Remembering Simplicity

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Now and then, I find it necessary to corral my fundamental simplicity messages – to refocus and try to remember what they are.

Simplicity, cheeky sod that it is, isn’t always simple. Like happiness, there are effortless moments. However, to fundamentally influence both simplicity and happiness, it requires reminding oneself and continually working at it.

Sure, the work should slowly succumb to the pleasure, but as with getting healthy after sickness, or picking up an old instrument you haven’t played for years, at first it is difficult and there are always reasons that your practice might slip awhile.

In both examples – the stiff muscles trying to get healthy, and the bum notes miss-hit – it takes some time and frustration to get over the reinitiating and into the joy.

What can we do each day to try to develop mnemonics, to help us remember? What is the simplicity equivalent of heading out for a jog, or sitting at the piano?

Certainly, at the moment I need them. Unlike most simplicity authors, I do not claim that this path is a one-way ticket in the right direction. The awareness of your goal perhaps makes it seem further away, especially during difficult times.

These should be little things that help us pick up momentum and to ease ourselves back into the frame. We can pick up the bigger items later. Here are some of mine:

1)    Find something you like doing that is entirely different from your normal day-to-day routine and helps you escape. Do it for just five minutes. For me, this does actually involve sitting at the piano, or picking up my guitar and playing and singing.

2)    Throw or give away three things that have been sitting around too long – perhaps a magazine you think you should read, or a book that’s been by your bed pressing into your dreams.

3)    Book at least one midweekly night in at home a week and do nothing, watch a movie, read a novel (not nonfiction) or spend time cooking.

4)    Go for a walk outside, even if it’s raining and it’s just round the block. This includes when you’re at work.

5)    At least once a day, fight the urge to check your phone or email for new messages. At least once a week turn your phone off for at least an hour while you’re still awake. One morning a week, don’t check your emails when you first arrive at your desk.

In one of my next posts, I’ll try to look a little further down the path and see if we can spot where this simplicity is heading. For now, take these baby steps with me and let’s see if we can get back on track.

Simplicity Vs Corporate

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I don’t necessarily let my clients know about this blog.

That leads me to wonder whether there is a fundamental disconnect – a tipple of schizophrenia in my life that I need to address.

If you need to ‘fake it to make it’, does that make you essentially a fraud?

Clearly, this website is in the public domain, as is my company. The more curious clients won’t struggle to find me here. I hope they like what they see. However, my sense is that many people I work with might not understand my simplicity quest.

The fact is that at this early stage of the business, I’d rather not scare anyone away by ‘coming on too strong’. If I’m professional and provide an excellent service, does it help my clients if they know that I am vagabonding and trying to maintain a work-life balance? If you’re talking to CEOs and heads of department, is it OK for them to know that you might be in your boxer shorts at the other end of the phone, living in a foreign city?

Simplicity might suggest to some that I’m not serious about what I do, or that because of my life choices and desire for fewer technological interruptions, that I’ll be less contactable.

Those who’ve followed this journey will know that simplicity should improve one’s professional life. That simplicity is about working better, more authentically and more intelligently.

I’d like to fuse these two streams and be able to demonstrate that taking time off work, being clear-headed, disconnecting and general simplifying all contribute to improving one’s working life and benefits those clients I work with.

Perhaps as things mature and I feel confident about a regular client base, I can be bolder. There’s something to be said for holding things back rather than upsetting people with your views, but there’s also something to be said for going balls out and expressing yourself overtly. Maybe clients would be more attracted to that honesty than the corporate veil that descends into boardrooms and cubicles worldwide that strips us of our personality. Perhaps I would win many more clients by being Simpletom than by being corporatetom.

As I look out at people here in Berlin (this post was written while I was there), I’m continually impressed by the fundamental honesty in their expression, their views and their unwillingness to toe-the-line.

For now, I’ll enjoy my clandestine Simpletoming and work on ways to begin the fuse the two…

My office window when I worked in Madagascar

Simply Loosing It

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Simpletom…?!?

Are you still there?

Is that you?

Oh dear.

This last couple of weeks, it’s just been Tom. Perhaps Stressedtom, Anxioustom or even Corporatetom…but frankly there needs to be some serious ember blowing on the coals of calm to be allowed to write here as Simpletom.

In addition, it’s entirely of my own doing. No external influence has induced this mania. There’s been no health scares, external issues, arguments, loves lost, keys dropped down drains, financial disasters or mishaps. Just a healthy dollop of self-induced pressure, layered-on expectation with a dash of flagellation.

As the cool of autumn creeps into the streets, is there a sense of another year passing that is igniting a sense of inadequate productivity?

Why do we tangle ourselves in these self-made balls of stress?

I’ve written here many times that more seems to get done when you let go of things than when you try to grab at things.

I’m no stranger to the world of hard work, but I lament the modern ideology that we must work faster and harder, despite our technological advances. Are many of our environmental disasters caused not because of basic need, but the hyped sense that we’re only human if we’re continually achieving?

This week I’ve achieved much, and yet nothing. I’ve made connections, sent mails and seen some chinks of light, yet I have nothing physical to show for my many hours spent tap-tapping away at this computer and yak-yacking away on the phone. The whole week I’ve been trying to do things more quickly, while lamenting my tiredness and inability to keep up a continual breakneck pace.

I’ve remembered to ‘manage my energy, not my time’, yet it still remains a concept rather than a reality.

It’s made all the more difficult by the knowledge that I ‘should’ be simplifying and that this momentum runs counter to my instincts, conflicting with the knowledge that building a business is difficult and needs utter focus. Sadly, my new entity isn’t a kinky platform that once built will scale exponentially – instead, it’s very much a ‘you get out what you put in’ type of business. That means every hour spent languishing and laughing could, through the lens of ‘success’, be viewed as a lost hour.

These last weeks I’ve not maintained the balance. When working, I’ve felt stressed at the weight of work to do. When not working I’ve felt guilty about the work I’m not doing. I’m neither here nor there.

Stress isn’t good for me. I feel breathless. No matter how long I sleep, I still feel exhausted. I just cannot enjoy myself.

Time for some self-medication (of the simple kind):

Please Stressedtom; remember that that one’s work is never…can never be done, because there is always more. You need to expect less, enjoy more.

You need to remember never, ever to compare yourself with others. They are exactly that – others – who have an entirely different physical, emotional and circumstantial makeup, which means that many of the things you covet in others are realistic, or would damage your own existence.

You need to remember that you’re all right sometimes. Flagellation isn’t constructive for growth.

You need to remember that Rome, or even Milton Keynes for that matter, wasn’t built in a day.

You need to remember what makes you happy.

‘Tis BE – not TO BE – that is the answer.

A reminder of less stressful times - an 'average' evening spent on the beach in Goa

Simple Wealth

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Simplicity does not mean you have to abandon material wealth. I’m still a firm believer in the idea that money is important when you earn it and use it correctly. Having more money than you need is a wonderful thing, if you understand what it is good for and what it is not.

Here are a few things I would like money for:

  • Living in a nice home. It doesn’t have to be big and ostentatious – but comfortable, warm, homely and not in danger of being repossessed. Preferably in a nice neighbourhood which is lively, safe and fun – it doesn’t have to be a posh neighbourhood, one with a strong community bond is best. I’ve always enjoyed my neighbourhoods when they’ve been less wealthy, offering a mix of people from different backgrounds.
  • Adventures
  • For starting up ventures and projects that help people
  • To enable you to do what you are passionate about
  • Good, healthy food
  • Experiences – the arts, festivals, city breaks, and interacting with nature
  • Freedom – to be spontaneous, or not to earn for a while if needed.
  • Learning and courses – from language to yoga, acrobatics to therapy. To afford the time, materials and lessons to learn.
  • Health – to have enough money to afford healthcare when needed.
  • Buying time – for love, for friends, for sharing, and for being generous when people need your help
  • Going to see people who you love
  • Books, music and films

What money is not for…

  • Showing off and ostentation
  • Watches, personalized number plates – items of zero utility
  • Labels – purchases whose only means of differentiation is the brand name, rather than the quality of the material
  • Club / First class travel – if you can’t last a few hours without creature comforts, you’ve lost your freedom to explore the world as it is, rather than as you’d like it to be
  • Expensive bars and eating in expensive places with people you don’t like – when the experience is more about being somewhere, than with someone, you’re missing a trick
  • Magazines, newspapers, and subscriptions.
  • Unnecessary gadgets and applications
  • Hit men

Think back to periods of your life when you had much and when you had little. Do you remember your possessions, or what you were able to do with them? Do you remember the car you drove or the journeys you went on?

Can you remember your best holiday ever – did you travel executive class (club or first) to get there? Given what a wonderful holiday it was, would you have rather spent an extra two to three days in a great hotel/bnb on arrival and taken some unpaid leave than have spent the additional £2k+?

I was once given the opportunity to live in an $8 million house in San Francisco with seven people in the nicest neighbourhood – instead, I went to live with three people in a $500k apartment. I’m reasonably sure I had a better time in the latter than I would have in the former, purely because of the neighbourhood, the experience and the people.

Paddling down the Mangoky River in the heart of Madagascar - a priceless adventure

Simply Go Away

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Think of all the migration, whether voluntary or involuntary that’s happened worldwide.

The term ‘Irish Good-bye’ (or shamrock shuffle) is, so I’m told, a phrase coined as a result of those Irish who left their home country without saying good-bye, so as not to have to deal with the upset of their family. A good (and logical) explanation, although I’ve since looked it up and cannot find that explanation anywhere. (However, I like it, so I’ll keep it.)

If the good-byes were painful, what about the arrivals? Those months in the port towns of the US, struggling to adapt and to carve out a life for themselves. My mind boggles at the number of people past and alive today who’ve been forced to find new lives in foreign places and the untold struggles that must have been suffered along the way.

Over the last three years, I’ve lived in four places for longer than a couple of months. I’m one of the privileged few – each time I’ve felt fortunate to be moving and done so out of choice – for fun.

Even among those voluntary émigrés, I sense a hint of respect when two people share their experiences living away for some time.

Some people are such natural vagabonds, or light-footed, that each move is a pleasure. Moreover, I’ve friends who’ve slid in and out of war-zones, dust bowls, refugee camps and chaos with alarming nonchalance. They are clearly made of sterner stuff.

Nonetheless I’ll stick by the belief that moving to a new place, especially alone, is not easy. Sure, it can be a incredible, unforgettable adventure, but there are lows as well as highs. Most people who’ve woken on Saturday morning in a foreign city without a single friend, a plan for weeks or return flight booked, will admit moments of bleakness, no matter how gregarious.

In San Francisco, the first of my moves, I struggled a little in the first few months. Speaking to those hardy adventurers mentioned above about my surprise at finding myself alone, I suddenly realised this was something they all had to deal with regularly. Often without complaining, or turning to e-mails, Skype and Facebook to allay their isolation.

Here in Berlin, two places later, the move has felt much, much easier. To make things work I suggest the following:

  • Sharing apartments with several locals
  • Buying a bike in your first few days
  • Saying yes to everything –however incongruent to natural inclinations
  • Asking friends to connect you with people they know in your new place
  • Learning to lean on new friends somewhat more than you would at home
  • Taking a friend or lover with you
  • Being happier alone

My point, if I have one, is that for all the glamour associated with jetting off to live in a faraway place and the Facebook stream of photographs of women and hot tubs, is that there are bleak moments of self-awareness.

These moments are good.

They remind you who you are when your circumstances and your life’s backdrop change. They cannot be gained by just going for a month’s holiday, or staying with people. In a changing environment, with various cultures, smells and rhythms surrounding you, you learn who you are. Sometimes a desire for change prompts such a move and that change is often a desire to ‘be different’.

If I’ve learned anything from my moves, it is that I’m the same wherever I am. Moving doesn’t change one’s insecurities, self-esteem, confidence, abilities or happiness. Perhaps there are temporary blips, blooms and blots, but eventually, the gravitational force pulls you back to you. No running away then. Your problems are faster than you are.

Many of you who read this are fortunate enough to have had, or have, the opportunity to voluntarily move abroad, knowing that there’s a base to return to. Think for a moment of those who haven’t. Then book that ticket, head away and enjoy the highs and the lows as a vagabond for a while.

You’ll never forget it, but you’ll never forget you.

Here's a photo of the deliciously delirious Dolores Park, taken on my first day in San Francisco

The Skype Drink – Technology Hacks

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Technology doesn’t always have to be a bane to us simple-seekers.

I learnt about a new phenomena this week, called the Skype drink. I doubt you’ll have heard of it because I’ve borrowed the expression from a friend who might be unique in his adoption of this adaptation

It entails setting up a time to have a drink with a friend who is a long way away and instead of doing it in a pub or bar – having that drink on Skype. He sits there with good friends sipping on a beer or cup of tea and sets time to have a chat, regardless of the usual ‘get the conversation done’ attitude that Skype can promote.

I love it when we break with the norm and use technology, or habits, in ways that help us rather than hinder us.

Rather than ‘like’ a friend’s post, or forward an email, here are a few things I like to do:

  • Write a note to a friend who I haven’t spoken to in a while, or have been thinking of to say ‘I love and miss you’. Perhaps followed by an encouragement that the person doesn’t have to respond
  • Ring someone for absolutely no reason at all
  • Write a postcard, even if I’m at home. There’s one friend (you know who you are), to whom I always send postcards that come from one place and then send them from another. i.e. pick up a postcard in Prague and then write it and get a friend to send it when she heads out to Beijing. Quirky, but fun!
  • Make a mix CD and send it, the days of mix tapes are gone, but the love of them aint. The reason why I have a house in Kenya is probably because I once sent a mix CD out to a new friend out there and that’s when she realised we were buddies.
  • Using an iPad as a table tennis bat*
  • Set up a reminder on your computer not to use your computer any more
* not true

B-Town, Simplicity and Authenticity

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I’ve been in Berlin now for all of three weeks, so this may well be premature, but this city seems to embody simplicity so much more than London.

I’m moderately hard on London in my posts. I wonder whether this is because it was the city I grew up in and, therefore, an expression of some internal discontent that is more about me than my birthplace? Or perhaps London truly is difficult and anti-simple? Most probably a mixture of the two.

Instead of being a bore and continuing the anti-London rant, here’s why Berlin seems so great, so far:

There is a latent authenticity, captured in the melting pots of the city, the attitude, in people’s clothing – a general sense that people are following their passions, without any regard for financial or status-driven motivations. The city seems filled with artists, musicians, poets and writers.

Living with housemates well into your 30s is not considered poor form. Being broke isn’t frowned upon. For some, it is a badge of honour overtly displayed to celebrate the focus on one’s integrity.

Whereas money is overtly displayed in London, Berlin has a healthy disregard for bling. Clearly Berlin is poor and that life can be difficult, but that doesn’t mean you have to go work for a bank.

In many parts of the city, Berlin is ugly, but that doesn’t mean that an individual cannot make their corner beautiful and different.

It may well be that it’s August and I’m a foreigner, but at cafés, bars and out on the streets, people seem remarkably friendly and much more willing to engage with one another. It is highly unlikely that in London a German would be welcomed into people’s social lives on first meeting, yet here people offer you friendship with genuine grace.

More important, wherever I go, people seem to be walking slowly, and enjoying themselves.

I’m told that the winter months are extremely difficult here. Perhaps I’m just witnessing the blooms of summer?

Nonetheless, with increasing love for the city, I wonder whether I’ll be here for a month or a year. Then I remember to try not to plan and let this next month pass before I step into the next.

Either way, Berlin seems like a never-never land, with a similar spirit to my beloved San Francisco, where people seem freer and happier, friendlier and ready to ‘carpe diem’. A place where life is lived.

Thank you B-town.

Simple Letter of the Week

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The Letter of the week in the week a few weeks back was a wonderful reminder to disconnect:

To the Independent:

“I went to hear James Cleick talk at the British Library a few weeeks ago about how we are constantly subjected to almost infinite amounts of information. I talked to him about this later, and we agreed that self-filtering is an inevitability. Not spam-filtering – self-filtering.”

“I walked home thinking about this, and had a Eureka moment somewhere around Clerkenwell. I threw my iPhone in a bin. I expect a homeless person now has it; best £500 I ever threw away.”

“The next day I bought a little Nokia with a decent-ish camera on it for £50, and downloaded my phone numbers onto it from my laptop. Then I took the laptop into my office and haven’t brought it back. I now live without a computer. It was like giving up drugs.”

“That Saturday I lay in bed reading a book. I have started scanning Time Out over lunch to see what’s on, and now go to see interesting stuff in the evenings as I used to. I’m not sure why this has happened, but it has. My partner has commented on how relaxed I am and how much more I seem to do in a day. I am aware of the common pitfalls of reformed addicts so I hardly ever mention this to my friends. The ones who have noticed think I’m a weird luddite.”

“I feel a little like the only AA person in a pub. They all sit checking their iPhones frantically every minute or so. And me? Well, I don’t”

Tim Pyne, London

Welcome Tim! Not sure about the tramp with the iPhone, maybe a charity would have been better – but sometimes you just don’t worry about what trousers you’re wearing when you have a Damascene moment.

There has also been other pieces recently about disconnecting. This from Rowdy Kittens is a nice piece, plus I noticed another article which mentioned that more and more people are disconnecting from Facebook. Bring it  the on. Or is that off.

Have a great bank holiday, UKers.

Simply Berlin and Vagabonding

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About five days ago I moved to Berlin, continuing my theme of vagabonding rather than settling. In the last three years, I’ve lived in San Francisco, Kenya and now Berlin is my home. The first two were both unforgettable and life changing, so I hope this meandering remains as positive as it has been.

At this stage in life, probably just short of the looming familiar responsibilities that tend to arise in one’s 30s, I’ve been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity for this exploration.

At times I’ve envied others whose businesses and relationships have gone from strength-to-strength. At others, I’ve figuratively pounded my itchy feet in the dust of freedom and lived in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if things had gone ‘to plan’.

One thing is for sure, I’ll never regret these last few years, even if I’m far from where my younger self imagined I might be and I suffer a fair few lonely evenings.

Although my new business is based in the UK, the nature of the work (almost solely phone-based) and my desire not to get sucked into London life, means that Berlin offered a inexpensive, accessible alternative.

Yet the changes haven’t been without strain. Starting a new business on your own is difficult. Really difficult.

It requires the dedication to get out of bed each morning and to self-motivate, even when there’s little other than your wavering self-belief to keep you at your desk. In an industry like mine, where you rely on just a handful of contracts each year, it also means you can spend many months working hard before your first cheque arrives in the mail.

It is an unsettling time – leaving you unsure whether it will be next week or five months down the line that you start to see tangible results. It involves trusting yourself, your offering and the process enough to keep you motivated. Sometimes, the insecurity can get a hold of you, but you have to persevere and push through the self-doubt.

My decision to move to Berlin is questionable. It could further exacerbate the feeling of alienation. In London I have friends, family and a home. Surely when you’re working alone and hard, it’s good to be around those who can support you?

This line of thought holds some truth. Yet there’s also something to be said for spicing up one’s environment and enjoying new perspectives to keep things fresh.

Certainly it’s possible that I won’t be able to enjoy the city as I might if I were here to study, or simply to learn German. That’s a sacrifice I’ll have to make.

Yet the benefit is that at the end of each day I can reward myself with something new and different. Being in a new place, there is a lack of community, but there is also a chance to learn on every street corner and meet new people.

I have no idea how long I’ll stay. At the moment, I’m committed to spending a couple of months and seeing how this vagabonding goes, and to try to make it work for the short-term. Who knows, the short might extend into the long.

All you can affect is the present.

***

POSTSCRIPT - I realise I’ve recently meandered into navel-gazing rather than simplicity tips for you, dear reader – so I will make an effort to try to add the existential with the practical. More to follow and I promise to be less of a curmudgeon about London and life in the UK (as one reader noticed – negativity isn’t the way). I guess after Africa you sometimes see things with fresh and alarming perspective.

Thanks for all your kind thoughts, support and wishes. It’s a surprise to me how many people actually read these ramblings.

iQuit (part 2) Simply giving up

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Not altogether.

iQuitting completely would be a little bit over dramatic.

But I’m iQuitting or at least reducing a number of habits. Bad ones.

I used to be a slave to e-mail. I still find myself checking the e-letter-box each morning with an alarming neurosis, but I’m slowly improving.

It feels good not to check mails for a few days. I press the delete key more often, and check e-mails considerably less.

I need to send a lot of emails for work, but I’m stemming the tide… slowly.

I used to have two iPhones, one for the US and one for the UK. I still have them because I don’t believe in buying new stuff for the sake of it – but I use ‘pay as you go’ and therefore can’t use any on-the-move Internet services. It’s just a phone. Sure, it’s like filling a Ferrari with chip fat, but it works. I save a small fortune in time and money. Plus in the rare moments when I’m on the tube or waiting for a friend I can sit and think or, god forbid, read a book (no, not a newspaper or magazine, which is just more of the same).

I used to answer these phones and reply to text messages immediately. Now I leave them off for hours, or fail to reply. My friends and even my clients still seem to tolerate me — in small doses.

I used to be up to date with all the programmes that helped my efficiency, whether they be faster browsers, databases or widgets. Now I use a moleskin to write most things down and tend to ignore new installments, or software. You should try paper — it’s amazing — you can draw anything without having to plug anything in, and it has all the latest features like crossing out, sketching, writing and tangible capabilities, only limited by your own skill and page-turning abilities.

I used to desire the latest, shiniest, fastest computer, but now I use the same Mac I’ve had for four years. I recently took it in to be serviced and Apple kindly (despite this rant, they’re still a good company) made it almost as good as new, replacing a number of worn out bits. I hope it lasts another five years. If it’s a little slower than it used to be, that’s just fine.

I used to have a huge hard drive with all my songs and movies on it, in case I needed something. Now I delete all films I’ve watched and all songs I don’t like.

I used to keep chat open in case people needed me. Now I always leave chat off, or remain invisible. They can call me.

I used to have a great stereo, fast car and all the gismos. Now I only have the things here in Berlin that I need, nothing more.

Here’s to iQuitting. I started a group on Facebook, relishing the delicious irony. It got a full eight members before I realised I had to administer every member. Then I realised how rubbish Facebook really was and decided to give up Facebook altogether. I tried deactivating my page, which felt good. Then I realised I don’t really abuse Facebook too often anyway, so I’m back, but Facebook-lite. If you’re reading this because of my link on my Facebook page, that’s automatic, by-the-by.

I truly believe that Facebook isn’t good for us – here’s an interesting article explaining why. 

This week I’ve started purging my Twitter account of useless followers. A few thousand down already, I’m going to see if I can get down under a hundred.

There will be more tales of deactivation shortly. First, I must revel in the sense of liberation I have from iQuitting.

Try unplugging, removing and ignoring.

It’s time to iQuit, bit by bit.