Category: Lifestyle

This post has been first published 11th May 2018. Another old one but also belongs here.

The life changing magic of not giving a f**k

So I left off with my last post mid 2015, when i started my dream job as a consultant, in small consulting company. I was in love with my job. I liked the variety, I adored my colleagues and I had an amazing manager. My job was very demanding but I loved it. I was living with my partner in The Hague with our two cats and we were searching for an apartment to buy in Amsterdam, where we would start a new family.  

Let’s fast forward a year and a half to December 2016, and make a similar summary. I’m still a consultant but I’m not really able to find the same joy in it that I used to. I’m living in Amsterdam on my own, in a rented apartment. I have just sold the apartment I have bought with my ex. – At least some positive in the story, we made quite  some profit. But not something I would recommend, it’s kinda emotionally intensive.

I live on my own but I’m not single. After a thorough exploration of the Dutch dating scene, things are turning pretty serious between me and one of my okcupid dates – another example of a freakishly good algorithm. 

So what happened in between? Looking back now it seems that the reason I was struggling to create a vision of my ideal lifestyle was that I was taking my existing life as basis. No future extrapolated from this resulted in anything I liked to look at. I have seen people in my surrounding having families next to 9-5 jobs and I could not see myself being happy with a similar lifestyle. So I have decided to make some quite drastic changes.

But since this post is also about minimalism let’s get back to the KonMari method. During the period of turmoil, I went through a couple of more rounds of clean up, throwing away more and more mind cluttering objects. I found that answering the questions, ‘Does it spark joy?’ with every object, helped me to understand what are the things in my life that are really important to me. 

Having less items also made life so much more simple, in many aspects, a  smaller wardrobe size being number one. If you happen to be a girl, thinking about minimalism and clothes most likely sets off a full blown red alert in your head. ‘I cannot live without my clothes!’. To be able to explain why i think you should still consider it I first have to tell about another life changing book, the title of this post: ‘The life changing magic of not giving a f**k’ by Sarah Knight.

I came across the book at Schiphol Airport in December 2016, as I was flying out to Stockholm for work. It immediately grabbed by attention because of a book I read earlier, written by a Japanese lady, Marie Kondo, titled The life changing magic of tidying up. See Part I. of this post.

As the title already suggest the book was inspired by Marie Kondo’s book but it expands on it. Think about the KonMari method as a conscious decision on how you allocate the space in your home between your objects. Sarah Knight’s book describes a method on making the same conscious decision on how you allocate your time and energy – or in other words, fucks – among all the things you are expected to do. Because you will need to chose. Unless you’re some magical creature, the amount of fucks you can give (or in other words, your time and energy) is limited, so you need to use it wisely.

Having a lot of clothes not only takes a lot of space in your home, it also provides you with a lot of options to wear. Which is great on one hand, but on the other hand takes a lot of energy – at least for me. Maybe not a lot of time, but honestly, for me spending mental energy on a daily basis on what to wear, is not a good investment. It could be for you, this is a matter of personal choice and preference. 

Don’t get me wrong. I was not planning to lower my fashion standards. I still wanted to look good only with less investment from my side. So i started to think about going towards a more uniform-like dressing code. Yes, like Steve Jobs. Or Elon Musk. 

And omg! I totally get it why they do it. The difference it made! The first change I adapted was that I would only wear black for work and only items that do not require ironing. This simple change on it’s own meant I needed to do one laundry and I was set for work for the whole week. Application of the KonMari method meant I only kept my favourite items, so every day became a feel good day, wearing something I adore. Minimalism also made a more conscious consumer. I used to be such an impulse buyer!

Just as I decided spending time on picking out what to wear was not a good investment of my energy, I applied the same technique to some other activities and started to refuse to go to social events i didn’t really feel like attending, using the ‘not sorry’ method. 

This exercise helped me to get my priorities right, and lead me to a lifestyle where I had more time and energy for the things I really wanted in my life. But my journey continued further, so watch this space…

Comments and questions are more than welcome. Thank you for reading. 

This post has been first published on 25th April 2018. Bit of an old one but belongs here.

The life changing magic of tidying up

 It all started with Marie Kondo’s book, ‘the life-changing magic of tidying up’, in January 2015. I am not even sure any more how i came across the book. Probably searching for ideas on Pinterest, or maybe it was a recommendation by Amazon – recommendation algorithms these days are sometimes so good that it’s freaky.

 What I remember however is, that I was facing a difficult career decision at the time. I was about to turn 34, working for a multinational company as a application manager. I quite liked my job but we were told that our department will be eventually moved to a different city. This meant I would either need to relocate – to which I couldn’t get my partner’s agreement –  or I would need to switch roles within the company – which option proved to be a dead end after all. So there was no future for me the company but my team was facing difficult times with the change and my manager really wanted me to stay and help him through the transition.

 To make my dilemma even more difficult, I was very hesitant to switch jobs as I was hoping we would start a family with my boyfriend soon and switching jobs (again – I’m notorious job hopper) would have meant I need to wait at least another year.

 I felt confused and I didn’t really know what I wanted, so I decided that cleaning up my apartment would help me to clear my thoughts and understand better where my priorities lie. 

 The reviews of the book were amazing. Marie Kondo herself sets the bar very high already in the foreword. “From the exploration of the art of organizing and my vast experience of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in your lifestyle and perspective. It’s life transforming.”

 I  can’t say I believed the method would change my life, but I felt lost, I so wanted clarity! I didn’t really feel I needed a new perspective, I knew where I was going. At least that’s what I thought at the time. I felt cleaning up my apartment will provide me with some much needed sense of direction and help me regain my balance. 

The KonMari method on it’s own is quite simple. There are six rules: RULE 1 – Commit yourself to tidying up
RULE 2 – Imagine your ideal lifestyle
RULE 3 – Finish discarding first
RULE 4 – Tidy by category; not by location
RULE 5 – Follow the right order
RULE 6 – Ask yourself if it sparks joy

 Funnily enough the part that was most difficult for me was rule 2. This meant imagining ideal lifestyle to the detail. Just to give an idea how clear this image should be, let me give the example from the book.

“One client in her twenties defined her dream as a ‘more feminine lifestyle’ … 

What do you mean by feminine lifestyle I [Marie Kondo] asked. She thought for a long moment before finally responding.

‘Well, when I come home from work, the floor would be clear of clutter…. and my room as tidy  as hotel suite with nothing obstructing the line of sight. I’d have a pink bedspread and a white antique-style lamp. Before going to bed, I would have a bath, burn aromatic oils and listen to classical piano or violin while doing yoga and drinking herbal tea. I would fall asleep with a feeling of unhurried spaciousness’“

 Quite detailed, right. I was so stuck with this part of the book! Nevertheless I got myself some sort of vague vision and decided to start the work anyway, as I was not able to get anywhere with imagining how my life is going to be, with so many things in motion. Looking back now, three years later, I have a different view on this, but let’s get back to that later.

 The book recommends doing the clean up as quickly as possible. Since I myself was also in a bit of hurry for answers I started the method nearly immediately. I do not consider myself a hoarder – moving countries two times made sure I didn’t hang on to sentimental stuff too long, but I still got rid of 27 bin bags of stuff – which I have donated to charity, for those of you who wonder. Stuff. No idea, what was in those bags. Mostly clothes, I guess. The fact that I don’t remember the content also means that since the clean up (3 years ago) not once did I think: ‘I wish I hadn’t thrown that away’.

The  cleanup indeed helped me to declutter my mind, and made me decide to follow my own interest – something I struggle with until today -, and explore the options outside the company I was working for. Magically, I ended up with three excellent job offers, two of them being for consulting roles. Consultant! A role I dreamed to have for the last 9 years. True magic. I thought. 

 Little did I know that this was only the the beginning and the changes to come will turn my life upside down. To be continued…