Live More With Less

Archives for October 2018

Combining Business and Motorcycle Travel Requires a Minimalist Mindset

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For the past two weeks, I’ve been working in a mobile, make-shift office setting. Not in a trendy, We Work shared office space (though I’d love to try that out sometime), but from remote locations away from my office in Costa Mesa, California.

Last week, along with a couple of coworkers, operated from a business partner’s conference room in Salt Lake City, Utah while closing out a project. This week I’ve been working from Karen’s kitchen table in San Jose, California…or as I refer to it, the Cambrian Park satellite office in Greater San Jose.

My minimalist set up for the past two weeks has been what you see pictured above. My 15-inch 2015 MacBook Pro and that’s it. No mouse, no external keyboard, no 27-inch Apple monitor… just the MacBook Pro.

Before I left my office in Costa Mesa, I debated taking my Apple Magic Mouse and full-size Apple keyboard, as well as my 12-inch iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. I opted to take only the MacBook.

In the past, I’ve traveled for work with all of these items (save the 27-inch Apple monitor – it’s a tad bulky). Each provides a useful and singular function, but this time I had to consider a lighter than usual carry…

… because everything I took to Salt Lake City I’d eventually be carrying back to California on a motorcycle.

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21-Day Intermittent Fasting – Reporting of Results

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This is a follow-up post on my results from taking part in a 21-Day Intermittent Fasting Challenge that I wrote previously about here. 

If you’re new to this idea, the program involves fasting overnight for 12 hours for a few days, then lengthening the number of hours you fast over a 21 day period culminating in a 24-hour fast on day 21. It sounds like it would be torture, but it wasn’t.

Quoting from my earlier post on why people voluntarily take on a challenge involving Intermittent Fasting, here’s why I did this:

The science says that at the terminal end of our regularly recurring daily fasts, while we sleep, fat burning occurs more efficiently. However, most of us wake up and consume a donut, a bowl of sugary cereal, some fruit, toast, or some other form of carbohydrates and we end the fat burning right then and there.

Intermittent Fasting (IF) prolongs the fasting time beyond the normal sleep period of 6-8 hours to a progressive 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, and 24 hours over a 21 day period, and by doing so I can boost my fat burning, resulting in an additional fat loss.

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Everyone on TV is a Minimalist

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Have you ever noticed that nearly every living room on television looks like a minimalist lives there?

Except for perhaps the households belonging to The Conners, ‘Merica’s most popular dysfunctional family, or apartments filled beyond capacity with millennial roommates like the world’s favorite collection of nerds in The Big Bang Theory, most of the living spaces you see on television are minimal in their arrangement, nearly museum-like in their appearance.

There’s open space on every counter, the table tops are clear of clutter, and bedrooms are like the sanctuaries we wish ours were. Kitchen countertops shine, hardwood floors gleam, and dirty dishes are a myth.

Is there something Hollywood knows that the rest of us don’t?

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