Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Your Five Most Precious Resources

Your Five Most Precious Resources A simple life involves, perhaps above anything else, the deliberate use of resources. To inspire you in that effort, we fashioned a handy acronym to help you identify and budget your most precious resources: S.T.E.A.M. Skills. You may possess certain inborn talentsâ€"hulking strength, graceful agility, a beautiful voiceâ€"but your talent is blunted if you dont develop it into useful skills. To get good at anythingâ€"to create something significantâ€"requires competence, which is developed slowly, day after day, with rigor, drudgery, and practice, until eventually youve whetted a skill. Sure, your innate talent might make it easier to sharpen your skills, but the work is still required. Hard work. Time. Its striking that well refuse to pay a few bucks to listen to a podcast, but well hand over countless hours of our day, willy-nilly, to anyone who provides us with free content. But, of course, free isnt actually free if youre spending your time. Theres no refund on time spent poorlyâ€"so spend time wisely. Energy. We often live our lives as if were a deflating balloon, bouncing aimlessly from our inboxes to our television sets to our social-media profiles, allowing other peoples priorities to dictate our actions. It feels productive to be busy, but meaningful tasks rarely reside on our to-do list. If we focus our energy wisely, though, then we can float purposefully through life. Otherwise, were just deflating. Attention. In a world filled with glowing screens, pop-up ads, and multi-platform media, everyone is vying for access to our ever-contracting attention spans. Advertisers have figured out that the shortest route to your checking account is via your attention, so theyll do almost anything to grab it. Perhaps, however, these corporations are reckless with our attention because we are so careless with it ourselves. If we want to live deliberately, we mustnt squander our mindshare on every interruption. Its best to unsubscribe, mute, and walk away from anything thats not adding value to our lives. Money. Although we often think of money as the ultimate resource, it is the least important of the five herein. Money wont necessarily improve your life, but it will amplify your existing behaviors. If you have bad habits, then more money will make your life considerably worse. And if youre already a generous person, then more money can help you be more loving, caring, and considerate. P.S. Yes, you could rejigger our acronym as M.E.A.T.S., which would be funnier and perhaps more memorable, but lets avoid putting money first. Subscribe to The Minimalists via email.

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