Paul McCafferty
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  • De-cluttering my Tech Gear

    A few weeks ago I decided to play the Minimalism Game. I chose a pared-down version lasting fourteen rather than thirty days. This was partly due to time constraints and partly a way of dipping my toe in the water.

    I completed the game, getting rid of a whopping 105 items in two weeks. One thing on day one, two things on day two and so on until I got rid of fourteen things on day fourteen. What struck me about the experiment was that many of the items of which I could easily rid myself were tech accessories. From old USB drives to charging cables, from travel adaptors to phone cases.

    Co-incidentally, today I was reviewing my Ten Ideas Every Day note, an occasional habit whereby I try to write down ten new ideas every day. James Altucher recommends this exercise as a way of getting more creative. And I have to agree that it works. Ninety-nine out of one hundred ideas I come up with are terrible but one isn’t. If I did the exercise every day for a year I’d have thirty-six great ideas!

    One of the ideas I’d captured was to limit my collection of tech accessories to what I can carry in one rucksack. I’m not sure what prompted me to come up with this but since doing the Minimalism Game it’s an idea I’d like to take further.

    In the next few weeks I will be going through all of my possessions that can be considered tech accessories and trying to reduce how many I have. It strikes me that if I can’t carry the items in one rucksack when am I ever going to use them. Of course I have to exclude non-portable items, but everything else I own that can be classified as a tech accessory has to be able to fit in my rucksack, or it’s history!

    β†’ 2:15 PM, Nov 20
  • Finished reading: Keep Going by Austin Kleon πŸ“š

    β†’ 12:43 PM, Nov 20
  • Finished reading: Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon πŸ“š

    β†’ 1:56 PM, Nov 17
  • Finished reading: Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder πŸ“š

    β†’ 10:22 PM, Oct 27
  • Finished reading: Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday πŸ“š

    β†’ 7:41 PM, Oct 13
  • Finished reading: Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn πŸ“š

    β†’ 3:16 PM, Sep 29
  • Finished reading: The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima πŸ“š

    β†’ 9:31 AM, Sep 21
  • Finished reading: The More of Less by Joshua Becker πŸ“š

    β†’ 7:54 PM, Sep 16
  • Finished reading: Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions by Ed Zwick πŸ“š

    β†’ 10:13 AM, Sep 1
  • Finished reading: The Match by Harlan Coben πŸ“š

    β†’ 3:05 PM, Aug 31
  • Finished reading: Simplify by Joshua Becker πŸ“š

    β†’ 5:39 PM, Aug 29
  • Finished reading: Being Elvis by Ray Connolly πŸ“š

    β†’ 7:17 PM, Aug 18
  • Finished reading: Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life by Joshua Fields Millburn πŸ“š

    β†’ 5:55 PM, Aug 14
  • Finished reading: Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino πŸ“š

    β†’ 7:35 PM, Aug 12
  • Finished reading: Elvis and Me by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley πŸ“š

    β†’ 7:39 PM, Jul 28
  • Finished reading: The Year of Less by Cait Flanders πŸ“š

    β†’ 1:42 PM, Jul 21
  • Finished reading: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt πŸ“š

    β†’ 7:30 PM, Jul 20
  • Finished reading: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro πŸ“š

    β†’ 8:24 PM, Jul 16
  • Finished reading: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion πŸ“š

    β†’ 3:03 PM, Jul 14
  • Finished reading: The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett πŸ“š

    β†’ 1:45 PM, Jul 13
  • Finished reading: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini πŸ“š

    β†’ 11:52 AM, Jul 13
  • In 2022 I decided to set a goal of reading 50 books a year for 3 consecutive years. I’m likely to complete my goal - I read 50 in 2022, 50 in 2023 and this year I’ve read 21 books so far. However I’ve read a lot of non-fiction and I’m beginning to feel like a receptacle for other peoples ideas, theories and advice.

    Next year I’m changing my approach. Instead of number of books I’m going to focus on quality. War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov and East of Eden are front of the queue. I intend to create a list of specific books I want to read during the year and the only non-fiction on the list will be biographies of people who interest me.

    β†’ 7:05 PM, Jul 10
  • Quite shocked to discover I had 155 third party apps installed on my iPhone. I’ve now reduced it to 140 and I intend to reduce it further. I’m curious how that compares with others…

    β†’ 8:59 PM, Jul 5
  • White Rock Beach

    β†’ 8:12 PM, Jul 1
  • Turtle watching in Kefalonia while we were on holiday last week

    β†’ 2:06 PM, Jun 30
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