Noisy Deadlines

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” – Douglas Adams

Book: Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists (Kindle Edition)

  • Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists
  • Print Length: 234 pages
  • Publisher: Asymmetrical Press; 3rd edition (January 1, 2014)
  • Publication Date: January 1, 2014
  • Read from April 22 to 30, 2016

I love reading about minimalism! I think it infuses us with a thought process that helps us be happier and mindful. It makes us think outside the box. And this book is very authentic. As Joshua F. Millburn says on The Minimalists podcast, this is a book about the big “WHY”. The “what” is just the easy part, it is the action of getting rid of our stuff, but:

“Minimalism doesn’t work like that. By simply embracing the what without the why, a person gets nowhere. It is possible to get rid of everything you own and still be utterly miserable, to come home to your empty house and sulk after removing all your pacifiers.” — Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists. Kindle Edition. pg. 70, loc. 848–850

The book is written in a kind of memoir format telling the story of how the founders of “The minimalists” blog began living more deliberately.

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So, the idea of starting a blog or online journal sparkled in my head by September, 2012. I was having a very boring day, so I decided to write down a list to shake things up:

  1. Start a blog to write things down and organize list(s) and thoughts about life, universe and everything.
  2. Reduce time browsing Facebook drastically: it is really depressing when you realize you’ve spent half an hour on Facebook and the most useful thing you saw was some news about a cool book coming out (and it was just some advertising, actually…). Note: I got inspired by this post @TheOnion — a must-read all you Facebook slaves!!
  3. Okay, there was just one more cool thing on Facebook today: some cute art saying that making lists keeps us creative. Yeah. Lists. Great.
  4. Say “no” more often. It is good.
  5. No multitasking. Multitasking is bad for your brain (there was some study I read about this, but I’ve lost the link, sorry).
  6. Assume my antisocial side, no need to feel bad if you don’t enjoy karaoke.
  7. Just say “no”.
  8. Sometimes people don’t care about what you find essential in your work, well f@#* them.
  9. Swim today. No excuses.

The list was called “A list out of boredom” when I wrote it. And after that I tried to continue blogging, but it actually didn’t work out very well. Looking back, I realize today that it was a difficult year for me. I had to make choices. I skipped many activities I usually enjoyed, but at least I had a main goal in mind, and I’ve managed to complete it. It was a big and long project: a master’s degree.

I was completely exhausted after this achievement! I needed some time to cool down and reorganize myself. I started making changes in my life, including routines, habits, life style and so on. I stumbled upon GTD, minimalism, paperless life, zero waste lifestyle, simplicity. And all those things changed my world view. And are still changing me.

I’m still in the process, and now I’ve found time and energy to dedicate myself to this blogging project.

In a way, I believe I’m going through some changes which, hopefully, are for the better. From the things I wrote on that list in 2012 I can say today that I have achieved them all, one way or another. I see that as a sign of growth and evolution. I’m very happy about it!

And maybe that’s what this blog is all about, besides thoughts about life, the universe and everything!

#writing #noisymusings #blogging

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

Book: The Art of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard

The Art of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard

  • Print Length: 308 pages
  • Atlantic Books (September 1, 2011)
  • Kindle Edition
  • Read from December 17, 2013 to January 15, 2014

— This is a curious book, because it mingles scientific approaches with Buddhism philosophy. It was actually my first contact with a book related to Buddhism. My main reason to pick up this book was that it brings some findings on the effects of meditation in our brains.

The chapters about meditation and inner peace were enlightening to me. This book has made me start a persistent meditation routine. I was amazed at how the practice of meditation can result in significant changes on monks’ brains who meditate for long periods daily. It brings information about the methods of meditation and also the fundamentals of Buddhism. There are examples of these fundamentals being used in cognitive therapies as a way to deal with anger:

“Buddhism takes a different position. It stresses enhanced awareness of the formation of thoughts, which allows for the immediate identification of an angry thought as it arises, and for its deconstruction the next instant, the way a picture drawn on the surface of water melts away as it is sketched. We repeat the same process with the next thought, and so on. So we need to work on our thoughts one by one, analyzing the way they emerge and evolve and gradually learning to free them as they arise, defusing the chain reactions that allow thoughts to invade the mind. This method, which presents some similarities with those developed in the West in the cognitive therapies of Aaron Beck and the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program of Jon Kabat-Zinn, is essentially centered on the present moment.”

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