All of this can contribute to a minimalist lifestyle, but it does not necessarily reflect a minimalistic worldview.

I think that many of the minimalism micro-movements that can be read about on various blogs and magazines are stopping short; it needs to go beyond lifestyle because indeed mother nature herself is a minimalist!

The message I read is that a minimalist lifestyle is for us, the souls that have been lost to the factory era and its super-consumerism long tail, when indeed it is ultimately the world that needs minimalism.

This is relevant and important, for me-focused minimalism shares that same quality with me-focused consumerism. I think minimalism is a great idea, will be a great lifestyle and needs to be an important worldview.

Update: in the minimalism of veganism, Leo Babauta does a good job of outlining how it fits in his world-view, not just his lifestyle.

I found that while working in front of the computer I could be easily distracted from the task at hand, sometimes leading to a lack of focus and deadly procrastination.

There are ways to avoid those ends and the best manner to be aware of the problem and find solutions it to be, umm… aware of the problem. This of course requires focus, so I set about something that could work in a similar manner to how one uses their breath as a center when meditating.

The solution! A simple countdown timer

Okay, bear with me if this sounds lame; it works (boy I can really sell an idea, no?)

I installed an extension for Firefox called easyEggTimer. At the start of the day I open it with Alt-e and then Alt-e, set a time, say 15 minutes, and the timer pops up 15 minutes later.

Big deal?

I know it sounds simple, but the idea is that when the timer goes off, you can evaluate where you are, what you are doing and if you are lost in the unconscious wave of the stuff that a day in the office can bring along.

It is a simple pop up that forces you to stop, look around and get back on track if you find you are somewhere else.

I set it for 15 minute intervals and go with that unless I notice that I’m having a particularly un-centered day in which case I drop the reminders down to as little as 5 minutes until I get back on track. Other then turning off my bookmarks toolbar in Firefox, this has been the most productive change I have made on my computer in the last 6 months.

Seriously though, after dealing with some health issues and reading the China Study (and taking a flexitarian approach to eating¹) I realized that the burden falls on our own shoulders to sort out what works for us when it comes to food and I decided to develop a framework of what works for me. The framework has but a few rules and it seems to me that by keeping it simple I save money and feel, look and perform healthier then ever².

First, the over simplified diagram of what I learned after spending 15 days on a fast, which was to eat most if not all of my food from the upper left part of the following image:

A non-scientific graph outlining our food choices from natural on the left to processed on the right and where these choices typically plot in terms of being healthy or unhealthy.

And so the simple rules:

• Eat most if not all of my food from the upper left part of the image above
• Avoid meat
• No refined sugar or flour
• No milk (I was never a big milk drinker)
• Avoid coffee unless it is necessary to use it as a stimulant
• Avoid alcohol

And that is it. There really isn’t much more to it. Eat as much un-to-low-processed food as you can, easy on the meat and by all means drop the refined flour and sugar. A simple, and actually rather inexpensive framework for eating that has worked for me. I will say that having a minor health issue and doing a 15 day fast is a great educator and motivator to get on a plan like this and in that sense it isn’t for everyone. Once on it, though, the results make it hard to stray back to poor eating.

Anyways, I’ll just repeat what the footnotes say: I’m not a doctor, always consult your doctor before doing anything like this. I certainly did!

It was a sad good-bye yet at the same time released a lot of stress. I had known for a long time that it was the right thing to do but was hooked. It was addictive and had become a habit in my life.

On the 30th of December, 2009, I unplugged, dismantled and washed my espresso machine. This was to be the last day that I would have wonderful shots of dark roasted coffee at my disposal.

I had dropped coffee on other occasions but slowly, as I would get worn out or whatnot, I would let it back into my life until it was sitting there on my desk working away the days by my side.

The thing that made the decision easy was not the bad health issues that coffee has – there are just as many good side effects reported about coffee.

What did it for me were three things:

1. The munchies: Most often associated with another habit/addiction, I have confirmed this problem with other coffee drinkers. You have a coffee on your desk, and beside it a pastry or some other food as an accompaniment. For me this was the norm.
2. Bonking: The word refers to the event when your blood sugar runs dangerously low and you get lethargic, shaky and pretty cranky. I found this was an issue while on coffee, a non issue off of coffee.
3. My son: At the end there my 2 year old son would climb up his step-ladder in the kitchen, turn to me a say “cafe?” He loved to work the buttons on the machine and also to have a sniff when it was done. A several-espresso-per-day father is not the type of leadership I want to provide my son.

Interestingly enough I stuck by coffee not only because I love the flavor but as an endurance junkie it is supposed to help the body tend towards burning fat rather then blood glucose. Great for putting in long miles. Unfortunately I found myself eating more crap with my coffee and unintentionally ensuring that I had fat to burn off.

I have had a couple of coffees this month; bought from bakeries or whatnot, this was me using it as a tool when needed. It is a stimulant and funny enough I find that it works better in this regard if you don’t drink it 24/7. Ironically one of the reason’s I was drinking it was to get me thru a long working and family day and in the end it really wasn’t that effective. Now when I am tired I nap¹ and when I really need it I get an espresso after lunch but am careful not to dig myself too much sleep-debt from using this crutch too often.

And so the end of January 2010 marks the breaking of the habit and a bittersweet goodbye. I do miss a nice dark roasted coffee, but the health and leadership benefits greatly outweigh the enjoyment of a shot ².

He played sports, games, played with his friends, watched TV and surfed the interwebs.

He finished high-school, and went to University.

There he studied, played sports, partied and had a great time. He would cram for exams with friends, eat bad food and drink lots of coffee.

He lived with friends, got a job, worked, came home, dated girls and hung out at home with his buddies.

They watched hockey (we’re talking about Canadians, eh?) and drank beer and ate chips and other crappy food. They would eat out a lot.

He liked to swim and run and bike, and so he did an IronMan race, which had the added benefit that he could eat a lot more food. (Pastries included!)

Then he met the girl. They moved in together and sure, although he had developed some poor eating habits over the years, he ate healthy.

I mean, he would eat vegetables and fruits that have antioxidants!

Then one day he had a pain in his big toe. It really hurt at 1 in the morning and only felt better if he cut it off held it high in the air over his head.

Its hard to live like that and so the boy went to the doctor who told him he had a gout attack! You know, that thing old people complain about? ¹

Say what?

It was hard to run. That big toe was not quite the same afterwords.

So the boy, worried that this would get worse or be a problem again – I mean he ate healthy and was struck down by an ‘old persons’ problem and he was young!

Anyways, the boy, he took matters into his own hands. He decided not to eat.

You see not eating allowed his body to flush out his blood, to clean out the gout.

Not eating was great! After a few days hunger was no longer an issue (though it sure was cold.)

Not only that, but sleep was more restful and he needed less!

And a funny thing happened. The boy noticed just how much food had transformed from something that gave him energy into a habit.

He noticed how often a cracker here, a cookie there and “a glass of orange juice ’cause I’m procrastinating” happened. (What, oj is healthy food!)

Food had become a habit. He was amazed at how big that habit had become and that the habit… was holding him back.

But back to the fast. After 15 days without a bite of food, his body kindly asked for something to eat.

And so the boy gave it food. And he found that while eating much less food then before he was able to sustain himself for the day.

Strange. He was more or less the same person. Minus 10 or 12 pounds.

So he ate and slept less yet felt more rested and was less tired during the day.

And this is the story of how a boy transformed his relationship with food.

The End.

In Why write a book? this magician, Seth Godin, managed to explain some of the misgivings that I have about writing this blog ¹ and at the same time re-enforce to me the reasons why it is 1. good to write and 2. good to write and publish your work.

Granted, he is talking about a book but on the face of it he is talking about writing. Writing organizes your thoughts, which is a great thing. But anybody can write in a diary so why blog? Myself I prefer to write in electronic form to have something that is both searchable and up-datable. So why not write a private blog?

Lets go back a minute

I have another blog that I began writing back in 2004. I really enjoyed that experience as it allowed me to participate in an early, budding “web developer blogging community” of sorts and it allowed me to “meet” a lot of people in our industry as we commented on each others blogs and shared ideas.

Back then there were not that many blogs and there were certainly not that many people reading them. This helped ease my nervousness about publishing my thoughts and ideas in public but nonetheless I was always a little scared each time I published a post. And here is where Seth’s post comes in again, where he states:

I published a book today. My biggest and most important and most personal and most challenging book. A book that scared me.

I’ll admit that it was easier to write on my web dev blog because that niche was not very big. Here on my personal blog, my writing may not be so niche; the thoughts and ideas I share may be applicable and open to scrutiny to a wider audience. That scares me. This is a good thing. And so is the possibility of finding like minded and un-like minded people to build a community of peers. So today Seth Godin, and writing this post, helped me to define why I blog.

Now it’s time to start hitting the Publish button instead of Save Draft.

This blog will have doses of personal, business and other things that interest me. This blog should be able to go places where my web development blog doesn’t.

Feel free to drop a comment if you know of something really cool that I absolutely have to use with WordPress.