
  • You are cooking for practical reasons over stylistic ones. This isn’t to say that you can’t cook a chef’s meal that looks great, but in most cases you cook food to eat.
  • You want to eat healthy and have an interest in cooking food. If you want to live and die by the microwave, there isn’t much more you need besides plates and silverware.
  • You’re not baking. You can have a minimalist setup for baking, but I don’t know what it looks like. I’m also gluten-intolerant, so standard wheat flour-based baking is out of the question and the hassle and expense of using alternative flours isn’t worth it to me.
  • You are going to be cooking for 2-4 people. I recommend this because it’s nice to be able to cook for a few friends, a date, or to have leftovers. It also allows for extra plates and such for reheating and storing food.

With all of the above in mind, here is how I would stock the minimalist kitchen.

One knife. I hate to go Rachael Ray on my readers, but I think she has this one right (besides the garbage bowl idea). All I ever use is one seven-inch Santoku chef’s knife. You can also use an eight-inch chef’s knife as well. It doesn’t have to be an $120 knife either. The one I use costs about $40, and it cuts everything very well. Don’t go with a cheap “eversharp” blade as they do not cut very well in my experience. Try to spend a little money on this one knife and you won’t be disappointed. If I had to use other knives, I’d go for a paring knife and a bread knife. However, the chef/Santoku knife is all I ever use in my kitchen.

Two cutting boards. One for meat and one for everything else because you don’t want to cross-contaminate your raw veggies with the bacteria from raw meat. Have one extra board specifically for fish if you eat it often. Make sure to clean your cutting boards very well in hot soapy water, especially the one for meat.

Two frying pans. I’d go for a ten-inch skillet and a 12-inch “everday pan” like this one. (I have it and it works great.) I find that most recipes use one size or the other. The everyday pan can substitute as a wok when necessary. If you eat a lot of eggs or breakfast meat, add a slightly smaller (8-9 inch) frying pan for breakfast foods. Try to get lids for them whenever possible, or use a universal lid.

A few pots with lids. You can probably get away with two sizes: 1.5-quart and 2.5-quart. Adding a 1-quart pot with a lid is really helpful for rice and heating small amounts of food like a serving of soup. A 5-quart Dutch oven or an 8-quart soup pot is really useful if you’re up for making stews, soups or a good amount of pasta. There’s no need for any other pots, and most people aren’t going to make stock so any pot larger than eight quarts will be underutilized.

One set of dinnerware and one set of silverware. Have enough plates and bowls for 4-8 people. You want to have extras to store and serve food with. Same goes for silverware; having a couple more settings won’t hurt here.

One drinking glass and one coffee cup for each setting of dinnerware. The coffee cups will probably come with the dinnerware. Glassware is a different story, and you don’t need a large amount of it. A good 12 or 16-ounce glass for each setting is enough. You can add a smaller size glass for juice and water, but it’s not necessary. I’ve seen Mason jars used successfully in lieu of glassware. If you drink wine, get a few red or everyday wine glasses, but there’s no real need for glassware for specific varietals (champagne is the exception!).

Measuring sets. Get one set of measuring spoons, one set of dry measure cups, and one or two liquid measures. For the liquid measures, go for a 1-cup and/or 2-cup in glass or Pyrex in case they need to go in a microwave.

Extra prep and storage containers. Use your best judgement, but a few Pyrex bowls really help in the prep and storage arena. A couple of ramekins or small plastic serving cups will really save you when you need to put a chopped clove of garlic somewhere temporarily. A 2-quart glass casserole dish with a cover comes in handy for cooking as well. Try not to go overboard on plastic storage containers; buy only what you need. I find that having the locking plastic storage containers really help for soup and storing dry goods.

Cooking utensils. Try not to go too overboard on the things that you need to cook with. I’d go with a can opener, a potato/carrot peeler, one set of tongs, a couple of spatulas, a ladle, a couple of serving and cooking spoons, a waiter’s corkscrew, a spoon rest, a strainer for pasta and greens, and a few trivets. I’d build slowly from there if you need anything specific, but most of your cooking will require these utensils sooner or later.

This seems like a lot, but it really isn’t. I find that even though I’m a bachelor and typically cook for myself, I use most if not all of what I listed. The key is to not buy additional cookware, too many cooking utensils and tons of storage containers. Most plastic-ware and utensils make for clutter in cabinets and drawers.

Three Burning Kitchen Questions

Having said that, you might be faced with a few extra choices when liberating your current kitchenware or buying new. Here’s what I can offer to best answer your questions.

  1. Non-stick or “stick” cookware? If you are just learning how to cook, get non-stick; you’ll thank me later. Just make sure to not use any metal utensils on the non-stick cookware. This means you may want to go with nylon and/or wood cooking utensils whenever possible. Make sure to inspect your non-stick cookware often and replace it if the material is coming off of the pan or it has some deep scratches.
  2. Electrics? In most cases you’ll intuitively know what electrics to get, but most aren’t that necessary. I’ve toasted bread in the oven, I can use a steamer insert in the pots for veggies, and I’m really good with a knife so a food processor isn’t all that necessary (but it can be helpful). I’d say the microwave is the one appliance I couldn’t live without, and a lot of places come furnished with one.
  3. What extra things do you use in the kitchen? I do have more utensils than what I have here. The top five things beyond the list that I use most often are a wire strainer (for rinsing quinoa, rice, and beans), a cheese shredder, a griddle pan, an electric steamer for rice and veggies, and a couple of 1/4-cup liquid measures. For tea preparation, I have a Zojirushi water boiler but I don’t count that as most people aren’t into tea like I am.

What I have listed is what I would acquire to set up a new kitchen. To be honest, I’m not that far off of that ideal today. However, it’s a lot less stuff than what most people think they need to make a great meal. The trend towards simplicity doesn’t have to stop at the kitchen – in fact, it’s one of the best places to practice it.

image credit: orinrobertjohn

Posted in minimalism | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The Kitchen Monster

Posted on Monday, 10 January 2011 by mikeschu

One of the places that people forget about decluttering is the kitchen.

I was reminded of this on Sunday when I was looking for my soup pot so I could make potato leek soup. There was a time where it felt like I was going to Macy’s every other month to buy a new pot, or to the store for another kitchen gadget. Over time, I built up a rather large collection of cookware. I cook often enough because of my food allergies, and it saves me a lot of money because I don’t eat out often. I definitely recommend learning how to cook, but I don’t recommend a kitchen full of pots and pans to cook with!

I bet there’s a few things in your kitchen that need to be liberated, and I’m not even talking about cleaning the pantry or refrigerator. (When’s the last time you did that?) Here are a couple of places where clutter occurs in the kitchen.

  • A lot of kitchens have storage space that is difficult to reach or not opened very often. Deep cabinets and kitchen corners are perfect places to hide cookware you don’t want to use or isn’t needed all that often.
  • The gadget drawer (yes, I know you have one) is a prime conspirator of your kitchen clutter. It’s like the Hotel California of kitchen stuff: gadgets check in but don’t seem to check out.
  • Cupboards can get cluttered and disorganized very easily because the contents are out of plain sight.

Clutter in the kitchen also happens for a lot of reasons. Most of them are well-intentioned but ultimately cause more stress than savings.

  • You lose stuff because it’s unorganized, so you go out and buy a replacement. Before you know it, you have three potato peelers. (That actually happened to me.)
  • There is a big market for “time-saving” in the kitchen for stuff that really isn’t necessary. Microwave egg cookers, special brownie pans so “the edges aren’t burnt”, citrus squeezers, plastic food choppers … the list goes on and on.
  • Cups and glasses in particular can be very collectible. Do you want to remember that you went to the first Starbucks in Seattle, or some other exotic locale? They probably have a coffee cup on sale to commemorate your visit. This also extends to theme parks, shows, and other attractions. Gift sets are another place where coffee cups in particular show up.
  • Most people don’t throw out their old kitchenware until they absolutely have to. I know my parents have some of the same pots and pans that I grew up with. Most cookware lasts a long time, but it does eventually wear out. In particular, non-stick pots and pans require a watchful eye because of the chemicals used to make pots non-stick. A scratched up non-stick skillet can cause more harm than good because you could be potentially ingesting Teflon that gets pulled up as you cook.
  • People moving in together usually combine their kitchens. In particular, newlyweds tend to acquire cookware and dining ware as wedding presents.
  • Some people may have inherited “fine china” or “fine silver”, or have hutches full of “good dishes”. Some people have full dining rooms to store it, but oftentimes it ends up in the kitchen or the garage because there’s nowhere else to store it.
  • You may try a new recipe and love it, so you get the idea to cook it at home. Then you find out that it requires a special cooking implement to make. You go buy it, cook the recipe once or twice, and then find it’s too much of a hassle to make on a regular basis. That gadget then sits unused in a drawer or cupboard for years.
  • Cookbooks are incredibly collectible, because you want to try out new recipes from time to time. I have four cookbooks on my bookshelf, and they languish there most of the time. If I’m looking for a culinary change of pace, I usually research recipes on the Internet.

Fortunately, kitchens rarely take more than a half day to declutter, unless you have a huge kitchen in your living space. But that four hours or so can make all the difference between having a kitchen you don’t want to use, and one that brings out many magic moments. Here are four tips to prepare the liberation of your kitchen from the weight of excess stuff.

  1. Get clear on your cooking habits. This isn’t meant to force a decision on cooking in general, but do spend some time to understand what you cook. Most people don’t have more than ten recipes that they cook on a regular basis. This will help identify if specific cookware can be liberated because you don’t use it.
  2. Learn alternative techniques for food preparation. Most people can squeeze a lemon or a lime with their hands, so a citrus squeezer isn’t necessary. You can buy a wok, but an “every day” pan or even a 12-inch skillet can be used instead. Perhaps you can grill or roast the asparagus instead of using an asparagus pot.
  3. Learn how to use a kitchen knife. Really understand how to use a kitchen blade, for it can save a lot of time and money by not buying gadgets to cut food. You may need to ask a friend who is good at cooking, or take a couple of classes at a local cooking school or community college. Most culinary colleges have a “knife skills” class that will exceed the majority of your day-to-day needs.
  4. Identify where you have other kitchen clutter. Most of the kitchenware inherited from others gets stored, not used. You may find that it’s time to let it go if you don’t use it.

When tackling the kitchen clutter, it’s worth it to set aside four uninterrupted hours to declutter it in one go. Pull out everything from drawers, counters and cabinets and set it all in full view. You may find you have duplicates of the same item. Put them in a donation box and get the unneeded cookware to those who can use it. Also check to see if your pots and pans are warped, scratched beyond usefulness, or just not needed.

I’ve pared down my kitchen to something that is minimalist and very functional. Granted, I’m only cooking for one person at the moment. But do you really need a serving set for twenty people? In most houses today, twenty people would constitute a visit from the fire marshal because there’s too many people inside the house!

Next week I will discuss the kitchen setup I have, and how it can be made more minimalist than it is now. It’s not completely minimalist, but I can easily cook for a double date at my place and only have to sweat about the food – not the clutter!

image credit: Francesco Rachello

Posted in minimalism | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

My 2011 Manfiesto

Posted on Monday, 3 January 2011 by mikeschu

Now that 2010 is out of the way, we can talk about the 365 days that comprise the year 2011.

I wrote last week that 2010 was a good year. I felt that I accomplished everything I wanted to and more, and I found that I can make improvements for 2011. In this blog entry I’ll set the agenda for what I want to accomplish for the year.

Over the week I read from Chris Guillebeau that he has themes for the year. I reviewed the last three years of notes and annual reviews and determined these would be the themes:

2008: Year of the Subtle Body (adventures in spirituality and personal growth)
2009: Year of the Yogi (introduction to yoga and vegetarianism)
2010: Year of the Retrofit (new friends, adoption of minimalism, meditation, writing, habit changes)

I don’t know exactly what 2011 will hold, yet I feel it’s going to be a big year in terms of change and opportunity. This is the first year in a while where my personal growth isn’t based on fixing a deficiency of fulfilling a need. Instead, this year’s personal development will be sourced from a sufficiency-based plan. I certainly have to make some remedial adjustments, but those alone will not take up the majority of my efforts. This year I am shifting from the focus of personal development and self-employment to interpersonal skills and helping others out. I’ll tentatively call this the “Year of Others”, but I’m sure that I’ll come up with a better name than that.

After six years of studying personal development and businesses, I need to make a change. I’ve read over fifty business books and dozens of personal development books. I’ve come a long way from 2004, when I needed to pull myself out of a funk after losing my job and starting over in a new field (and city). I still am focused on liberation, but I found that I cannot focus on it directly from a self-directed standpoint.

Late last year it became apparent that the path I was on was not working for me. I was trying to form a business for the past six years. Unfortunately, I never arrived at an idea that I felt I could follow. I think staying stuck on finding a business idea for six years implies that I need to let it go and not force it.

Similarly, after six years of personal development I find that most of the material I read is intuitively obvious, irrelevant or fully integrated in my life. The signs of familiarity and repetition indicate a need to change, so strict personal development will not be a focus for me going forward. This doesn’t mean I’m giving up personal development entirely. It means that I won’t be putting directed energy towards it unless there is something that requires it.

2011 Focus

When I read through my digitized notes from last month I found a few important reasons for my success:

  • Development of leadership skill and ability
  • The ability to negotiate and communicate well, especially from one person to another
  • The ability to understand systems and situations rapidly
  • A partially photographic/eidetic/”muscle” memory (not something that is easily built, but it doesn’t hurt).

Most people think I have great technical capabilities at work, but that’s not why I’m successful. I have good technical capabilities and I grasp systems and information very well. But where I really shine is in conversations and leadership. I’m not the best software developer in my company, or even in the department I work in. Those who have reviewed my code at work know exactly what I’m talking about! But I work great with others, can explain what is going on and what to do, and take the initiative from a business and technical standpoint. That’s how I was able to be promoted three times in seven years.

I have a sense that this is not a do-it-yourself lifetime for me. I note that I have more success when I involve others instead of going out on my own. Last year I formed a club and lead over 25 people in Toastmasters; I felt better accomplishing that than any other project at work this year. I feel good by helping others out and creating win/win situations. Based on this, I’m willing to spend a year to approach things differently. I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I don’t have much to lose, and I feel that I can gain a lot from experimenting with this focus.

In terms of skill building and focus, I look to build my expertise in the following areas:

  • Negotiation and diplomacy
  • Team-building
  • Coaching – maybe train to become an Integral Life Coach, but I have to see what it requires. Currently this may only be an option if I take it in Canada, but I need to look into it further.
  • Counseling – but not from a therapeutic modality.
  • Developing leadership skills in others
  • Promotion and promoting others’ work. I don’t know what this looks like, but I had someone in the marketing department at work tell me that my “sales letter” for forming the Toastmasters group was an example of very good PR and promotion.

These are ideas that others or a review of materials have suggested I can become really good at. As I said earlier, I feel comfortable enough that my current needs are being met and that I can take this year to do a little experimentation.

2011 Commitments

Based on my review and where I would like to head in the future, I need to make changes in my life to see if the direction of focus is where I want to be. With that said, here are the commitments I am making this year.

  1. Set aside the idea of starting my own business, at least for this year. It makes no sense to put more energy into something that isn’t working for me now. I reserve the right to change my mind if I find something I truly want to do or I find people are throwing money at me because I can do something really well.
  2. Only read business or personal development materials when I need them. Instead I will read books in the focus areas for skill development.
  3. Continue with writing and creation (the goals from last year).
  4. Continue down the path of minimalism. I won’t pare down to 100 things, but I aim to get to a level where I don’t have much more than I really need.
  5. Make adjustments to improve my health. This will probably involve sleeping a little more, less caffeine, more meditation, eating healthier foods, and cultivating a deeper understanding of my physical set points.

Note that I don’t have any significant projects outlined for my 2011 commitments. For me this is like the opening strategy in chess. I know what I want to accomplish this year, but the exact details haven’t been fleshed out because I’m going to be doing some experimentation.

This also means that the focus of the blog might change, but I have not looked into anything at this point. The first couple of months may be just research and reading, but I intend to write more about the topics I have outlined later on in the year. It may also mean that I start another blog and post less here. In either case, I’ll give plenty of notice to what my intentions are for my writing and blog presence.

Projects For 2011

Changing my focus does not mean that I get to bury myself in books and seminars this year. Far from it, in fact. I do have some projects I will be tackling this year.

  1. Learn bike repair to a beginner/intermediate competency. I feel I will be on a bike more this year than in the past, so I want to know how to do basic repairs and regular maintenance. I can help others by supporting a good bike mechanic, but that won’t help me immediately when I have a flat tire on the street.
  2. Commit to funding portions of 50 Kiva loans. Note that this doesn’t mean I’m funding 50 loans at once, although I will likely get close to that. I started on 12/31/2010 with one loan funded.
  3. Start a mentor program for the Toastmasters club at work.
  4. Commit to receiving the Toastmasters Advanced Communicator Bronze award by June 30th. I have four speeches left. I would love to get this done for the club I am involved with.

There will most likely be other projects that I partake, but I intend to only select those that further the goals and interests of my focus for this year.

The Two Words: Minimalism and Travel

As I said previously, sometimes words come up to me that describe what to focus on in a given year. Last year it was “write” and “create”. This year I had three words, but the two that seem to pull me the most are “minimalism” and “travel”.

The minimalism part will be simple: I aim to get to a point where I don’t own more than I really need. For me this looks like I need to liberate the amount of stuff equivalent to a walk-in bedroom closet. Most of it is going to be donated, but I have some stuff to sell off. I hope to get that accomplished by Memorial Day this year, though I am not in any significant rush to complete this. (Anyone interested in men’s watches, board games or a pool cue can contact me.)

I intend to do a little more travel this year, even if it’s getting away for the weekend. My big trip this year will be on the rails for three weeks to visit the Pacific Northwest. I’ll be visiting San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC. (SF is not the Pacific NW, but it’s on the way.) One thing I am looking at doing is bike touring, doing short trips called S24Os (sub-24 hour overnights). Basically, get on a bike and spend a night somewhere other than home. It may not even be by bike to start out with, but I like the idea of getting out on the road and going somewhere else.

The third word this year was “business”, but as I wrote before I will not be focusing on it. It’s entirely possible that I can form a business by letting the idea come to me intuitively or naturally instead of trying to force one into the world.

Admittedly, this year feels more full than most other years in the past. In fact, I can say that this is the most planned year I’ve had in a long time. I may not get to everything, and I may not make all of my commitments. I actually have to fit work, sleep, yoga, eating, and maybe a date or three in there. But I have a sense that it will be a great, action-packed year.

Posted in annual review | 7 Comments

The 2010 Review

Posted on Friday, 31 December 2010 by mikeschu

I’m no different than most people: I like to review what I accomplished this year.

The end of the year is a natural point for a lot of us to reconsider what we did this year and what to look at for next year. This will be a two-part review; I’ll write my goals and focus for 2011 next week.

I do not have a formal review process that takes hours and hours. I seem to intuitively know what I intend to accomplish and can keep track of it without too much trouble. People like Chris Guillebeau have more formal methods for planning. I suggest working with a more formal method at first to see if it works for you. If not, make adjustments as you see fit.

The 2010 Focus: Writing and Creating

I usually find my focus through meditation. I spend a little time meditating on what I am to accomplish for the coming year. Usually the words will bubble up through a guided meditation or automatic writing process. For 2009, the words I wrote were “power” and “yoga”. For 2010, they were “write” and “create”. I was successful at both, even though I didn’t have any detailed outcomes in mind last year. The writing aspect was accomplished by restarting this blog and writing a weekly blog entry. I also signed up for 750 Words, writing a daily entry over the past two months.

The creation part is harder to define, but again I was successful at it. I accomplished the following:

  • I started a Toastmasters club at work with 35 members. At this time the club is at 27 members, so it’s healthy club even nine months in.
  • I went to two of Steve Pavlina’s Conscious Growth Workshops, where I forged some amazing relationships and met a lot of great people.
  • I created a meditation practice by learning Primordial Sound Meditation at the Chopra Center (with a bonus talk by Deepak himself!).
  • I embraced minimalism and created space for myself by liberating things I no longer needed. I participated in the $100 Wardrobe challenge and the 333 Project and have succeeded at both. Both challenges are not formally done until the end of today, but I will call it as done as it will get.

I still have a ways to go, even though I have made significant progress throughout the year. For instance, I still have more stuff than I really need. I don’t intend to go to 100 things, but I have about a bedroom closet’s worth of stuff to liberate. My meditation practice tapered off from 30 minutes twice a day to 30 minutes 5-7 times a week. However, the habits are fully integrated in my life now. It’s just a matter of following up and making any necessary adjustments.

Other Aspects

Steve Pavlina discuss in his book six key areas to focus on when evaluating your life. I’m going to give a quick overview about what happened this year to set the yardstick for me in 2011.

Career: I was promoted in November to a position where I have a little more responsibility and less involvement in the day-to-day work. It’s not exactly where I want to be, but I can accept where I am at and that I’m doing well where I am now. I may not have a major overhaul here in 2011, but I feel I can start transitioning to something different.

Finances: With the promotion came an increase in income, so I feel really good about my financial picture. I reduced my expenses as part of adopting minimalism, which helped fund some of my travels this year. I have at least 12 months of expenses in the emergency fund, so I can start concentrating on saving for other things like travel and putting more into the retirement funds. I recognize I have a conflict with the career aspect here in terms of exchanging time for money, but I accept that is where I am at right now.

Relationships: My relationships have improved just by meeting new people and maintaining contact with them; however, this is one area I would like to focus on for the coming year. As much as I like being single, I’d like to start sharing experiences with someone else.

Health: This is the one area of my life where I slipped. My yoga practice is still going strong, even though there have been times where I pushed myself too hard. I still need to eat and sleep better, especially as of late. I am much more aware of my habits in this area.

Habits: Adopting the two M’s (minimalism and meditation) have made the most impact. I keep up with them regularly. Other adjustments like green tea in the mornings instead of coffee, black or oolong teas have worked out well. The one-week digital sabbatical showed me where I can make changes for 2011, so I have somewhere to focus in this area for next year.

Spirituality: I might have slipped a bit in this area over the year, but I still feel great about where I am. Meditation helped immensely in this department, but there are some practices I set aside that I would like to return to. I sense that I need to do a little work in this area but it is not a high priority for 2011.

Overall, this year went pretty well. Granted, I didn’t have a lot of objective goals in 2010. However, I feel much better about where I am at the end of 2010 relative to the beginning of it. I have a lot more clarity about where I want to head and work on in 2011. That will be the next post.

Here’s to a great 2011.

Posted in annual review | 1 Comment

Defeating The Paper Tiger

Posted on Monday, 20 December 2010 by mikeschu

These days humans are no longer stopped by real tigers; instead they are defeated by TPS reports.

The TPS report is used in the movie Office Space as a symbol of inefficiency and bureaucracy. However, have you considered how important it is to have paper in a world that is becoming more digital? I don’t ask the question to bash the use of paper. Instead I am starting a conversation on how you store and retrieve information.

Information storage in general has certainly advanced over the years. Cave paintings were the first recordings of human history and information, but they were not easily movable. Later on, clay tablets were used. While clay tablets are transportable, clay tablets are heavy and fragile. Further advances led to papyrus and then paper as the primary mechanisms for storing data. Consider a book as nothing more than a collection of bound pieces of paper. Storing information digitally is only a recent development; computers had to be developed first. Digital storage has only been available to the masses in the past thirty years or so.

Consider how much paper you handle in a given day. How many receipts, notes, bills, and forms do you see and store? You probably don’t handle as much paper as you used to. However, those bits of paper add up. You may need to store that paper for further work, tax time, or some other time that is important to you. Sometimes that time never comes, but people usually play it safe. Years of accumulating paper leads to full file cabinets and stacks of paper on every flat surface of your office. Eventually it has to be dealt with. One of the ways of dealing with it is to switch to storing information digitally and going paperless.

While I love paper and still use it to this day, it turned into a mental block I had to overcome while becoming a minimalist. There were lots of things I absolutely had to have on paper – my tax forms, seminar notes, even photocopied pages out of books that I used for reference material. While it is true to keep paper copies for some things (as we’ll touch upon later), I had to look around and see how much paper I was actually carrying. The process started when I went through all of my operating manuals I had stored in a file box. I ended up tossing things like an owner’s manual for a bicycle I owned in 1994 (later sold off or stolen, I can’t remember), a 13-year-old coupon for steak sauce, and receipts for computer parts dating back to 1999 (later sold off). I recycled about 70 percent of the paper in the file box.

Eventually I realized that the only difference between paper and digital data is the medium in which the information is stored. With a little extra thought and consideration, I realized that I can store almost any data and documents I need to digitally instead of on paper. Over the past few weeks I’ve worked to reduce the amount of paper I own. I reached a milestone his weekend where over eighty percent of the paper I used to own is gone. I want to share with you the things I’ve learned while undertaking this process.

Reasons for Going Paperless

Let’s start this conversation by considering a few reasons why going digital and paperless is a good idea.

  • Paper takes up much more physical space than data. One metric I heard is that a page of paper can store approximately 3000 characters (bytes) of text. A ream of letter-sized paper (500 sheets) will effectively store about 1.5MB of text in a space that is a little over two inches thick. Note that 1.5MB is almost the capacity of a high-density 3.5-inch floppy disk, which was used as portable data storage as early as 1987. Today, flash storage can store several gigabytes of data on a chip that is about a square inch in size and very thin (as of this writing). Less paper also means spending less money and time on systems to store paper.
  • Digital notes can be made available anywhere and nearly at any time. Paper is constrained to the physical space it resides, and its space requirements make it prohibitive for most people to carry all of their paper notes around. On the other hand, digital notes can be stored on removable media (such as flash drives) and in the cloud (like Gmail).
  • Digital notes allow for faster information retrieval. Consider that a computer file can be found in seconds or minutes by using search tools. While some paper might be available to you in that time frame, it can take hours or days to find a piece of paper if you have a lot of it around. How much time have you lost searching for paper documents this year? A 2004 survey of executives stated that, on average, they lose six weeks a year looking for lost documents. (Here’s a secondary source, along with some other interesting tidbits.)
  • Digital notes allow for discovering more relationships between data. When you read paper, you can only read one page at a time. Your brain is completely responsible for storing the information in memory and coming up with new possibilities based on what it knows. On the other hand, electronic data can be searched and indexed. The computer can do some of the leg work and bring possible correlations to your attention faster than it takes to read lots of paper and come up with it yourself. In effect, technology spares you of having to consistently retain lots of information in your head. (You are still responsible for actually making any correlations with the data, however.)

Four Concerns To Going Paperless

While there is a great argument for using the digital world to store information, there are a few things you may need to consider before making the switch.

  1. Going digital is not a cure-all for accessibility. Digital data requires a computer or other information device to access the data. There are potentially more access points to the data by going digital than a piece of paper. Like paper that requires it to be present for someone to read it, having a digital copy is no good if it isn’t accessible. Firewalls and connectivity are the biggest constraints to accessing data over the Internet.
  2. Not all paper can be digitized, and some data may need to be encrypted for security once digitized. This isn’t an issue for most data, but you may need to consider issues with legality, taxes, or security. This is a much bigger subject than I can cover here, and I am definitely not a lawyer or an accountant. In any case, please perform any due diligence on your paper and data storage before converting it to digital formats.
  3. Digital clutter can happen just like paper clutter. Digital clutter isn’t as obvious as overflowing file cabinets and piles of paper, but you can still fill disk drives and hit quotas on file servers. While there are good file search tools available and digital storage capabilities are increasing rapidly, some maintenance on the data will be required as if it was paper in your hand.
  4. Some people take in information differently than others. I tend to take in information by reading and writing it. Some people also take in information kinesthetically (e.g. muscle memory). There are tests like VARK that can help you identify your learning modalities. It is not a disadvantage by being a kinesthetic or read/write learner, but you may need to spend more time and have paper and pen always available to take data in initially before converting it to digital formats.

How To Go Paperless

The biggest piece of going paperless is considering it as a system. Going digital and paperless is not something you do once and are done with it. Each piece of paper works through the system. Therefore it is essential to spend time on building a paperless system.

When constructing a paperless system, consider the following pieces:

  • What incoming information needs to be stored digitally
  • What paper you have currently that needs to be digitized and stored
  • What formats to store the information in (e.g. text formats, picture formats, Web services)
  • How that information is stored (e.g. disk, other physical media, or the cloud)
  • How that information will be accessed (e.g. by computer, smartphone, PDA, or other digital device)
  • Who will access the information (e.g. is this personal information or will family or employees need it as well?)
  • How to dispose of the paper once the information is digitized (this is more important than you think)
  • The legal status and storage requirements of your documents

This may seem like a lot to consider, but it is no different than any  method of organizing paper. Any piece of paper needs to be inspected for its contents, filed in such a way that it is accessible, and eventually disposed of. Most people fail at organization systems because they do not consider it a system that needs to be sustainable for someone using it. I’m not going to suggest a “best way” for paper or digital organization, since the best way is dependent on you. What I will suggest is that you spend a little time defining the system before going into digitizing mode.

Ten Tips For Taming the Paper Tiger

I was able to digitize most of my current paper in less than a weekend, and this included determining what systems I needed to set up to make it happen. Based on this, I’d like to leave you with ten tips to help you on the way to a paperless lifestyle.

  1. Backups are essential. I can’t stress this enough. The last thing you need to happen is to go completely digital and lose all of your data in a crash. My current backup plan is to save to two different hard drives every month. While cloud storage like Gmail is very reliable, companies can go out of business overnight or unintentionally lose data. Ensure that you have a regular backup plan.
  2. The best way to convert paper information to digital is to do it slowly. Like books, most people own more paper materials than they think they do. Paper reduction can be saved for a bad-weather weekend, but it can be very draining to sit at a computer and play data-entry clerk for hours. It may be best to tackle one chunk of paper at a time; e.g. a file cabinet or notes for a book you are writing.
  3. Apply the Pareto Principle to paper. You may only need to save a small fraction of the notes and paper you have. This step was really helpful when I was looking at notes from past seminars. In most cases I didn’t need all of the notes I took, so I saved the ones I needed and threw out the rest.
  4. As a helper to the Pareto Principle, keep the source and toss the paper. This may mean that you keep a bookmark of a Web page instead of a printout of that page. If a source from the Web no longer exists, it may be possible that a service like archive.org has a copy you can reference.
  5. Favor text-based file formats over binary formats to store text. Text-based formats like plain text are advantageous because of their low overhead. A simple Microsoft Word document may require 50,000 bytes for a document that is 4,000 bytes of text. The other concern with formats like Microsoft’s Word Document format is that they store information in a way that is not human-readable. Thus you may be susceptible to conversion issues if you choose a different editor or operating system later on that doesn’t support the file format you wrote your notes with. I use Rich Text Format (RTF) which, while being proprietary to Microsoft, is primarily human readable and available as a format across most operating systems and editors. Most of my notes have minimal formatting, but I know I can format the document and read it using a plain text editor if the format goes away.
  6. When buying things online, save the receipts in a digital format, or save an e-mail copy. Most operating systems will allow you to save a receipt in the PDF format. PDF used to be the domain of Adobe Corporation, but is now an ISO and open standard. Readers for this format are free and readily available.
  7. Be cognizant of anything regarding legal documentation such as car titles, as it may be required that you keep the original copy. It’s favorable to scan them in as a backup, but be careful of the legal stature of the electronic copy.
  8. Scanners are very useful if you need to save the data in a pictorial format. If you can’t borrow one from a friend, your workplace may have copiers that can create PDF documents that can be e-mailed to a work address. Just make sure that you abide by any company policies on using work equipment and remember to clear the cache from the copier when you are done.
  9. If the notes are not sensitive in nature, consider delegating or hiring someone to digitize your paper. Another option besides a scanner is to use a service like Shoeboxed and send the documentation to someone who will scan it in for you.
  10. Make sure to have an exit plan for your paper. Most paper can be recycled, but you may need to burn or acquire a shredder for paper that has financial or sensitive information on it.

Conclusion

Even in today’s world, paper is a necessity. I certainly enjoy writing on paper and wouldn’t miss it for the world. However, for those who are considering minimalism, converting your paper-based information to digital formats is an important strategy for maintaining the information in your life. Even if you aren’t considering minimalism as an aspect in your life, going paperless may help with the piles of paper and overflowing file cabinets in your life. It’s certainly a lot of effort, but it can be an important step that saves time later and allows you to live the life you love.

image credit: roham

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Sandboxes For Success

Posted on Monday, 13 December 2010 by mikeschu

Do you remember playing in a sandbox as a kid?

For me, the days of playing in a sandbox are getting a little harder to remember. I do know I spent a few spring and summer afternoons as a child with a shovel, a bucket, and a couple of my closest pals in a backyard sandbox. There was this mystique about being in the sandbox. It was an entirely different world, where the physical Universe didn’t matter. We could create sand castles, sand turtles, anything we wanted to. We could also act out what we wanted to become without being ridiculed about it by others. Eventually, we grew out of playing in the sandbox and started to interact with the real world. This is good for our evolution, but bad for our creativity and willingness to try new things.

Here’s a thought: what happened if we brought the concept of a sandbox to our lives?

In computer programming, the sandbox is where untested code and ideas can be developed without any harm to a production environment. If some software ends up trashing the sandbox, it’s not a big issue – you just clean it up and start testing in a refreshed environment. Laboratories perform the same function for physical experiments, though the effects of a bad experiment may be harder to clean up.

Sandboxes create the space needed to work on new concepts and ideas. They create a place to test ideas and allow unfettered experimentation. They can be physical or virtual, like the software sandbox described earlier. In life design, sandboxes and the action of sandboxing are great to use early on with mental shifts and during the basic implementation of an idea or concept you may have.

Real sandboxes work in two ways: they keep sand contained within a box, and they keep other things out of the sand. To extend the analogy, a sandbox keeps developing ideas and concepts from spreading outside, and a sandbox keeps the environment from penetrating the sand and the space. Sometimes it’s not perfect: the family pet may use the sandbox as a bathroom, and kids tend to spread sand everywhere when they play. Fortunately the sandboxes I am talking about are more tightly controlled than a box full of sand.

There are a couple of ways to set up sandboxes and to use sandboxing in your life.

Physical space. An office, a spare room in the house, or a corner of a room can serve as a physical space to create. Having a physical space that is free of unwanted distraction gives the structure to allow for your best incubation work to shine. Monasteries are a good example of a “public” sandbox. Meditators using the monastery don’t have to worry about logistics like food and security, as it’s set up to be a safe and comfortable place to meditate.

Information. Basic external research is a desirable and necessary function, and the concept of sandboxing doesn’t prevent it from happening. However, the Internet brings a lot more information to you than you need. When developing a concept or an artistic idea, create a virtual “sandbox” by turning off the flow of information. This minimizes the distractions and conflicting information that can affect the outcome of experimenting with a great idea.

People. Sharing ideas is necessary in the world we live in. That level of sharing is different than offering the idea to the world when it is just a tiny shoot in the garden of your mind. Have you ever been to a party and shared a thought you are toying with? It’s amazing what sorts of conflicting and potentially detrimental feedback you get. Like information, too much feedback early on can dampen spirits or send you down research “rabbit holes” where you spend more time researching and destroying ideas than cultivating them. While feedback is important, it’s essential to begin developing ideas on your own. Later on it’s important to bring in a few select people (such as a mastermind group) to critically evaluate the idea and provide good feedback. This is a similar concept as alpha and beta testing in software (unless you’re Google, but that’s a different story).

One final word of advice: don’t spend all of your time in sandboxes. It’s a good idea to go out in the environment and get new ideas to bring back to the sandbox. It’s also a good idea to bring the ideas generated in the sandbox into reality to fully test them and to allow others to appreciate what you’ve done. Otherwise, the sandbox you built becomes an ivory tower where you are completely isolated from the world around you.

This week, consider using the concept of sandboxes and sandboxing to create the space you need to succeed. Maybe it’s not that you need to know something new in order to live the life you love. it can be a simple matter of setting up the structures and boundaries to cultivate success.

image credit: trommetter

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