Essentialism
I read Greg McKeown’s Essentialism in 2022, and like most good books, it said out loud what I had been slowly doing anyway. Less, but better.1 Over the years, I have applied it to what I own, and lately, more to the technology I live with.
This is my working list. It is not a system, and it will keep changing.
Native, and open formats. I prefer native apps over web apps dressed up as apps, and files over databases I cannot see. If my notes, photos, and writing are in plain text, Markdown, JPEG, or PDF, I can open them in twenty years with whatever exists then. A format I can walk away with matters more to me than a feature I will use twice.
Fewer accounts. I have been stepping away from online accounts that mean nothing to me,2 the ones I signed up for to try something once, or because everyone was. I no longer need to be an early user. If something is good, it will still be there in a year, and I will hear about it from someone I trust.
Essential apps only. My phone and my computer each have a short list of apps I actually use. Everything else goes. If I need it again, I can install it again; that has rarely happened. Not everything needs an app anyway.
Fewer subscriptions. Every subscription is a small promise to keep paying attention. I have canceled most of them. The ones that stay are the ones I would pay for again, today, without thinking.
Cables, without guilt. I used to keep every cable and adapter “just in case.” Now I want to be able to walk away from them, without the guilt, and without that dreaded nostalgia of the drawer. If a cable has not been used in a year, someone else can have it.
A dumb home. Our home setup is simple, and mostly dumb, on purpose. A switch should switch, and a lock should lock. Automation is an optional layer on top, and it is OK if it does not work. Nothing in the house should stop working because a server somewhere did.
Layers, like an onion. I think of everything in layers.3 The core is plain and must always work. Each layer on top adds convenience, and each one can be peeled away without breaking the one beneath it. That is how I dress, and that is how I want my technology to be.
Hobbies I can walk out of. I still tinker, build, and try things, and I enjoy it. The rule is that I should be able to walk out of any of it, any day, and nothing important falls apart.
No regrets. If I die tomorrow, I would like the family not to inherit a puzzle. No accounts to untangle, no subscriptions quietly charging, no closet of mystery boxes. Just a few good things, in their places, with backups, that anyone can understand.
References and Inspiration
-
“Less, but better” is Dieter Rams’ Weniger, aber besser, the line he lived his design by at Braun. McKeown borrows it as the motto of the book. ↩
-
Every account is one more place for my data to leak from. I would rather assume it will, and keep fewer of them. ↩
-
I first wrote about the onion layers for security and privacy, where it is better known as defense in depth. The same thinking works for almost everything else. ↩