This post is part of the series of posts about Minimalism

The first approach of my mac-minimalism was to mod everything to look minimalistic and eventually be minimalistic. I wanted to achieve that with custom icons, a custom theme for the OS X, having no Menu-Bar-Icons as few as possible Dock Icons and to use GeekTools for process-stats, calendar, time and weather stuff.

All that was great, it really looked nice and was practical. But there was one downside: I spend more time modding the system than actually using it. Often I was sitting in-front of the computer thought: damn, there is a new app and the icon does not fit into my icon set so I had to create a new special icon for that application right away, what needs some time to be done.

My second approach to mac-minimalism now is just to use what is already there. Do not spend time with modding anything. Just use the stuff. Doing that I realized that Mac OS X Snow Leopard already is quiet minimalist. You do not have to spend much time to get it even more minimalist. Some of the things that I try to keep in mind now is:

• Run Fewer Programs in the Background (needs less RAM)
• Use the Menu-Bar for what its made: Background-Processes and Settings for:
  • DropBox
  • Bluetooth
  • Wi-Fi
  • Batteri
  • Date&Time
• The Dock can be hidden so get icons in there

One more things I use is QuickSilver for application launching and as a calculator. Plus I have written some action-scripts to do stuff like “count-words” and write a log-file of what I do.

This was post number two of the series of posts about Minimalism. Go check out the others

This post is part of the series of posts about Minimalism

I have written about my Desk and office many times here at the blog. Over the past weeks I even created a own page for the posts about my Desk to be collected.

But this is not solely about my desk it is about my office and what I think is important for an Minimalist Office. I still believe in the creative zone and that is my office + bedroom.

But now what about the minimalism? I believe in having everything cleaned up. Not having anything not needed laying around. It means to keep stuff thats is not needed every day kept in drawers not seeable so that it does not distract me. Also it is about having as much free space as possible, which mainly is the reason I have a bed without a bed frame — it only needs more space and does not help me in any way so I just have my mattress and underneath a slatted frame.

It also is about simple colors. Not everything colorful but simple also not everything just singleton. In my room I have two dominating colors: RED and WHITE.

And the last thing I want to mention about a Minimalist Office is the paper. I sometimes think about a paperless office and think it might be a good idea to have one. But also I think it is not really essential. I currently have not that many documents to file and those get filed in two folders which are — like sad before — hidden so that I do not see them all the time. Even though I tend to keep my desk paper free which essentially means that I get paper work done as quick as possible and get it out.

In conclusion I think minimalism at the office is about keeping it clean, simple and wide open.

This was post number one of the series of posts about Minimalism. Go check out the others

More than a year ago I started to get into Minimalism. Reading about a minimalist life-style, minimalist office, minimalist work and everything around it. Now I would like to share my approaches of minimalism. This is going to be a series of 7 posts. The topics are:

1. Minimalism: At the Office
2. Minimalism: At the Mac
3. Minimalism: At the iPhone
4. Minimalism: In GTD
5. Minimalism: In my RSS
6. Minimalism: Social-Networking
7. Minimalism: At Twitter

One thing I hope from this series to happen is that I can structure my minimalism even better, get to know things that may be done better and to share the good things.

If you have any tips yourself how to make things minimalistic, feel free to share them — either by Twitter, email or comment.

Very interesting! Try to read what’s written down below:

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

Well I am pretty good at doing stuff which is not productive — also refereed to as procrastination. But that is for sure one of the worst things todo! And me — and you — should focus on getting procrastination out of our life’s!

One thing I like to do if I procrastinate is shopping online. Just looking at things I could buy — which are most likely to be expensive toys for my camera gear or a new MacBook — but don’t need right now. I could also use that time to just go out shoot some nice photographs and get better with the gear I already own — which is pretty massive. Or I could study for school which would probably be a important thing todo.

In the end I think I have many problems in my time management. I am a bit unfocused and can procrastinate very well. But lately I am getting better in focusing and just ‘doing’ stuff — even if I am scared of it, which is if I need to write an email to somebody I do not really know. I just need to say: 10 Minutes and I need to have this ready. And that works most of the time!

Many things are planed. Many are not. I have some plans made and those are sometimes hard for me to understand. It’s about to attend school one more year or not. In the end it came down to the decision that I am going to do one more year.

And that’s it for now! I am going to do this even if it will be boring and not exactly what I want that time. It is something which sure will be something I will build my future on. And I still can do what I want after that!

So for now: I have to take it. But later I will be thankful that I did!

A few weeks ago, I started to save web found things at my Tumblr account avalible at log.CSPIEGL.com.

One problem about this is that I am struggling with the linked list posts here. Maybe I am going to stop the linked list stuff or I am going to filter the really important stuff and go on posting the important stuff here.

You probably shouldn’t be writing anything. Just sit back, do what you have to get done and write again later…

That’s what I am going to do now!

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a tinkerer. Some of my fondest memories of my childhood involve taking apart my toys, figuring out how they worked, and putting them back together.

~ Josh

As far I can tell, I was pretty much like that. But much more of a problem is the second part.

I’ve given up almost everything serious that I’ve attempted to do. Over the past few months, I’ve been trying to discover a reason for this so I can try to remedy it. When it really comes down to it, there are only a few very specific things that come naturally to me, and when I encounter something that’s difficult or that I can’t pick up and perfect right away, I get very discouraged and give it up.

~ Josh

That is pretty much also my problem. Often I think about others, and what they do and that they do it all life long. I am not such a person. I start many things, have many ideas and try different things all at once. All that is sometimes very confusing and also that way it is hard to get one great thing done.

Over the past I tried to get more focused and to concentrate on one thing but that did not happen. I am still doing several things all at once. And one thing I hate about it is that it influences my marks at school — which really is bad!

One reason I keep telling me is that I am still pretty young and that it is OK to try different things. Still, I would like to get one thing that really works and that I love.

In the end I come down to minimize the things around me. Stop project I do not think are worth the effort and try to focus on the things I like. Even than that are to many different. So I start to stop things I like the least. And than — not that much later — I just start one new thing.

I hope that gets better over the next weeks as I am going to — again — have some final exams. And that I will be able to concentrate on that. Afterwards I hope that I can find something I really like to work on (but still I will have one more year of school which needs to be done).

I will see how things will turn out!

Our there are many tools that let you organize stuff. Some are for example: DEVONthink, Evernote, Nifty-Box or Yojimbo. Over the past year I probably tested 10 Anything Bucked systems but fell in love with one I already owned from day one.

What is a Anything Bucked?

Anything Bucked is a tool or App which lets you organize stuff. PDF-files, web archives, serial numbers, text, bookmarks and images. Add tags or comments to the different items, filter and search that stuff. All that in one app and if you create a structure it also is fast and logical.

Why you should bucked!

Saving all that information in your head? Probably not possible. So you need a place to save all that stuff. Doing so with a Anything bucked? Probably not!

Why not to use a Anything Bucked

Four out of five of you are nerds. On your computer exists your hobbies, your current and/or future career, and the rest of your daily life. You don’t own a snowboard, but you do have a blog, a Twitter, an RSS reader, and a pirated copy of Photoshop.

You, my friend, need an Anything Bucket.

~ Shawn Blanc
Systems like Yojimbo or one of the other tools mentioned above all have one problem. They cost money (just Nifty Box does not!). But even worth, they just let you save specific files. And who has just PDF’s, text files and bookmarks? I do not. I have Numbers, Pages, Keynotes, Doc files and Excel sheets, PHP/JavaScript or other code and of course I have some zip files. All that is not organizable by that Anything Bucked systems.

Which system to Chose

If you want to store data of differing types within a lightweight organization system, I encourage you to check out the filesystem.

~ Alex Payne

There is one Anything Bucked all of you already own. It is called your OS-File System (Operating System File System). Since I am on a Mac, that is that is HFS+. A file system with everything you need. You can add tags to a file (if you want) you can save comments and you can store the files in folders, create aliases. To search the data just use SpotLight or some other tool. Maybe look at Quicksilver, AlfredAPP or the Google QSB.

That way you can save some money. Use what you already have and will never have problems with upgrading—a problem with a Anything Bucked, what are you going to do if the software firm will stop supporting the app you used?

If you don’t want to be forever accumulating applications, store stuff as plain text on the filesystem. It’s dead reliable, you can shuffle it about however you want, and you’ll be able to search through it quickly, even without an index.

~ Alex Payne

Still

Some aspects of a Anything Bucked are positive. I do not use a fully featured Anything Bucked, but I use some things that help me structure some data. One for example is Notational Velocity together with SimpleNote and SimpleNote for iPhone. Those are the tools I use to save my todo-lists and some ideas I get while on my iPhone. Since it is over the air sync and The Hit List for now lacks an iPhone app!

Conclusion

In the end everybody needs to work out a own system. Mine is the file system + a few extra tools to get some special, related things organized.

To find that system, I encourage you to read these two pots. One is pro Anything Bucked the other is con:

• The Case Against Everything Buckets ~ Alex Payne
• Yojimbo, and The Case for Anything Buckets ~ Shawn Blanc