Personally, I employ a different method, but I decided to follow his advice for once, as I advocate trying out new stuff that costs you nothing and takes ten minutes of your time.

So I started off by turning everything off that had the chance of disturbing me, sat down in my comfy IKEA-chair and closed my eyes. Immediately, thoughts started filling the empty space in my mind. Nothing unusual. They became more and more of a background noise as I turned my attention to nothing specific in my surroundings. Still, I thought it was quite difficult to really relax completely.

So how would I do it? – I found some ideas that lead to this way of active relaxation a while ago on no specific website. It’s similar to Karol’s’ method but a little more “active”.

1. Turn everything off. Or at least turn it on silent. I just do the latter. The important thing is that nothing disturbs your ten minutes for yourself.
2. Breathe. I breathe in for three moments and breathe out for five. You have to choose what you do. Everything is fine, as long as it relaxed your mind and body.
3. Focus. Here’s the difference. I normally try to slowly shift my attention inwards. To do this, I focus on three things that I hear, feel and (if my eyes are open) see. I focus for up to half a minute. Then I go for two different things. Then for one. Try to be aware of feelings, sounds and impressions that normally get lost in your selective attention, such as your own breathing or the feeling of your clothing on your body.
   Once you’ve done that, close your eyes and imagine one thing you feel, hear or see in as much detail as possible. Then two, and then three different impressions. Try to create a broad mental picture in your head of a scene that relaxes you.

Depending on your level of detail and on how much effort you put in this, alone the introduction of this state can take between ten to twenty minutes. And you can hang on to this for as long as you want and even change the picture, as you like.

I call this technique my “mini vacation”, as I sometimes create pictures from my memory that were, in my eyes, awesome. For example: Looking over the Kilpisjärvi in northern Finland.

Try it out, right now, and tell me how you felt!

In some cases, for example wen you create your own clothing or start your cooking process not in the supermarket, but in the garden, you fill the time that you gained by taking non-essentials away with the extended process. That might also intensify the experience you gain from something.

I don’t like it. It’s nothing I would enjoy, I think.

Sometimes, I enjoy minimalism and minimalizing. But for the large majority of things, I like my comfortable, yet sometimes ineffective procedures. Let me give you three examples:

1. Clothes: I have a lot of clothes. I did not realize that until our washing machine was broken and my housemate was forced to wash his belongings by hand. I could live comfortably for around three weeks until we had our new machine. The only piece of clothing I wore multiple times were my jeans. The rest I could change every day. – And I even buy a new piece every month or so.
2. Room interior: I have a huge amount of stuff: Several candles, decor, books, vases, lamps, chairs. I even have two beds, because I my room came furnished and I did not feel like settling with a single bed. Just for the delight of having it, I bought a double bed from IKEA. I love it.
3. Connectivity: My e-mail inbox is overflowing, because I did not see the need of additional administration. I empty it once in a while and thanks to Gmail it does not really make a difference for me whether I see my mails in the inbox or in the archive. Oh, and I’m on several social networks.

At all, I am quite an average guy. The only thing were I practise minimalism is my productivity. And this is quite a different story – because I hate the many rules of productivity systems I totally block them from influencing how I work. I have been what you could call a productivity geek in the past, valuing GTD and other systems whilst ignoring that the administration of them took more time than my actual work. Especially because I did not have that much work, as a studen

However, life is a journey and I will give “minimalism” a try. In August I will be moving into a new apartment and over the course of the summer, I will get rid of some old clothes of mine.  My goal is not to live with 100, 50 or less things but to just tune stuff a little bit down. Less clutter, more that I can enjoy.

I would be glad to hear some of your opinions. How do you cope with the increasing amount of stuff we all collect in our lives? Have you recently turned minimalist? How does it feel?