The simplicity I’m aiming for isn’t the black and white simplicity before thought, i.e. ignorance, but the simplicity that comes after the far side of complexity, i.e. clarity after thought.

In this series, I want to explore simplicity through the eyes of different people. Hopefully, this will enrich our ideas about simplicity and help answer those questions for both you and I.

What is Simplicity According to Zen?

Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism that focuses on direct experience of its teachings. In fact, its legendary founder Bodhidharma asserted that Zen is a “special transmission outside scriptures” which does “not stand upon words.”

While Zen has a lot to teach us about simplicity, I’m going to draw specifically on two aspects linked to Zen that I first learned about from the seminal book Zen and Japanese Culture by Dr. D.T. Suzuki.

Wabi – the Love of Poverty

What is wabi? Dr. Suzuki says that it translates to “aloneness”, “poverty”, or “not to be in the fashionable society of the time.” He puts that wabi “characterizes the entirety of Japanese culture reflecting the spirit of Zen.”

To be poor, that is, not to be dependent on things worldly – wealth, power and reputation – and yet to feel inwardly the presence of something of the highest value, above time and social position: this is what essentially constitutes wabi. Stated in terms of practical everyday life, wabi is to be satisfied with a little hut, a room of two or three tatami (mats), like the log cabin of Thoreau, and with a dish of vegetables picked in the neighboring fields, and perhaps to be listening to the pattering of a gentle spring rainfall.

Dr. Suzuki tells a story of Sen no Rikyū, the founder of the art of Japanese tea as it is practiced today, that helps illustrates the idea of wabi.

A teaman of Sakai owned a caddy of a special pattern entitled “Unzan Katatsuki.” As the ware was quite well known among teamen and prized by them, the owner was naturally proud of it. One day he invited Rikyū to tea and used this caddy. But Rikyū did not seem to be very much concerned about it and left the house with no comments. The owner was upset over this, and immediately broke it to pieces by striking it against the gotoku, and sighed, “What is the use these days of keeping an article not at all approved of by Rikyū?”

A friend of the owner’s later collected the broken pieces of the caddy and glued them together carefully so as to restore the original pattern. The work was done with a great deal of skill, and he thought the mended caddy was not after all a poor specimen. He conceived the idea of inviting Rikyū to tea and using the caddy again to see what Rikyū would say about it.

While the tea was being served, Rikyū’s keen eye at once detected the same old caddy now pieced together. He said, “Is this not the same caddy I saw elsewhere some time ago? When it is repaired like this, it has really turned into a piece of wabi.”

Photo by Est Bleu2007.

Sabi – Rustic Simplicity

Another aspect of Zen that is closely linked to wabi is sabi; which “consists in rustic unpretentiousness or archaic imperfection, apparent simplicity or effortlessness in execution, and richness in historical associations (which, however, may not always be present); and lastly, it contains inexplicable elements that raise the object in question to the rank of an artistic production.”

Another story of Sen no Rikyū helps us to understand sabi.

When Rikyū was invited to a first winter tea party somewhere, he was accompanied by his son-in-law. When they stepped into the court, they noticed the gate hung with an ancient-looking door. The son-in-law remarked that it savored highly of sabi. But Rikyū smiled somewhat sarcastically: “This is far from savoring of sabi, my son; it is on the contrary a most expensive piece of work. Look here closely. Such a door as this is not to be found in the vicinity. It must have come from a remote mountain temple far away from the human world. Think of the amount of labor to bring it here, for which the master must have paid dearly. If he had understood what genuine sabi is, he would have searched for a suitable door ready-made or made to order among the neighboring dealers, and would have had it pieced together with an old board found among his premises. Then the door fixed here would certainly savor of sabi. The taste shown before us is not a genuine one.” It was thus the son-in-law was taught the art in a practical way.

Photo by mandolux.

Simplicity is Imperfect

I take it Dr. Suzuki wasn’t suggesting that to pursue the simple life, we should all seek to be poor. Rather, he was saying that “however ‘civilized,’ however much brought up in an artificially-contrived environment, we all seem to have an innate longing for primitive simplicity, close to the natural state of living.”

We see that simplicity according to Zen – from the aspect of wabi-sabi – means a quiet appreciation of simple moments & things, and that simplicity may be imperfect but not without quality.

The door which Rikyū criticized failed to have this quality because it had tried too hard to get it. So did the well-known tea caddy that failed at first to get Rikyū’s attention. But once the caddy had been broken and carefully repaired, it effortlessly embodied wabi-sabi from its being. Yet it wasn’t enough that it had been glued together and become imperfect, the care and attention that was put into its repair added a touch of rustic quality to it that so charmed Rikyū.

It is this sense of quality in an imperfect simplicity that is best illustrated in this last story about the tea-master Rikyū.

When Rikyū was still apprentice at the art of tea, his master told him to sweep the roji – the court attached to the tearoom. The roji had already been swept clean by the master himself. When Rikyū came out, not a speck of dust was to be found, but he at once read the master’s mind. Shaking a tree a little, he let a few leaves fall on the ground. This pleased the master.

Photo by amy’s pocket-camera.

Last week, Life Coaches Blog’s server on Site5 broke down and we became inaccessible for a few days. To their credit, Site5 has apologized and given half a year’s worth of free hosting for all sites that were affected.

While that was going on, I was in Shanghai for a working trip and couldn’t be online to check for updates. Thanks to all my friends who messaged me to ask about what happened to Life Coaches Blog, I appreciate it.

My life’s been shifting the last few months, as I found myself feeling dissatisfied and thoughtful. Questions like; what’s really important to me? with the limited time and energy I have left on this planet, what do I want to commit it to? and ; what would make me happier? ran through my head.

The more I thought about it, the more Life Coaches Blog came up short. I don’t hate it, I don’t want to give it up completely, and I never want to stop growing. But LcB has been growing more irrelevant to me and I can’t deny it.

In the past, I could devote many hours to LcB, but I no longer want to. Instead of rushing to cram everything into my schedule, I want to have time to read, to spend with my loved ones, to recharge. Instead of staying busy all the time, wishing there was more time to do what I wanted, I want to do less things, so I can do the things that really matter to me.

And more importantly, I want to talk less about personal growth, and do more personal growing.

Personal development has become a sort-of pseudo-philosophy for the modern age. While it promises to explain everything in x number of easy steps, not everything can be easily explained, and not a single soul has all the answers.

I can’t tell you for sure why I feel this need to streamline my life, to drop the mundane and some not-so-mundane things to free up my time and energy, why I feel this need to release and let go of more commitments and take on less. I can’t explain it to you, but in my gut I feel it, and I feel it is for the best.

What Would Make You Happier?

This really wouldn’t be a Life Coaches Blog post if there wasn’t some life coaching, would it?

If streamlining your life sounds like something you’d like to do, here are some suggestions that might help you along the way.

1. Clarify Your Values

What’s important to you in your life right now? Your family, your career or your health? Somewhere down the line, there’s going to be conflict, so the clearer you are about your values the easier it’ll be for you to make the judgment call on what to sacrifice.

2. Declutter Your Life

Are there old commitments dragging you down? It can be anything; old clothes, old appointments, that call you should have made ages ago. Close the loop if it’s still relevant, if not decide to let it go once and for all.

3. What Would Make You Happier?

It’s more useful to think of happiness as a continuum you travel along rather than a fixed point to be reached and stopped at. If you’re stuck for choice between hanging on to something and letting it go, ask yourself which choice would make you happier. Don’t confuse this with the question of which would give you more pleasure, but instead which choice would give you more pleasure and meaning now and in the future.

Life Coaches Blog will Go On

Despite what it may sound like, Life Coaches Blog will go on, but at a slower pace from before. From the experience of the last few posts this seems to have the effect of creating more well-thought out articles, as I now only write about what I really, really want to write about.

So it’s a win-win situation, you win because you get to read better articles, and I win because I have time to go live my life

See you soon.

Taking the time to be. Absolutely adorable photo by tanakawho.

The GTD wallpaper created by Stefanos Karagos, which breaks the GTD process down into a simple graph. Click for a larger version.

Why Get Things Decluttered?

David Allen, founder of GTD, likes to make the point that the stuff in your life occupies psychic RAM – the problem is that most people don’t process that stuff properly and so it creates unnecessary stress.

In the same way, the stuff you own doesn’t just occupy psychic RAM in your head, it occupies real physical space in your house. But is that stuff relevant to who you are and who you want to be? Do you still have copies of CDs you haven’t heard in over 10 years, or books about subjects you’d never be interested in again?

Besides organizing your time, GTD is also about defining what things mean to you and placing them into appropriate places (the GTD contexts). You don’t need to be reminded to buy milk when you’re in the office, so in GTD you have specific to-do lists for different places and times.

Getting things decluttered doesn’t just mean deciding what to do with your stuff, but also what your stuff means and where it belongs. Giving things a proper place helps you file and find them easily, which also cuts down on the stress in your life.

Step One: Where To Put Your Stuff?

It helps to have what GTD calls a single collection point, or an inbox for your incoming stuff that you can continuously clear. GTD strives to have a clear inbox because that means the incoming stuff in your life has been clearly put into the places they belong, and there they can be easily maintained.

I know it’s strange to think of something as ethereal as an email inbox in your room, but just think of it as a place you put all your incoming stuff. It has to be in a convenient place (so you can use it easily) and easily seen (so you can’t escape it).

For example, I have a couple of nice plastic trays I got from MUJI (one of my absolute favorite stores) for my inbox. But after a few weeks, I realized it wasn’t working, they looked great on my desk but after stashing stuff inside the trays I would forget about them.

I stumbled upon a much easier hack, the nice big table-space in front of the trays. It was easier to use, I would just dump all my incoming mail, documents and stuff on it. Because it was right in plain sight, I couldn’t escape any growing piles of clutter. And because I’m such a neat-freak, I knew it would compel me to act on them, and I do.

Step Two: Is This Actionable?

Stuff comes into your life, whether it’s a proposed meeting, a stray piece of paper or stuff that’s already there like the old clothes in your cupboard that you hardly put on anymore. What do you do about them?

In GTD, the first step you take whenever you approach stuff is to ask if it’s actionable: can you, or do you want to take an action on this? When decluttering, what action can you take on your stuff to clear or organize them?

For example, with bills, I act on them by stashing them in my daily bag, so I will pay them the next time I’m out. With old clothes, you can ask if you’ll ever act on them by wearing them again.

Sometimes the ‘is this actionable’ question doesn’t apply, then I like to ask myself another question; ‘does this item add to my life or take away from it?’, or ‘does this thing help me move closer to the vision I have of my life?’

It’s like Peter Walsh said in this interview with Unclutterer:

It’s not about the stuff – it’s about the life you wish to live…It’s important to remember that what you own and where and how you live is a reflection of the person you are. A clutter-free, organized life is about living in a way that helps create your best possible life – happy, stress-free, creative, motivated and enriching. Happiness can’t be found in the quantity of stuff we own, it’s in the quality of relationships that we form. What we own should foster that life, not be a hurdle to it.

This is the way I decided to throw away a whole collection of old books that were about subjects I was no longer interested in anymore. If you have something that you won’t act on again, or don’t add to the quality of your life anymore, then move them to the next step of GTD: trash them or stash them.

Step Three: Stash or Trash?

In GTD, after deciding something isn’t actionable you can either trash it, file it in a Someday/Maybe corner or keep it for useful reference.

When decluttering, I like to add in an additional, environmentally-friendly step: recycle it. So instead of just junking something, stop and ask yourself if you can sell it, give it away or bring it to a recycling bin.

If you decide to put it away because it still has relevance for you – you might maybe someday use it – or for reference like old books or mail, the most important step is to have handy, defined places to keep your stuff. Clothes go into a clothes drawer, old bills go into a clearly-labeled file, old CDs go into the same box.

GTD to Getting Things Decluttered: The Summary

Normanic‘s lovely, decluttered workspace.

At its heart, the GTD process to Getting Things Decluttered is a way to decide and find out what the things you own mean to you. Are they still relevant? do they help you move towards the life you want, or do they belong to an older vision of you? How can you clear it from your inbox – do you act on it, find a place for it or remove it entirely?

Some people think that a decluttered life means a life utterly devoid of belongings, but I don’t think of it that way. To me, a decluttered life is pretty lean, but only because you keep things that are relevant and add color to your life. You put them in places that make sense and where you can find them easily, and you don’t allow irrelevant things to take your space and time – a very GTD philosophy, don’t you think?

Whatever system you create in your life to handle your stuff, keep it as simple to use as possible. Like a machine, anything that has more parts will have more points of failure, the easier you make it to declutter and organize your things the more you’ll be sure you’ll do it.

Useful Ways to Get Things Decluttered

Unclutterer is the blog about getting and staying organized, and one of the favorites on my lean reading list. Erin from Unclutterer has also written posts for Zen Habits, which has more than a few useful posts on decluttering and the mindset behind leading a simple life, like a guide to creating a minimalist home and a minimalist’s guide to fighting (and beating) clutter entropy.

To find out more about GTD, visit David Allen’s official website, 43 Folders’ Best of GTD series, or buy the book Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

But it wasn’t easy. In fact, I dug up books that I hadn’t seen in years, and if you know me, you know I have a great fondness for books. I grew up with some of these books and boy, did they bring back some memories.

I was having a tough time clearing them out, which I realized was strange. Here I was; suddenly feeling nostalgic for things I hadn’t seen in years, when in all these years previously I’d nary given them a second thought.

I realized it was the past I was feeling nostalgic over, and these books had just triggered that for me. While I deeply treasure the happy memories growing up with these books gave me, the past was just that…the past, and I figured I’d always feel nostalgia for the past. I couldn’t keep every old thing with me simply because it reminded me of the past, and certainly not children’s books which I no longer read.

Have you ever had the experience of throwing out something that was a link to your past? What made you decide you could let it go peacefully?

P.S. I threw out the books, but my mom asked and my neighbor’s little girl took them home.

For days before the new year, we sweep out the house, wipe down corners that haven’t been seen for ages, throw out old stuff and buy new ones. It’s an old tradition to start off the new year with a clean house and new clothes, and there’s a Chinese saying that translates to; ‘if the old doesn’t go, the new doesn’t come‘.

If that isn’t reason enough to declutter, I don’t know what is!

Cleaning Out My Bookshelf

I started cleaning early this year, because I knew I wanted to purge and purge big, in line with one of my resolutions to streamline and simplify my life. The first place I started with was my bookshelf, which is the biggest piece of furniture in my room. I’m not someone who’ll spend a lot on clothes, or food, or drink, but I buy books easily.

These are the results (so far):

And those are just the starters!

So how did I pick which books to let go of? It’s really the same process I go through to throw out old belongings that don’t serve me.

3 Ways to Decide What to Declutter

1. If I hadn’t used it in a long time, it’s time for it to go. If I hadn’t read it in a while, it’s most probably true that I won’t be reading it again.

2. When I no longer find it useful. I’ve learned and grown through the years, but some of my old books haven’t grown with me. They were useful then, but no longer useful to me now.

3. When I bought it, didn’t use it and most probably never will. The amount of information out there that wants your attention is infinite, whereas your attention is not. While it’d be great to read all the books I want to read, that’s not a realistic goal. Is this book really something you want to spend your time and energy on, when you could be spending that time and energy on something else?

And finally, I use these quotes from Peter Walsh – author of It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff – as guiding principles.

From his book:

The key to getting — and staying — organized is to look beyond the stuff and imagine the life you could be living. Put most simply: It’s about how you see your life before all else.

From an interview with Unclutterer:

It’s not about the stuff – it’s about the life you wish to live…It’s important to remember that what you own and where and how you live is a reflection of the person you are. A clutter-free, organized life is about living in a way that helps create your best possible life – happy, stress-free, creative, motivated and enriching. Happiness can’t be found in the quantity of stuff we own, it’s in the quality of relationships that we form. What we own should foster that life, not be a hurdle to it.

Helpful Links to Start Decluttering for the New Year

Want to start decluttering your own home for the new year, but not sure how to get started? Blog Unclutterer has a great archive of neat tips and tricks to get yourself organized and sorted out.

1. First, get inspired. Unclutterer has a Unclutterer Flickr group full of beautiful homes that sport the clean, uncluttered look. I love looking through the photos to drool over and get ideas from.

2. CNN provides some helpful tips too at Outta here! Professional purgers’ organizing tips (via Unclutterer).

3. The New York Times has a whole wealth of articles (listed at Unclutterer) about uncluttering your life.

4. In case you’re feeling overwhelmed, Unclutter gives you some words to keep yourself motivated.

Benefits of uncluttering can include being better organized, less stressed, and having fewer things to clean. When you walk into a room, you’re able to relax because there is a place for everything and everything is in its place.

5. Another good idea is to write down a list of what your uncluttered dream home would look like.

6. You can also read about GTD expert Merlin Mann’s War on Clutter, his Tools to Purge Big and his War on Clutter inspirational links.