"Become a Minimalist to be a Maximalist."

“A man should choose (pursue) not every pleasure, but the pleasure which leads to goodness.”-Epictetus

There’s a lot of really good stuff out there. However, there’s only one best. If you can’t have the best why not have the best available. Here’s the real money shot…if you can’t have the best available, do without, altogether. Boom! Thank you. You’ve been a wonderful audience.

Ok, I’ll go on a little further…If you’ve listened to The Jason Wright Show or read any of my content lately you know I’m an aspiring minimalist. However, I don’t want everything to be minimal. I want some things to be maximal. In fact, I want everything that is good to be maximal. I have learned in my pursuit of pleasures in life I have cluttered things up to a such a degree there is often no room for maximal. Imagine Pavarotti singing in the middle of a crowd yelling and screaming. One of the most beautiful voices ever known to man is there, and if you get close enough you might hear it. However, if you get rid of all the other voices drowning out the master then you can really enjoy those pipes for real.

Let’s take my wardrobe as an easy example. I, in time’s past, have been the proverbial definition of a clothes horse. From a young age I have loved clothes. It got to the point I almost collected clothes more than I wore them. I would color code my closet, neatly arrange all the ties, dress shirts, shoes, belts and pants and just stand back and look. It was beautiful. I had a cornucopia of fashion that would rival the most dapper of the dapper.

What I noticed though is I typically wore only a few of the items. The 80/20 principle almost always shows up in our day-to-day habits. It turns out I was wearing about 20% of my clothes 80% of the time. These few items are my maximal items. They brought me maximal enjoyment as far as clothes go.

However, there were times I would pull something else out to wear for no other reason than feeling like I needed to. I have it. I should wear it. How could I cure this conundrum? I know! I could get rid of it. With this in mind I started slowly but surely whittling down my selection. I’d box up some shirts here some pants there each time trying to remember when I had last worn the item. If it hadn’t been in the last 30 days (accounting for seasonal wear) it was in the box. All that was left was my Pavarotti of clothes.

I didn’t immediately get rid of the items. Instead I just packed them up and put them in one of our guest bedrooms. If there was an emergency event where only a Ralph Lauren tartan plaid shirt I had owned since I was an undergrad was necessary, it would still be an my disposal. No preppy hero worthy events ever surfaced.

What I am left with now is a closet containing only my favorite things. I have my favorite pair of jeans, which are my Flint and Tender selvedge denim from Huckberry. I have my favorite black tee shirts which are a mix of Rhone Element Tees and Banana Republic Luxury Touch Tees. All are black. I have my favorite shoes which consist of white Cole Hahn Grand Courts in both white and black and a few others for different occasions. I’m still reducing the shoes, which I learned from Project 333 by Courtney Carver. Shoes are usually the most pricey item next to coats so hardest to dispose of.

In this effort I’ve adopted minimalism for maximalism. By pairing things down to the few I really enjoy I now get to experience maximal enjoyment in what I’m wearing. I only wear my favorite things. This doesn’t just end with what I wear either.

When it comes to things I want to do in a day I try to keep things as minimal as possible. I have started to create a “minimalist” to do list. In fact, my to do list generally has 1 thing on it. This way I have maximal impact on the one thing I’m doing. I’m not saying I only do one thing a day. However, I am saying I strive to only do one thing at a time with maximal focus as the goal.

What about attention. How many times are people in a room with the T.V. on, their phone in their hand, a book by their side they are glancing at and trying to carry on a conversation all at once? How can you be truly engaged with the other humans with all those competing forces? I try to leave my phone in the car when Jemilynn and I go to restaurants. I also put my phone on the charger at night well before we go to bed. I endeavor to remove as many competing forces for my attention as possible when I’m talking to my wife. I want her to get maximal attention with minimal distraction.

If you are searching for a maximal life, I highly encourage you to start by minimizing. This is a great step toward to the goodness we all seek.

Jason