Peacefulness

Over the past two days I’ve spent 50% of the time I usually do on the computer. Nothing bad happened when I stopped obsessively checking my email inbox or looking at my Twitter feed. You can do less. Don’t be afraid of bad things happening (they won’t) and strive to beat your addiction to work now.

One of my favourite books about writing, On Writing Well, focuses heavily on the act of writing less. Of editing out the unnecessary and wasting less breath to get a point across.

A few negative reviews I’ve seen of this book though make claims that this focus on writing less eliminates the soul of their words, transforming them into elementary collections of communication like “it was good or “and then I was happy”.

But it’s not.

Writing less does not mean eliminating character or your personal mannerisms. It means doing away with words that creep into our work that makes it difficult to read, cutting off the flow. In doing so your character, your voice is unleashed - amplified.

And this doesn’t just apply to writing.

In any form of less, in any form of minimalism, you’re not sacrificing anything for some superficial achievement. It’s all a matter of laser targeting your focus - of choosing what actually matters, and dumping everything that doesn’t make the cut.