Last year I counted my shirts. Forty-something. I wore maybe eight regularly. The rest just... hung there. Taking up space. Making me feel vaguely guilty every time I opened the closet.
So I got rid of most of them. Kept the ones I actually wear. Now getting dressed takes like 10 seconds and I don't stand there staring at options I was never going to pick anyway.
Sounds small. It's not. That decision paralysis was happening everywhere.
The accumulation problem
We're wired to collect stuff. Makes sense evolutionarily - for most of human history, having more things meant being safer. More food stored, better chance of surviving winter. That kind of thing.
But I'm not surviving winter in Melbourne. I have a supermarket down the street. The instinct hasn't caught up.
So we accumulate. Clothes. Kitchen gadgets. Subscriptions. Side projects. Tabs. (I have 47 tabs open right now. I'm not proud of this.)
None of it makes us happier. It just makes us... busier? More distracted? Vaguely overwhelmed by things we technically own but never use?
Everything costs something
Not just money. Mental space.
That gym membership I wasn't using? I thought about it constantly. Should I go today? Why am I not going? Am I wasting money? This guilt was worse than just canceling and admitting I'm not a gym person right now.
Every subscription is a tiny claim on your attention. Every commitment is borrowed time from your future self. Every possession needs to be stored, maintained, thought about.
When I add things without removing things, I don't get more. I just dilute what I already have.
The removal question
I try to ask this regularly: what can I get rid of?
Not "what should I" - that feels judgmental. Just "what can I?" What wouldn't I miss?
Usually more than I expect. Commitments I thought were essential turn out to be obligations I never actually examined. Apps I "need" haven't been opened in months. Tools I bought for projects I abandoned.
Removing stuff feels risky until you do it. Then it mostly just feels lighter.
Going narrow
There's this ramen place near my flat. Tiny menu. Maybe six things. The chef just makes those six things really, really well.
I think about that a lot. What would it look like to have six priorities instead of sixty? To do a few things properly instead of everything badly?
I don't have it figured out. But I'm trying to catch myself when I add something new and ask: what am I willing to remove to make room for this?
Usually the answer is "nothing." Which tells me I don't actually want the new thing. I just want the idea of it.
Anyway. If you take one thing from this: go delete an app you haven't opened in 6 months. Or unsubscribe from that newsletter you never read. Just one small removal.
See how it feels.