Quotes About Simplicity

Who could justify trading a lifetime of stress and backbreaking labor for better blinds? Is a nicer-looking window treatment really worth so much of your life?

I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. Knuth

Thoreau demonstrated similar concern, famously writing in Walden that "we are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish." They elaborate that execution should be aimed at a small number of "wildly important goals." This

Beautiful code is short and concise, so if you were to give that code to another programmer they would say, "oh, that's well written code." It's much like as if you were writing a poem.

The Minimalist Technology Screen To allow an optional technology back into your life at the end of the digital declutter, it must: Serve something you deeply value (offering some benefit is not enough). Be the best way to use technology to serve this value (if it's not, replace it with something better). Have a role in your life that is constrained with a standard operating procedure that specifies when and how you use it.

the cumulative cost of the noncrucial things we clutter our lives with can far outweigh the small benefits each individual piece of clutter promises.

recognize a truth embraced by the most productive and important personalities of generations past: A deep life is a good life.

My author website doesn't provide a personal e-mail address, and I didn't own my first smartphone until 2012 (when my pregnant wife gave me an ultimatum—"you have to have a phone that works before our son is born").

As I argued, when you delegate productivity decisions to the individual, it's not surprising that you end up stuck with a simple, flexible, lowest common denominator–style workflow like the hyperactive hive mind.

I'm usually facing someone who wants to send twenty-nine emails to fix a problem." His solution is simpler: "Go talk to them.

After embracing minimalism, Dave reduced his persistent social media use down to only a single service, Instagram, which he felt offered significant benefits to his deep interest in art. In true minimalist fashion, however, Dave didn't settle for simply deciding to "use" Instagram; he instead thought hard about how best to integrate this tool into his life. [...] making the experience of checking his feed both fast & meaningful.

The goal of this book is to make the case for digital minimalism, including a more detailed exploration of what it asks and why it works, and then to teach you how to adopt this philosophy if you decide it's right for you.

A deep life is a good life.

Do fewer things. Do them better. Know why you're doing them

Early in his visit he asked a senior monk, who had been living in a similar cabin for over fifteen years, if he ever got tired of walking the trail connecting the residences to the main building. "I'm only just starting to learn it," the monk replied mindfully.

The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.

The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish." They elaborate that execution should be aimed at a small number of "wildly important goals.

A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.

I'll live the focused life, because it's the best kind there is.

The declutter acts as a jarring reset: you come into the process a frazzled maximalist and leave an intentional minimalist.

The complex reality of the technologies that real companies leverage to get ahead emphasizes the absurdity of the now common idea that exposure to simplistic, consumer-facing products—especially in schools—somehow prepares people to succeed in a high-tech economy. Giving students iPads or allowing them to film homework assignments on YouTube prepares them for a high-tech economy about as much as playing with Hot Wheels would prepare them to thrive as auto mechanics.

Digital minimalists see new technologies as tools to be used to support things they deeply value—not as sources of value themselves.

As the authors of The 4 Disciplines of Execution explain, "The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish." They elaborate that execution should be aimed at a small number of "wildly important goals." This simplicity will help focus an organization's energy to a sufficient intensity to ignite real results