How Anticipation is the Least Minimalist Emotion

Why your futuresense is handicapping your success.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Around two million years ago, we humans evolved the absolutely stunning ability to see things that were going to happen in our heads.

Two million years might seem like a long time, but as far as evolution goes we’ve just developed this miraculous ability. We’re still trying to grasp how to use our pre-frontal cortex properly.

This ability to project experiences upon ourselves can be quite useful. It allows me to try out blog post topics in my head before I write them. If they bomb in my head, there is a good chance you won’t want to read them either. This saves me the trouble of writing (too many) bad blog posts.

I like to call this our futuresense.

No other animal has this ability to anticipate the future quite like humans do. It’s hard to compare it with any other ability. I trust you can do this, and you know what I’m talking about.

This ability to futuresense is cool, but the problem is that it doesn’t always work right. In fact, a good deal of the time our futuresense is completely off.

We don’t know what will make us happy.

I gaurantee at some point in your life you’ve sat awake at night and anticipated a date that was going to change your life — and then it was a boring date. Or you couldn’t wait to get your hands on a new gizmo-gadget, but this didn’t end up solving all of your problems.

If fact, imagine you have this choice: Tomorrow you’re either going to win the lottery, or you’ll be hit by a bus and be paralyzed for the rest of your life.

Which one will make you happier? Easy choice, I know. You want to win the lottery.

Well, you guessed wrong.

Studies have been done on the happiness of these two outcomes. Statistically people who experience these two outcomes end up with the same level of happiness, whether or not they were hit by a bus or won the lottery. Shocking!

What this tells me is that we’re all too focused on a future happiness, and ignoring the fact that we’re going to be the same amount of happy in the future as we are now.

Why don’t we appreciate what we have now? Stop futuresensing, start enjoying this moment.

We can’t futuresense most outcomes.

Then there is the fact that of all the possible outcomes that you’ve been futuresensing, the chances of anything close to what you futuresense coming true are slim.

Many of us sit for endless hours pondering outcomes. ‘Well if I do this, x will happen and it’ll be a disaster.’

How many times has your futuresense told you that everything was going to be a big mess, and it wasn’t? Probably most of the time. The world isn’t really that scary a place, but your futuresense still thinks there are sabertooth tigers.

You can’t anticipate the future.

So we spend hours upon hours ‘making plans’ before we do anything. If what I’m telling you about the inaccuracies of our futuresense is true, then making plans is about the most absurd thing you can do.

By making a plan, you’re just sitting around contemplating a future that isn’t going to happen. Your end product is zero. This doesn’t mean you can’t have objectives, priorities, goals.

I’m just saying that playing out the final act in your head before you start working is a waste of time, and yet we spend so much time doing it.

Nothing actually happens until you take an action and do something.

You can’t futuresense outcomes at all, you can only waste your time. It’s the least minimalist emotion.

You have the power to decide to opt out of using your pre-frontal cortex before you do every little thing. This is not easy, but it helps once you recognize what you’re doing. You’re working yourself up into a big old panic attack over 75 futures that won’t happen.

Turn it off, start living your life.

My new e-book, The Art of Being Minimalist, is on sale now for only $9.95 for the first 1000 people who download it.

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How to Get The Art of Being Minimalist for Free

Download your free copy today for 24 hours.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

[Update February 2: Thank you so much everyone. The free link is now closed.

The last 24 hours has been a quite a day! I've received so many emails and tweets thanking me for the book. I'm continually amazed at how many people downloaded and enjoyed reading The Art of Being Minimalist.

You can purchase The Art of Being Minimalist here.]


I’m excited to announce that I’ve finished my first ever e-book, The Art of Being Minimalist.

And I’m releasing today, for free. But only for 24 hours.

About The Art of Being Minimalist

I’ve been working on this The Art of Being Minimalist since the start of this blog in October of 2009. It’s a real privilege to release it to you now.

Long-time readers will notice that I’ve incorporated some of the best material from Far Beyond The Stars in the e-book along with brand new material about living a simple minimalist life.

The Art of Being Minimalist tells the story of how I was able to leave my job successfully during a recession and set out on my own. It explores how living a minimalist life can help you achieve your own ideas of success. It explains how being minimalist can help you live a life that revolves around activities that you enjoy.

Here’s how you can help spread the word:

I hope that you will take 10 seconds or more of your time, in exchange for receiving this copy free, to help me out today.

  1. Retweet this on Twitter, so the amazing people who follow you can have a free copy.
  2. Share this on Facebook, so your friends can have a free copy too.
  3. Write a review of my e-book on your blog.
  4. Become an affiliate seller and put the link on your blog (earn 50% commission on every e-book sale.)
  5. Write a review of my e-book on your blog and sign up for the affiliate program with a link to the book.
  6. Interview me about the book on your blog or media outlet.
  7. Invite me to do a guest post on your blog about The Art of Being Minimalist.

(Please don’t do anything sketchy or spam people with links please.)

I’m an independent writer, and this blog is my primary source of income. Your help is the only way that readers find my blog, as always your help spreading the word is greatly appreciated.

If this e-book helps you, considering giving a small donation to support my writing.


Thank you.

Download The Art of Being Minimalist for free. [Update: the giveaway is now over. You can purchase The Art of Being Minimalist here.]

This link will be up for 24 hours starting February 1st 2010 at 6:00am EST.

You can visit The Art of Being Minimalist website here.

[UPDATE: There were a few broken hyperlinks in the initial free version. Please re-download if you're having any trouble clicking.

You can find Leo Babauta's A Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life here.]





The Minimalist’s Guide to Launching an E-Book

11 ways to use minimalist ideas to launch your e-book.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

As many of you know, I’m putting the final touches on my e-book The Art of Being Minimalist.

The Art of Being Minimalist is essentially the culmination of the ideas I’ve put out on this blog, along with my experiences traveling around the country over the last four months.

I’ve integrated some of the best articles from the blog (so you’ll recognize or have read some of the content before) with a lot of all new content that expands on my ideas.

How I went from zero to done in two weeks.

Some people have asked me how I went from having no plans for an e-book to selling in e-book in two weeks.

The truth is that I’ve always planned on having an e-book available through Far Beyond The Stars. This is why I’ve worked so hard on the content here, because I’ve wanted to put all of the ideas that I’ve developed here into an e-book.

The final product came together over the last two weeks. I felt like I had completed enough of the e-book to make it worth reading. So, I finished it.

I’ll be releasing The Art of Being Minimalist on Monday, February 1st at 6am.

I’ll be giving away the e-book for free for 24 hours, with the request that you spread to as many people as possible during that time. I’d rather this e-book be read by 10,000 people, than forcing 1000 people to buy it. All of you reading this now deserve to read it for free, because you’ve been so supportive over the last few months.

You’ve helped me write every word of this e-book, thank you.

I’m going to be offering the opportunity to earn 50% commission selling the ebook to everyone. There are many great minimalist blogs out there, I hope this e-book can help support your writing as well as my own.

Here’s what I’ve learned about launching an e-book. I hope this can help you with yours.

12 things I’ve learned about launching a minimalist e-book.

1, Make the end the priority.

My aim for this blog has always been to launch e-books, much like Chris Guillebeau does at The Art of Nonconformity. Every day I sat down at the computer, and when I wrote I was focusing on the end product. This created a consistency to my blog that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. From day 1 to day 124 this has been about The Art of Being Minimalist, and nothing else.

2, Write content that helps people.

Your blog and your e-book has to have the goal of helping people. Self-referential blogs are a dime a dozen out there on the net, and there is a reason why everyone’s eyes gloss over when they come across a diary blog. This blog and this e-book has always been about helping you, the audience. I want you to join me in living this life of minimalist freedom. I hope this e-book can help you achieve your goals.

3, Give yourself no other options.

I quit my job to become a minimalist and move to Portland. I’ve passed up other opportunities in order to focus on writing this e-book, because I knew I had to create something of value for the community. I also knew that I wouldn’t be happy if I wasn’t creating something that was going to build my legacy project. I was tired of my work going to benefit large corporations, so my focus has been on creating useful information for people. I hope this writing can help you. I also hope that enough people will buy it that I can support myself until I write the next ebook.

4, Write what you know.

This blog and the e-book are about the life that I live. I couldn’t have written this sitting at a desk in an office, because I wouldn’t have experienced the depth of being minimalist that occurs when you get on a plane with all of your stuff on your back. There is simply no way to have that experience while being safe at the same time. This writing wouldn’t have happened without making the leap to see if the life I dreamed about was possible. It is possible, I’ve been there.

5, Don’t stop doing the work.

This is probably the most important. Don’t stop working. I’ve never missed a scheduled post in the last 4 months. Once I settled on a publishing schedule of three articles a week, I didn’t take a break. I did the work every day towards this goal. If I knew I was going to have other commitments, or I’d be out of contact, I scheduled posts ahead of time. It’s a really bad idea to drop off the planet while trying to run a successful blog, if you do that the momentum is gone and you don’t have an e-book after 124 days.

6, Participate in the community.

I wouldn’t be here without the minimalist community. I’ve met some amazing people, and they’ve helped me more than they’ll ever know. See the blogroll on the side to meet some of these awesome individuals. I’ve received emails asking for help that made me think about how to help people better. I’ve received some emails challenging my positions, which made me think more about whether they were valid. I changed things if they were crazy. I stood fast if I found I could defend them. All because of the amazing people who read this blog. Thank you everyone.

7, Choose a mentor.

I also wouldn’t be here without the help of Leo Babauta, the author of The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life. 1, Because the sales of his e-book helped support me while I worked on my own e-book. 2, Because many of you probably found my blog through him. When I say mentor, I don’t mean that I bothered Leo all of the time for help. We’ve probably spent three minutes interacting over the last four months, mostly on Twitter. I wouldn’t dream of taking up any more of his time. He’s made the decision to link to my blog a few times over the last few months, and that has made a huge difference in how much traffic I’ve received. Thank you Leo.

8, Study the best.

I spent the last year studying e-book launches. I did this by watching some of the best. Darren Rowse of Problogger, Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Nonconformity, Jonathan Fields of Awake at the Wheel, and many more. These people are the masters of creating e-books that help people. I spent endless hours reading their material and learning how they do what they do.

9, Spend less time with hype.

I’ve noticed that many bloggers announce the e-books they’re working on around a year in advance, and then every couple of weeks they write a post about how hard it is to write an e-book. That’s cool, but it’s not helping anyone until you’ve finished it. I also have artist friends that spend years talking about “amazing projects that will rock the world” that they never finish. I figured the minimalist approach to launching a blog e-book would be to not speak of it at all until it was ready to go. Then launch quickly, decisively, and actually launch (most people don’t get to the launch point.)

10, Let people help you.

I’m so thankful that I’m not doing this alone. Chris O’Byrne was thoughtful enough to email me a few days ago offering to copy edit my e-book, he did a great job. As you all know, clean copy is definitely not my strong point. I’m so thankful for his help. I’m also thankful to all of the people who have offered to help market the book on their own blogs, such as Tammy Strobel, Jules of Stone Soup, and Chris Baskind of the upcoming blog The Minimalist Century. I’ll be releasing more details on how you can earn 50% commission selling my e-book on Monday. If you want to get on board earlier than that, drop me an email and I’ll get you what you need to make sales and get commission.

11, Ship the e-book.

As Seth Godin writes in his new book Linchpin: the enemy of shipping is the resistance. Making the decision to overcome all of the fears that are associated with publishing a work is hard. I’m sure there will be people who read this book and decide to criticize me for living the way that I do. I’m okay with that. I could have let fear overcome the decision to publish this, but I didn’t. I fought it, I wrote for hundreds of hours. I did all of the design and photography on this e-book. I set a date and I shipped.

On Monday it will be available for the world.

I believe this e-book will help a lot of people begin living a simple and more minimalist life. I hope that you will enjoy it.

Thank you for making this possible.

-Everett Bogue





The Unconventional Truth of Being Minimalist

There comes a moment in time for all of us when we realize the rules just don’t work anymore.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

There is a moment when we decide we can’t handle one more trip to Target, when we can’t buy another McChicken nugget. This is the moment when we begin to accept the unconventional truth of being a minimalist.

There is also a moment when we decide we just don’t want to go to work anymore. We don’t want to continue to be a cog in the system. We want liberation, not another flat screen TV.

We all could just as easily sit back and continue to be part of the problem, that’s easy enough. Just keep buying $2 goods from China in bulk. Put them in your closet, or fill up the other side of your two-car garage. That’s what they want us to do, that is what is easy.

But we don’t to anymore, so we decide to opt out.

I imagine the similar change in mindset happened to Jay Parkinson, when he decided to revolutionize the medical industry. He could have of simply joined part of the problem after med school, but he didn’t.

I imagine the similar change came over Mike Horn when he started What Is Fresh. He could have just kept on going to C-Town, and buying wilty greens, but he didn’t. Instead he created part of the solution: a website that tracks exactly which farmer’s markets are open in the city.

Now we don’t have to remember that the only good place in New York to get locally grown food is on Wednesday is Union Square, because we can just check.

The same change came over me, when I decided to limit myself to 100 things, and adopt a 30-day rule for my stuff. When I decided to live and work from anywhere.

The same change came over you when you stumbled across this blog, whether by word of mouth, or Twitter, or a link from another brilliant blog on the internet.

You decided to start accepting the unconventional truth about the stuff that’s cluttering your life. Physical, emotional, manifestations of time best spent.

You want to change, enough is enough.

But change doesn’t happen without action. You can read about being minimalist for ages, becoming minimalist is a different story.

I have a list of people living with 100 things on Twitter. It’s very short, I wish it was longer. I know there are more people out there like us, I know there are more people who have made this unconventional leap.

I need your help to find them.

  1. If you have less than 100 things, @evbogue me on Twitter and I’ll add you to this list.
  2. If you don’t have 100 things, retweet this on Twitter so people who do are able to find me.
  3. Follow the people on the 100 things list, because all of these people have made the leap. They are an inspiration.

The retweet button is either above or below, depending on if you’re one of the almost 1000 people (!) receiving free updates via RSS or Email, or you’re reading this directly on the blog.

Thank you for your part in this unconventional revolution. I could not do this without you.

–Everett Bogue





9 Ways to Distract Yourself with Work

There are a million things you can do right now instead of doing something important. How do you choose?

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

We are faced with unlimited choices in modern society.

There are millions of paths we can go down. One of the biggest questions inevitably is: which path do I choose?

Choose the one that is most important.

The most successful people I know aren’t on Twitter for two hours a day, they don’t watch TV three hours a day, and they certainly don’t own a Wii.

If you know what your important priority is, good. I applaud you.

If you don’t, your first priority needs to be figuring out what your priority is. Go on a vision quest. Lock yourself in a room. Read books. Anything until you have some idea, because until you’ve figured that out, it’s really hard to find an excuse to turn Lost off and do something worth your time.

What is important to me.

I have a little important project that I want to share with you: I’ve been working on a e-book on being minimalist.

Around a month ago I realized that I was writing too much material for this site, I had to publish it somewhere more important to me. An e-book seemed like a good choice. I hope you’ll agree.

I’ve never been a published author before, so I’ve been a bit nervous about how this e-book would turn out. So far I’ve been very surprised though. The words are just flowing out of me.

The e-book basically covers the minimalist journey that I’ve undertaken over the last year. It explains in detail the experiences I had ridding myself of my possessions, quitting my day job, and beginning to live and work from anywhere.

I hope this e-book will help a few more people take this rewarding journey.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll be sure to give you updates as the e-book progresses.

Obviously working on an e-book is hard. I’ve spent countless hours (probably in the hundreds) writing, designing, copyediting the final text. I want it to be perfect.

The constant threat of distraction.

Seth Godin writes in his new book, Linchpin, (aff link) which comes out Wednesday, the following:

“By forcing myself to do absolutely no busywork tasks between bouts with the work, I remove the best excuse the resistence has. I can’t avoid the work because I am not distracting myself with anything but the work.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this paragraph as I spend the hours making my e-book happen.

Many people would find something else to do, but I choose not too. I choose to make something important, a text that I hope will help people.

I could have watched TV, gone shopping, or had another cup of coffee. I could have complained about how hard it was to come up with ideas, or asked a dozen people to give their opinions on whether I’d fail or not. But I didn’t.

None of these things would have helped make this e-book a reality.

Here are a few techniques I’ve put into play to avoid distracting myself from the work.

  1. Incentives. Finish X before you’re allowed to have another coffee. When the going gets tough, I like give myself a little somehing that I’ll get once I’ve spent two hours working. Like I can’t have another coffee until I finish this blog post.
  2. Sitting in silence. Force yourself to sit in silence until your work is done. This is very difficult for many modern people, who are constantly updating the Twitter and digesting information. Don’t let yourself fiddle with a random thing until an idea comes to you, because it won’t come if you fiddle. Sit in silence until the idea comes, you’ll find that they come far more frequently.
  3. Continuing to do the work. When no ideas are coming, It’s important to keep on creating. There’s a common myth that creativity comes in waves, and you just have to catch the next one when it comes. Creativity doesn’t work like that though, so most people sit staring out a window waiting for the daemon to strike. It doesn’t just strike, you have to work for it. Sit and work for 30 minutes, and eventually your work will transition from crap to magic over that time.
  4. Take yourself away from distractions. If you’re having a hard time concentrating, consider moving away from distractions. I’ve been doing this by going to a coffee shop in Brooklyn, but there are endless other ways. Sit out in the back yard. Go work on a mountain top. Disconnect your Internet.
  5. Make everything else done first. I have two things that need to be done before I start working, the dishes and my email. I clean all of my dishes, and answer all of my email before I work. This is harder if you have a bottomless to-do list. I’ve programmed my life to have very few things that I’m required to do every day, so this works for me..
  6. Don’t allow multitasking. Don’t allow yourself to flip between Twitter and Facebook and chatting with your friend while you’re working. When you are creating something great, there is no way that randomly tweeting during the process will help make it better. Dividing your attention is project suicide.
  7. Recognizing the importance. I honestly can’t work on projects that don’t care about anymore. I’d rather starve than make another widget. The promise that I’m creating a work that is important in this moment in time has really kept me going. Are you working on what something that you feel is important?
  8. Deadlines. I’ve set the expectation that this my project must be done by the end of next week. I could have given myself an open deadline, but I feel like I’d then spend endless hours aiming for perfect. There is no perfect, there will be flaws, there will be things I wish I had said differently. The most important thing is to ship this project: 1, so it can start making good in the world; 2, so I can start on my next project.
  9. Off time. I don’t let myself do any work between 5pm and 10am. I know that sounds rediculous, but I’m convinced that workdays are too long, and we spend a good portion of them wasting time by procrastination and pointless busywork. I limit my work day, so I feel that I can barely get the goals I’ve set out to do. I finish the work without distraction, and then I stop. I read a book, I spend time with my girlfriend, I go for a walk, I cook dinner. The next day I can work again. The one exception is that I let myself write material at any hour of the day. Ideas come to me, I can have them finished and into Evernote in 15 minutes.

Here’s one more thing that occurred to me recently, I thought I’d share:

We’ve been taught over and over again that great work comes from thinking incredibly hard for a lot of hours. This doesn’t make sense to me.

I don’t think great work comes by thinking really hard about things that are hard to think about.

To be honest, this upcoming e-book is based on my experiences. The techniques that I’ve learned and employed. They are natural to me, because I’ve mastered them. If I was writing a book about something I didn’t know about, it would be difficult and I’d have to think really hard. I would make my brain hurt. But I know this stuff, so it comes naturally.

Great work doesn’t come from overworking the picture box in your pre-frontal cortex. It should just flow out of you without prior contemplation. It just comes out of you onto the page.

Important work should come naturally.

I have a guest post coming up on Zen Habits, in a few weeks (not sure exactly, Leo has a long guest post cue because of his site’s popularity) which deals more with creative flow. It’s quite a privilege to have a post up on Leo’s blog, I can’t wait until it posts. I hope you’ll subscribe to Zen Habits, if you haven’t already, so you don’t miss my post.

Anyway, it’s really important to remove anything that will stop you from achieving flow with the creation of your project. Distractions kill great work.

How do you remove distractions? What great work are you creating?

If this was helpful for you, please help spread the word in any way that you can. The buttons below are two good options.

Thank you.