Occam’s Razor and the Case for a Simple Life (Intermediate)
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Live simply and with less. Science says so.
Colleen Valles Oct 24, 2017
Occam’s Razor states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. That is to say, All things being equal, the simpler explanation is generally better than a more complex one. William of Ockham, an English Franciscan friar, came up with this brilliant revelation way back between 1287 and 1347 (the years he was alive).
Basically, he was advocating simplicity, and while his idea is mainly applied to scientific explanations — simpler theories are more testable — it’s relevant to everyday life. Another way I’ve heard Occam’s Razor said is “It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer,” which is pretty relevant to what I talk about, and which means that you don’t need lots of stuff to do something you can do without lots of stuff. That’s the way to say it if you’re going for a total lack of elegance.
The point is to pare down just to what you need to get the job done. For instance, if you’re a writer, how many notebooks do you really need? If you do most of your writing on the computer, you probably just need one or two to carry with you when you jot down ideas and drafts when you’re away from your computer, and probably another one for journaling or commonplace-booking, or the like.
Simplify, get rid of the extraneous items in your life, and you’ll find that everything else gets easier. You find things more readily. You clean up quicker. You spend less time finding places for stuff, cleaning and taking care of it, and more time doing things you enjoy, like actually writing.
This applies to the rest of the house too. Get rid of the clutter elsewhere and you’ll find less mental pressure exerted to clean instead of create, to organize again instead of doing what you love. This is also a good case against single-use tools in any room in the house. For instance, a sandwich press. Be honest, how often do you really eat panini? Go through your house, but particularly your kitchen — kitchens are often a hive of single-use items — and see what single-use tools you have. Assess them: Have you used them in the last year? Have you used them ever?
If not, now might be a good time to donate that sandwich press or start a pile of things you want to sell. Make a few bucks off the panini maker and use the money to buy yourself a panini next time you’re in the mood for one. Then use all the extra space to store the stuff you actually do use and get it off the countertops. You’ll have your stuff neatly stored, your surfaces clean and your mind clear and ready for all the art you want to create.
In keeping with the general application of Occam’s Razor to testing scientific theories, why don’t we try our own test? I hypothesize that if everybody got rid of at least a quarter of their stuff, they would find their lives better off, with more space to breathe, more time to create, and more money to spend on fun things. I’ve already done this to some extent, I could do more.
A quarter is a lot of stuff, and if you’ve already downsized some, it might be a stretch to do that much more. But aim for it and see how much more space you can give yourself to do what you love instead of taking it up with storage.