This text was originally published on my former blog typeoneminimalist.com. The website has been offline since 2020. This is an archive version.
Every January 1st, millions of people decide to get their life together. Physically, socially, study-wise, careerwise and financially. It’s a great idea and it will bring you further. But: It’s always harder than expected. And at some point, you will slack off.
Let me tell you a story. I didn’t decide to change anything by the start of 2019. I just wanted to continue being awesome. Then, January 1st came along. I felt like dying that day. I went to a huge party for New Year’s Eve and wanted to get the most out of my money. You can probably guess where that ended up.
Fast-forward a few hours. It’s January 1st, 13.00 o’clock. My alcohol-sensitive me feels like an addict getting off his drugs. At least I foresaw that on the day before and cleaned my apartment. So I could suffer in a nice room on this January 1st.
Dr. Stay-in-the-House
There wasn’t a single situation in which I could’ve imagined myself having fun in this state. So I did what every person would do: I tried to get my mind off the feeling of dying. I started watching my favorite television series: Dr. House. (Which is the most amazing show on this planet, in my opinion).
The emphasis here lies on the word “started”. Because I didn’t stop until it was 1 am. I literally did nothing else but lie in bed and watch Dr. House for 12 hours that day.
Was it worth it? For the sake of entertainment: Yes. In every other way: No. I felt horrible after that 12 hours. I just wasted a whole day of my life for nothing. I didn’t even have fun watching the show anymore during the last few episodes. I just wanted to get the season done.
A new spark
It’s a weird story but the realization that I just wasted a full day of my life lit up a motivation inside me. A motivation that I haven’t experienced in months. It made me realize again what’s important for me and it made me remember what I should focus on.
When I woke up the next day, I was full-on back on track. I couldn’t wait to do stuff, to explore places, to learn something and to be productive. Doing all these tasks was fun again. Everybody of us will slack off his or her usual lifestyle at some point. It’s normal. Don’t upset yourself for it. We can do a lot but we can’t do everything.
Why we slack off in the first place
Looking at the science, slacking off is a natural human behavior. It can be traced back to our ancestors. As an article by Lifehack states, humans constantly needed to supervise their environment back in the days of the hunter-gatherer society. While they were working on new inventions like reproducing fire, early humans were under a constant threat of being attacked by an animal like a sabertooth-tiger. Today, we’re not risking being killed every single moment anymore. However, the natural human instinct remains in us. That’s why we need to learn to control it and to focus.
Minimalism can make this process easier. In the life of a minimalist, there’s not a lot of distracting stuff around. Of course, there’s the internet. But in my life, I can’t think of anything else. Cleaning my apartment wouldn’t make sense because there’s not much to move and it’s always pretty clean anyway. All I have is my laptop which I can use for good and not-so-good stuff.
The takeaway
On that 1st of January 2019, I definitely used it for not-so-good stuff. However, now that I’ve watched the only season of Dr. House I owned, there’s nothing else that could distract me anymore. I won’t buy a second season soon after all of this.
My takeaway is the following one: Rather than making yourself feel bad for slacking off – focus on getting back on track. Make plans for the next day and work on them as soon as you wake up. Slacking off happens. Use bad days to your advantage. Use them to re-evaluate what you want in life.
At this point, I want to wish all of you a great 2019! Let’s crush this year!