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How to Summit Life’s Everyday Mountains | Zen Habits:

How can a mountain better prepare us for life? At over 14,000 feet, there’s more to learn than I would have thought.

“The most important simplicity habit has nothing to do with how many items you own or how many times a day you check with email. The important thing is focus—do you know why you do the things you do? Are you working towards something over time, or just hopping from task to task? If you can bring focus and intention down to a laser-sharp level, you’ll be far more productive than everyone else… regardless of how many socks you own.”

- Chris Guillebeau

Function Vs. Form : fiftyfootshadows.net:

Wow. Great read. John Carey hits it beyond the bleachers with this piece. Many, many things that resonate here with me, I’m not sure I know where to start. I’m just going to pick out a favorite bit or two:

I find that I sit somewhere between the ultra minimal lifestyle that many tout on their blogs and social networks and those attached to older, kitschy nostalgia. I like having old books on my bookshelf and small trinkets from my travels scattered around my living space. I like both the minimal forms of modern trends in product design and the warm feeling an old wooden bookshelf can bring.

Yep, same here. While people who don’t know me would peg me, based especially on what they see here, as a modernist/minimalist, they may be surprised to find me spending hours each day at my treasured old-fashioned cherry wood desk. I love it. I’m a writer and when I first saw it I thought to myself that it looked like the desk of a writer. Lots of cubby holes for pen and paper stuff. To me, it feels like a place where serious work gets done. Then there is this:

So when it comes to buying into new products I feel its good to look at things in a really obvious way, why do I think I need this and what do I need it for, which leads me to also picture what I DON’T need within the product as well. All too often a product will stretch itself way to thin by trying to accomplish too much. When you boil down a need to its essence you will more often than not discover you can usually do more, and be happier with less. When you simplify your desires it leaves room for you to actually enjoy the results of your labors.

So very, very true. Also, don’t be fooled. He does dig deep and peel back some layers on overdoing it with the minimalism for its own sake. That said:

Happiness is easier to find when you don’t fill your life with all that clutter and that is the reason I have been thinking about all of this lately. It feels all too daunting to live a life so crammed full with information and constantly changing standards to keep track of. I search for ways to find a balancing point, a calm among the madness of life spinning around me.

Me too, Brother John. Me too.

Also, make sure to check out his desktop pictures while you are there. I’ve featured them here before and they are killer.

(via shortsweettothepoint, which is proof that I do, in fact, look at the submissions.)

A very simple tokonoma

Damn! I was trying to find a Twitter client for my mother, she uses Windows. ALL the clients that are somewhat decent require that you install adobe air. What the fuck?

To get something so simple (a freaking Twitter client) I need to install an entire framework? 12mb to run a 250k app? what the FUCK?

What happened to writing native programs? Why do you write freaking application on flash? What is wrong with this people?

I can maybe understand writing menus or little apps that run on a web browser, but a standalone app on a main OS that DOES support writing native applications (YES, FUCKING BINARIES!), it does not make any sense.

No wonder real programmers don’t exist anymore. All the new programmers (if you can call them that) are using crappy frameworks. Can you say security nightmare? Can you say crappy performance? Can you see horrible GUIs?

Fuck!

ps: yes, i needed to let it out. this post will self destruct in 1 hour

Clean your desk.

Put away or throw the things you don’t need: papers or items relevant to tasks you already finished, scraps of paper that need to go to the trash or shredder, disposable coffee or tea cups, wash your mug and store it away, CDs or DVDs that you won’t need tomorrow, etc.

Just remove it from your desk. Leave only your computer, phone and one thing you will need for the first task tomorrow. Neatly arrange everything and go home.

Tomorrow, when you come to work you’ll feel good.

Minimal Mac: Simplenote Gets Updated, Stays Simple:

I have been a dedicated user of Simplenote for quite some time. Almost everything you see here on the site is either synced to it via Notational Velocity or written directly in the iPad or iPhone app.

The new version was just released and it is nothing short of amazing. They have chosen just…

Patrick just wrote what i wanted to write.