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The Minimalists The Minimalists
Emmy-nominated Netflix stars, podcasters, and New York Times–bestselling authors Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus help millions of people live meaningfully with less. The Minimalists have been featured in TIME, GQ, ABC, CBS, NBC, BBC, NPR, and they have spoken at Harvard, Apple, Google.

Consumption Is Not the Problem

By The Minimalists ·

We all need some stuff. Many of us have taken it too far, though: the average American household contains more than 300,000 possessions.

We accumulate more than we need hoping it’ll make us happy someday. It won’t—we know this. Needing more will always lead to a pall of desire until, ultimately, we feel trapped by consumption.

But consumption isn’t the problem—compulsory consumption is. Purchasing more stuff to make us happy—adhering to a broken template—is the real issue.

The solution is to consume deliberately—to ignore the inane advertisements so we can determine what we need based on our lives, not on what we’ve been told.

We’re all different: what we need is different for each of us.