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!
