Ok this blog post is gonna be all over the place, so be warned.

I have to admit that I am a bit full of myself sometimes – and definitely have been so in the past. It’s been an area of my life I’ve been working on since my friend Isaac told me in the 7th grade that my ego was so big that I could sit it in a chair next to me. After much humbling throughout my life, I’ve gotten more reasonable, but I’ve always got something to work on in this part of my personality. Living in LA doesn’t help with this much.

I’m no different than most – we all like nice things. And I’ve allowed myself to slip into the hole of spending commensurate to my means. A part of it is this – sure, I’ve worked hard, taken risks, failed, succeeded, failed, succeeded, so I’ve earned this. But there is a balance to this that I’ve been trying to nail the sweet spot on. Buy too many things, and get caught up with a whole bunch of junk that brings fleeting happiness at best. Buy too little and you’re miserable. There is a happy medium (pardon the pun).

I checked out this documentary called The Minimalists on Netflix recently, and found it to be a really cool story (www.theminimalists.com). The short of it was that there were 2 guys who got together after finding that climbing the corporate ladder with “success” yielded a continual cycle of yearning for more, and resulted in the relinquishing of any real semblance of true happiness. Their newfound mission was to find happiness by downsizing, and living very simply with a core set of necessities. It would be the bare minimum of things needed in their lives. The result? A simple happiness that didn’t cost all that much.

Continuing my Netflix binge, I found another documentary called Happy. In this one, they talked about how people all over the world found happiness in different forms. Whether it was the communal folk of Denmark, or the crawfish catcher in Louisiana, or the family in the slums of Kolkata, the common theme was not too surprising. It was that when basic survival needs were met, only what was truly utilitarian beyond this was all that was needed to produce happiness. Moreover, it was the context and intent of how these utilitarian things were used to achieve their goals of serving people in a meaningful way that generated this happiness. These people were not caught up in attaining more than this amount of material stuff.

So after watching these documentaries, I asked myself if I was truly happy. In many regards, absolutely I was, and I still am. Sure, I’m tempted by the things of the world just like anyone else. But I quickly found that this can be an expensive addiction, and one that results in a certain gravity to one’s financial freedom. After all, the more you spend on things that don’t generate true utility (or cash flow), the more you have to work to get more of those things, and the lesser one has of a chance to attain investments that yield financial freedom and the piece of mind that it affords. Perhaps this could be one version of happiness that many also crave – to not need to worry about money. But I’ve found that this kind of happiness requires an extreme discipline and a predisposition to not chase after things.

These days, I’ve noticed a large portion of my money goes to 3 areas of my life.

1. Investments – long term 
2. Experiences – travel & dining, building relationships
3. Giving or lending to those in need 

I noticed that it’s these 3 areas that bring me the most joy, happiness, and fulfillment. I will happily open my wallet for any of these 3 areas. I certainly have evolved since my 20’s, where my sole focus was on experiences. In my 20’s I traveled all over the world and racked up ludicrous amounts of debt, but opened my eyes culturally and socially. Back then, I didn’t give anything or save anything for investments – and I was in that mode of “I’ll pay for it later, I need to experience this NOW” that eventually put me in an emergency mode in my 30’s (this did eventually help light a fire under my ass to figure things out, so I’m thankful for that). Looking back, I wouldn’t do that part any differently, but the lesson I learned from it all was that I found what had brought me real happiness back then, and still continues to be what generates that happiness. The only change is now I’m in a position to give back to the community, and to the people I love – and I’ve found that this is another awesome dimension of real happiness.

The guys on The Minimalists had a very interesting view on the few things they possessed. They were all about utility, and not amassing things that one could develop a fixation for. Similar to their perspective, I noticed that I have always had a sense of efficiency about me since I was young, that some might find unnerving about me because it is kind of OCD-ish. In high school, I’d always write daily to-do lists on a paper and keep it in my pocket throughout the day. A quick aside – today, I arrange my iPhone in this neurotic manner below:

It may not seem like anything special, and might be quite similar to how most people arrange their home screen, but there is a method to this odd layout. Because I’m right-handed, and the iPhone 7 is larger than it used to be, the form factor only allows for my right thumb to swipe in an elliptical arc through the bottom half of the right side of my screen when I hold it with only my right hand. The majority of my high-frequency apps are in this area, like my music, or Skype or messaging, or Waze. As you move to the upper left of the screen, the apps here are mostly two-handed operations where I’d be sitting and have the ability to focus with my added left thumb padding away in concert. And yes, there are only 4 emails that I’ve intentionally left as Unread status so I know to get to them later, even though I have read them already. The placement of each app is the result of a calculated function of convenient right-thumb accessibility, importance, and frequency of their use.

Yep, I’m weird like that. I actually put that much thought into the arrangement of my iPhone home screen apps. You should see what happens when you swipe right to the next screen!

But, this utilitarian side of me that I can’t seem to turn off has had its benefits in my life. I project this kind of thoughtfulness to just about everything I do (this part isn’t all that great because I lose my focus sometimes and drive myself nuts), and have been able to move off of just focusing on acquiring things just because I like them. Instead, I’ve focused on acquiring things with what they will be used for in mind, and for whom. I enjoy finding these micro-instances where things can be utilized for maximum impact. And best part – I’ve found that this brings me happiness. Maybe that’s why I keep doing it subconsciously.

I took away a cool quote by The Minimalists which was this: “Use things, and love people – because it oftentimes doesn’t work well the other way around.”