Internet is full of videos and articles on the theme of “if you had to take one camera and one lens and use it for the next ten years, what would it be”. Or it’s “if you had to have only one computer, watch, pocket knife, car, pen…, what would it be”.
It always implies some kind of a “less is more” situation – basically, when you’re forced to use limited tools, you compensate with creativity and the results tend to be better than if you subscribe to “more is better” paradigm. Sure, sometimes. However, for the most part that’s all nonsense.
When you actually have a limiting situation, it’s not a choice between three different macbooks, a desktop computer and a gaming Windows laptop, and deciding to keep just one. It’s a situation where you have the cheapest possible computer that has minimal functionality for your daily tasks, and when you have to do something harder, it all starts to crumble under your fingers. Ask me how I know.
I had minimalist setups because I was poor, not because I subscribed to some stupid post-modernist minimalist paradigm where you own nothing and are happy. I owned nothing because it was an actual situation, and not some bullshit for YouTubers. Extreme poverty introduces its own kind of minimalism, and trust me, it doesn’t make you happy. It doesn’t reduce mental clutter – on the contrary.
Having a Macbook Pro that connects to Apple Studio Display with a single cable, with clean wireless mouse and keyboard setups, isn’t a realistic minimalist situation. Not having a desk and instead putting the cheap bulky computer you got used on the flimsy kitchen desk you found in the apartment you’re renting cheaply, that’s realistic minimalism. Working with whatever camera and lens you could get for the least possible amount of money because you couldn’t afford anything better, that’s realistic minimalism. It’s not a choice between ten excellent lenses and artificially limiting yourself to one. It’s using the one you found for 25 EUR on ebay because you had 25 EUR plus shipping, that’s realistic minimalism.
Minimalism isn’t a choice of one watch; minimalism is when you only have one watch, and it’s cheap because cheap is all you could afford. And by cheap I mean 50 EUR. Any by 50 EUR I mean you had to save for several months to be able to afford a 50 EUR watch, and you think it’s unjustifiable luxury. Ask me how I know.
When you’re poor, minimalism means you can’t replace your jeans, which have holes on them, because you had to replace your shoes first, because they too have holes on them. True minimalism isn’t a clean desk setup because you are decluttering. It’s an empty flimsy desk with nothing on it because that’s what you have.
When I see how people justify their minimalist setups, I can’t believe the nonsense I’m hearing. Like, they are using single-task devices such as typewriters or dedicated computers with no networking and only minimal software, so that they aren’t interrupted by all sorts of notifications and social media while they write. Excuse me, but that’s a matter that requires mental training, and not different equipment choices. When I open a word processor and write something, I can have literally dozens of things open in the background and I don’t notice any of them. I actually don’t hear what my wife is saying to me in person, and I have to ask her to repeat it later, because when I’m concentrating on writing, nothing else exists. It goes to such extremes that I can freeze behind the computer and get sick later because it was cold and I didn’t register it, because what I was doing took literally 100% concentration, to the point that I don’t register pain, hunger, hot, cold, noise, earthquake or aerial bombardment when I’m working. I don’t care about minimalism because when I’m working, I don’t perceive anything on my desk, or on my computer besides the program I’m using for the work I’m doing. I don’t need to have a clean desk with the smallest possible number of items on it, because otherwise my mind would be cluttered. On the contrary – my mind works like a switch, because that’s how I trained myself. When I’m doing something, nothing else exists; not because it’s not there, but because selective concentration is not a matter of having less things. It’s about focusing on just one thing, despite being surrounded by the entire world of things.
There’s a word in Croatian, “izdrkavanje”, which would literally translate as a wank job, but which means performative actions, things you do so that the audience would perceive how awesome you are. That’s how I perceive the performative minimalism. Its purpose is convincing other people that you have an organized mind because you have a clean desk from Ikea, with just a laptop, monitor, a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse on it, with a possible addition of fake grass in a pot from Ikea. People who have such setups usually have nothing better to do than waste time on such performative minimalism, where an actually focused person would have all sorts of stuff lying around, while they are focused on just that one thing they are doing, and they don’t have time and energy to waste on performative actions intended for impressing anyone.
They usually say that minimalism reduces the overhead of choice – for instance, you don’t have to think about which lens you’re going to use because you only have one. Oh, the agony of choice; you need to pick one for that day. How horrible. If choice is hard, I just take what’s already on the camera, because if it mattered, the choice would be simple. What pencil or pen to choose? The one that’s closest to the paper, usually. If it actually matters, then I go to the pencil cup and pick a more adequate one.
I’m not advocating for chaos and lack of organization and tidiness. I’m saying that a minimalist setup is performative nonsense that takes more time and energy to maintain than a reasonably cluttered setup, and shows that your energy goes into showing other people how minimalist, tidy and clean you are, rather than getting shit done as efficiently as possible.