Welcome to minim.blog, a place that talks about existential and digital minimalism and that is crafted and hosted minimally. You can search the following posts by pressing ⌘ CTRL+F or tapping on ☰ Menu > ⌕ Find in Page. CRASH BLINK TEAMS FEARS SOUND MOVES SPACE TITLE ONION FONTS DRIVE LIKES INTRO RESET GROUP CLICK ICONS TRAIN DOUBT UNIFY TASKS INBOX STYLE CABLE TOOLS SPEED ADOPT PLAIN DRAFT PACES BLOGS EMPTY MINIM BEGIN CRASH My mother-in-law has an old DELL desktop with 512 of RAM memory. A Debian with Openbox kind of resurrected it; until my son opens Tux Paint and draws some lines, making the thing crash. About twenty years ago, people were able to utilize such devices. They were fine, they did the job, and most definitely, it did not feel that the thing was slow. Daft Punk got it right with their "Touch" song: - I need something more. What happened? A soup of consumerism, obsolescence, and fluffiness. Luckily, computer hardware is slowing down, and it kinda got stuck during the last few years. Now, we are facing something different: Repair it? Nah, get a new one. Like devices are bags of potato chips. What will happen in twenty years from now? Change your device because the privately owned manufacturer, the Operating System, or the App say so. Or perhaps, change your device because you are out of mainstream Social Media. You name it. Even the Open Source avenue does not fully solve the main problem, it just mitigates it. This puts the work of some folks like System76 [1] in a rare pedestal. Like bowling, when you strike, your crowd have another chance for a blue screen of death. [1] system76.com BLINK Today, a year ago, I started this very blog. The recent weeks were tough; I've been struggling, and that affected my creativity. But you know what? It's going to come back. Here are three life-applied lessons after a 365 review: 01 FEELS: Surround yourself by people that truly see you for who you are. 02 HOPES: No matter how dark it gets, there is always a blink of light. 03 MAKER: You don't have to blink twice to create your dreamed reality. I hope that my yearly subscription to these lessons gets renewed soon. Thank you for blinking. TEAMS I love playing football, historically futsal and recently only with my son. Although, my relationship with the sport changed because of its business side at all costs that we all watch on TV. Something that I want to highlight from the recent victory of Spain in the Euros, is the team. How, without having a prominent superstar, all the players played a role in the tournament. Even the third goalkeeper was a great motivator, despite not playing a single minute. And this is a model for work and organizations. Independently of your age, experience, and status; if you have the skills you will succeed. If you commit to work hard, learn, and grow, you will shine. All of it if the team and your coach provide the environment that you need. FEARS My first and only attempt at skiing was about a decade ago, and it was not good. Deep down, I knew that it would not be a pleasant experience before even starting. Why? Because I was afraid. That said, I know that with some patience and practice, I can overcome this fear. When an organization needs to change in order to survive, something similar happens, but with a bigger scope and impact. At the end of the day, if fear surrounds decision-makers, there is an invisible wall made of hierarchy that is almost impossible to break. The difference is that I let my friends ski, and I enjoyed watching them from the cafeteria. SOUND Alarm, water, toothbrush, shower, dishes, coffee maker, toaster, food, people, door, elevator, street, people, traffic, school, people, traffic, key, door, office, chair, laptop, recording in progress, people, keyboard, trackpad, coffee maker, food, water, door, street, people, traffic, park, door, toys, television, people, food, dishes, bath, books, television, toothbrush, water, 𝄇 MOVES We just moved to a new apartment. My partner and I became quite experts at it, as we have lived in six places since we met in rural Costa Rica. The other day, she had a moment of revelation and told me something like, "Moving. Transporting our stuff from one place to another." And it was then that I decided to write about it. Why did our nomadic ancestors settle down? They wanted to own stuff - especially when agriculture came and forced them to start storing food in times of abundance. When well planned and executed, I love moving. The process creates many opportunities to apply minimalism when prioritizing goods. The fact that you need to account for, protect, and store some stuff makes you question if you need that thing or not, and that is beautiful. We downsized, and quite a lot, considering our two-and-a-half-year-old toddler. After ten fifty-liter bags of clothes and half of his toys were donated to charity, and a transition to a bed, leaving the crib and changing tables away, we are pretty proud of the outcome. But guess what? We still have the slight feeling that we own too much stuff, according to our standards. So, we have started applying the in-or-out-the-box guide courtesy of The Minimalists [1], whom we have been following for decades. So far, it's working, and the more you practice it, the more you realize what gives you joy and keep it. The way my son adopted the move and how instantaneously he integrated it was fascinating. A new place, a new room, a new bed - it doesn't matter; he was the same, and these major changes didn't affect him at all. This made me think of one of the most important values that we can teach kids these days: How to embrace change and uncertainty. He definitely did, and nobody has taught him yet. Maybe society and the educational system need to improve. A move is change, and change is good. So, let's keep moving and make it moving. [1] theminimalists.com SPACE When I wrote my very first post six months ago, I said that I couldn't explain what made me finally start - now, I can: You. Thank you for reading, sharing, and encouraging me to keep going. Thank you, Ashley, Manu, Hussaina, Koray, Alexis, Luke, Cole, and T. And special thanks to you, whoever you are; you are reading this and it means a lot. Remember that if you are thinking about starting your blog, I can be your first reader. It's time to look back at the minim manifesto and make some changes: 01 GOALS: Do you think I wrote about existential and digital minimalism? 02 SCOPE: I will post whenever I want until I decide to shut this down. 04 POSTS: The plain text remains; the post length will be unrestricted. As for the rest, it's not going to change for now. The single draft in thirty minutes methodology is working great for me, as are the tools, architecture, and costs. I need more space to find something meaningful for this space - word after word, separated or united by a space. Onwards, TITLE Some readers noticed it, and asked me why the titles of my posts have five characters. This post tries to answer this question with five letters, and five reasons: 01 CLEAR: Straightforward, simple, one word, infinite possibilities. 02 TOPIC: You know what this is about; it creates some expectations. 03 LOGIC: The challenge has consistency and a deeper meaning behind. 04 BLOCK: It gets well visually digested, without unnecessary noise. 05 MINIM: Following this blog's manifesto, and doing more with less. As much as it looks like OCD, I want to clarify and reiterate that this was the product of a mere coincidence, that transformed into a challenge and became ritual. Am I going to keep doing this? I don't know, maybe. Overall, it helps me with the creation process, especially putting my mind in the right place to start writing. And no, this has nothing to do with Wordle - great if it helps you get inspired. ONION Onions go with anything - they just make it better. A simple chopped and sauté adds flavor to whatever you're cooking. They also come in handy during these challenging times with wars, inflation, and the cost of life affected by the cost of food. If you have your refrigerator half empty, but there's an onion, there's hope and opportunity. Not to mention its shape, varieties, and, most importantly, layers. To me, they are a physical manifestation of the holistic approach applied to life; and how interconnected these layers are - root, stem, bud, and skin. The natural version of the Matroska dolls. At work, I keep using the onion-layers metaphor over and over. Immersed in the workplace, the metaphor helped me highlight the good teamwork, cross-pollination across teams, and the importance of groups as the sum of individuals. If we don't go as one, we're not going anywhere - we're just taking parallel routes that bring us to a blurry, individualistic, and egocentric dead end. On the other hand, some companies use onions as mantras. Take the Tor Project, anonymous communication against tracking and surveillance. TOR literally means "The Onion Router." Their browser is called Onion, and even their logotype has the inspirational bulb cut in half, openly showing its multiple layers. Nonetheless, an onion is just a vegetable - but when you mix it with other foods, it makes a whole meal. FONTS Stand up and look around - typefaces are everywhere. In quotidian objects from your home, on the streets, and most definitely in your digital devices. With the exceptions of the particular cases of Comic Sans and Papyrus - jokes aside - the vast majority of fonts out there are "sans-serifized" to pretty much Arial and Helvetica, and vice versa. Mainstream, standard, and repetitive experiences, until we bump into something different, something bold, something very unique. Diving into digital font families can take hours and generate dead-end rabbit holes. You know these exceptional cases; they click instantly, and it shows the great job from the people behind it. Take the case of Atlassian's visual brand [1] with the prominent and tailored Charlie Sans family - when you load a page or read a document with this font, you automatically know that comes from them. In my opinion reaching this level of visual brand awareness results in great success. The other side of the coin brings the concept of fallbacks, and how to be compatible and consistent with your typefaces without losing your visual brand essence, and keeping the experience seamless. Let's welcome the Web Safe Fonts. I position myself in a perfectly balanced gray area - on one hand, I love brands that are bold picking a unique typeface with its fallbacks; on the other hand, I also love brands that exclusively rely on Web Safe Fonts. Simplicity to the extreme. Although I don't consider myself a designer, about eight years ago, I designed my first and only typeface with the very same name as this site. The minim typeface [2] is an open-source font designed to simplify and remove the superfluous. It was an amazing experience that showed me how difficult and detail-oriented the creation process is. It's a display font only available in uppercase, better for printing than for the Web. I remember working on a specific letter during weeks. Fonts change and grow like we do. As a kid, I was into the serifs Georgia and Garamond; the teenager me used the well-known, so-narrow Impact everywhere; and as an adult, the classic Helvetica got me until the discovery of Monospaced fonts. I feel something different when I read a paragraph in a fixed-width non-proportional typeface; something delightful that I can't explain. Courier New, DejaVu Sans Mono, SF Mono - you name it. Now, the Victor Mono [3] makes my days. [1] atlassian.design/foundations [2] 1001fonts.com/minim-font.html [3] rubjo.github.io/victor-mono DRIVE After almost twenty years, I have a love-hate relationship with driving. I love the physical act of driving a car, the independence that brings, and the feeling of always going forward. On the other hand, I hate acknowledging that driving is not a sustainable way of transportation, and I also hate traffic and sometimes other drivers. Essentially, a car is a transportation vehicle that can help you to go faster from point A to point B. The social and cultural meaning of the car tends to have some drops of classism and status quo, especially with luxury brands. We have them all at our disposal, in different sizes, brands, types, and colors. I particularly like the simplicity of the first commercial and affordable cars from the decade of the sixties - especially in terms of design and functionality. I think that parts of it are coming back nowadays; what became the standard is having a huge screen right in front of you. Yes, technology, again. What is the minimum that a car needs to function? An engine, brakes, wheels, structure - and the basics to operate: a steering wheel, pedals, seats, mirrors, and sometimes gears. Take the Air Conditioner, for example, a feature that evolved from a commodity to a necessity, especially in some parts of the world. Now we depend on it, and we automatically sweat more when we sit in a car without it. What's going to be a necessity in a few years? Touchscreens? No wonder people have accidents. What if I want a car, but it comes with a screen by default? Are the industry and the market ready for some modularity? What I'm missing is a real return to the basics - some kind of ungrowth, without renouncing the essential comfort and security. It drives me crazy. LIKES "To take pleasure in" is the best definition that I found. We like ourselves, other people, experiences, and even things. It is normally an unconditional and unlabeled action that we tend to express with verbal and non-verbal language. There is nothing to brag about, nothing to measure, and nothing to compare. Although something like the like button started before Facebook, the blue ⓕ most definitely made it the standard and drilled it into our early adopter minds. Now, like after like, it's not a surprise to see it on almost any social platform, in the form of a thumbs up, heart, or check. And that's what we do: click it or tap it, and move on. For the majority of cases, it dies there; all we have is the timestamp. To me, this doesn't allow going deeper; it loses its essence. A mere switcher with 0 and 1 values. You can like something without manifesting it. Sharing and writing about it in the form of a comment is also liking it, even offline. A conversation is about sharing, receiving and giving feedback, and ultimately growth. I guess it doesn't add up to our dopamine-based status quo ranking. Do you have a likes counter on your soccer ball? Does somebody check if others liked this sunset beach before sitting on the sand? Do people in a café wear a gamification badge on their chests? What about the gray areas? What if I love a two-star restaurant on Tripadvisor and I can't explain why? At least we have that. Numbers, statistics, and algorithms that force us to only experience what the majority likes. Black Mirror was right more than a decade ago - we are one click away from mainstream numbness. But guess what? You can like this post without leaving a trace, and nobody will know about it. INTRO The first words that come up after body language when we try to proactively explain who we are or when somebody asks us. Introductions tend to be quick, superficial, professional, and overall, odd. How can we even start defining ourselves? The task is not that easy, as we are complex animals. We all been there, as a victim or perpetrator. "- This is [Name], [Role] at [Company]." I mean, it fulfills the purpose, right? With that we got the name, professional occupation, and where do we perform this job - and most importantly, the status quo organically starts the comparative wrestling show. I have the feeling that this might be already changing for good; that said, I recall some awkward and shocking introductions like that. I've once asked a friend how he was, and his answer was about how challenging his job is. The truth is, if you try to get creative and out of the box, the thing is hard to understand. For instance, what about an "- I'm Raul, a dad, and currently enjoying writing on my blog." Is that pretentious? I mean, that's the truth if I want to explain who I am based on my current focus besides and beyond work. I've been practicing this, and I must admit it doesn't always work, also, depending on whom the interlocutor is it just doesn't come up naturally. On the paper, I think that's a powerful and always-changing way to introduce yourself. We can also apply minimalism for introductions - is the name enough? A nice to meet you sufficient? Or perhaps just a simple hello? If the conversation starts and flows, then we can show the cards mentioned in previous paragraphs. A whole different topic that I'm not planning to write about is what happens when you share about something and the other person rapidly shares not to add, but to compete. What a fascinating species we are. Sometimes, simple introductions generate meaningful conversations and vice versa. I'm sure you can remember a great or even deep conversation with somebody who didn't introduce. Who cares? The power of human connection can show a pilot of your being without even saying a word. Shall we call it lifeaholism? At the end of the day, we are way more than just our LinkedIn badge. RESET This post was supposed to be called "start", but after some thought, I've decided to name it "reset". I particularly loved this ↺ button from the old desktops - small, specific, and with a single purpose. Deep down, despite the Gregorian calendar and the establishment of the social meme, nothing really starts; everything continues and that's what happens with life in this world, a mere change of state. So, here you go. Let me push this blog's reset button and welcome you to minim.blog, a place that talks about existential and digital minimalism and that is crafted and hosted minimally. If you are reading this for the first time, feel free to keep reading down or use the "☰ posts" menu to navigate. Everybody at some point gets trapped into the new year wishes bullshit. If you really, really want to change something, you don't wait until the beginning of the year, you just change it. Perhaps an automatic car fits better in these situations, as there's no need to go back to the first gear. Let's drive, keep going forward until we hit our top speed - crashing is inevitable. My goal for this life is to be kind, first to myself, second to others, and third to the world. The act of kindness facilitates, unlocks, empowers, and inspires. As of today, I have many available versions - 358 this Gregorian year - and I want to make each one better than the one that precedes. I'm naming it "CK: Continuous Kindness". Now, if I get to a dark place, I'll push my reset button and go back to the default state of kindness. Have you tried turning it off and on again? GROUP In some cultures, the end of the year encompasses traditions that are celebrated in groups. We gather with a variety of acquaintances; from close family members - friends and relatives - to some people that we only see for these dates. Excluding the real meaning of some religious impositions, I generally love being surrounded by my circle. In the end, as social animals that we are, that's something almost inevitable. As years go by, I've started to realize how these gatherings evolve. People depart and join the group - as life dictates, families grow and create ramifications, some people move away and cannot be physically present. Above all, the essence is alive, and that's what fuels these people to gather and share every single year. And this is also present in other community groups like neighbors, parents, hobbies, sports, you name it. Of course, this doesn't exclude work; where groups are more defined and prominent thanks to hierarchy. I'm part of a subteam, that's part of a team, that's part of another team, and then there's everyone as a group - not to mention our users. Onion layers that sometimes make our eyes cry and not see what's behind. In any group, there's people with more or less affinity and most definitely, there's a clear - or not - decision-maker(s). I still need to truly figure out the right balance between consensus and unity of command. Going back to the "inevitable" from the first paragraph; unless we deliberately decide to retreat like a monk, we are part of at least one group. Actually, even monks are part of a community. Now, we need to be at our best to thrive in a gathering as well as we need these experiences to challenge us and make us grow - an endless-loop-paradox. Happy '24 everyone. CLICK Checking my inbox and surfing the web these days is kind of trendily depressing. The last quarter of our western-globalized year starts with a "blackfridayan" move, to then get tinted with silver and gold with the arrival of the holiday season. Dude, you had all year to keep my interest - why do you only ask me to take action now? What's the rush? What came first, the chicken or the egg? We consume both. Like I mentioned on past posts, I'm torn about call-to-actions - they literally keep me alive professionally, as well as make me wonder if there are other more meaningful, organic, and genuine ways to keep users engaged on the web. Basically, the thing is about telling a story within a viewport and ending with a button that goes somewhere else. What type of service is that? When I ask for a drink on a bar, they don't make me go to another room; they serve me right there. Why do you want my click? What are you going to do with it? Numbers, influence, iteration. These metrics can drive you mad to the point of getting obsessed. Let me put it differently, would you want my click if you knew that I'd bounce beforehand? Would my engagement be considered if I just read, and I stay where I am? Or that makes me invisible? Maybe I want to be invisible - I don't like cookies. We need to click with what we do with clicks. Oops, I just clicked without realizing - a blink of an eye, a click of fingers. ICONS We're surrounded by icons - if you close your eyes and think about three, I bet they'll come easily - ⚠, ☰, and ▶ came to me. I think that, at this stage, I don't need to specify that I'm talking about computing icons. To me, they're connectors that help understand an action independently of the language of the user. In the late eighties, some employees from Xerox and Apple started investigating the practicalities of creating a universal character set - and Unicode [1] was born. Currently, after fifteen versions and almost 150K characters, it's the reference text encoding standard. As a side note, Emoji is based in Unicode. Focusing on icons from the Web, what I find particularly fascinating is the evolution from images, across fonts, and ultimately emojis - socially accepted these days. I wonder why only a minority stuck to the classic Unicode characters. In my opinion, they add value and simplicity, as you don't need an external source. To be clear, I'm not aligned about Musk's brand moves in 𝕏. Independently of the name or icon, the only thing I find socially powerful is how simple can the logotype be shared, with just a copy and paste. If we dissect an average website; icons are mainly present for action, navigation, and search. Here we have an example of two plain text mockups, that contain ten elements, the first without and the second with them. Without icons: MENU LOGO SEARCH PREV PLAY NEXT Lorem ipsum dolor si BUTTON FACEBOOK X INSTAGRAM With icons: ☰ Ⓛ ⌕ ← ▶ → Lorem ipsum dolor si BUTTON ↗ ⓕ 𝕏 ⧇ Which one would you pick? Why? Email me [2] and let's talk. We're visual people - hence, icons work well by design and by default; not to mention the fact that we've integrated them. My suggestion is to find balance by applying accessibility text fallbacks, like the first mockup. Perhaps next time you think about Font Awesome, you'll check out the Unicode Miscellaneous Symbols [3] first. ␃ [1] unicode.org [2] minimblog[at]duck[dot]com [3] unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2600.pdf TRAIN Taking the train is one of the most simple and sustainable ways of traveling. You go to the station, buy your ticket - unless you did it beforehand - and wait for it, sometimes you can even enter the wagon in advance. No check-in, security, or instructions. Just have a seat and enjoy the journey. I would not exist without trains. My grandfather worked for the public railroad company, and an end of line forced him and his family to move east. Without that change, the probabilities of my father meeting my mother would have been substantially reduced. I will always remember my grandpa's care and kindness while showing me what happened around the station. Working days traveling to the city made me discover the routines and that these type of rides are not the same as the pleasure ones. There is a different code of respect, especially on the early morning ones. During these couple of years, I met wonderful people - some of them, still take the train to go to work every single day. I was looking forward to these three hours of roundtrip journey. I love the magic of it, the overall vibe, the sounds, people in and out, the landscapes. It gives you a portrait of a tiny corner of the world, with a group of human beings going from point A to point B. Paraphrasing Coelho, "Many times the wrong train took me to the right place." I wish I could take the train more often. Despite working remotely during the last decade, once in a while I have the opportunity to take the very same one to meet some colleagues in the city. Until the next trip, visiting the station with my son and seeing how his eyes shine are worth the wait. DOUBT A hundred percent of confidence - with the permission of what we project and how it's perceived - doesn't really exist. Having a moment of uncertainty, even if it only lasts for a millisecond, is part of the human condition. Actually, I believe a little bit of what I call "healthy insecurity" is needed; it fuels us to give the best of ourselves. As mentioned in the BLOGS post, having doubts when starting a blog is normal - and having them while maintaining one too. During these three months, I had doubts. Sometimes about myself, often about what I write, and most importantly, if what I'm doing has any value at all. Let's face it, if these doubts eat me alive, I'll shut this down for the sake of my health. But, something that I'm starting to qualify as more magical than coincidental happened at least a couple of these doubtful times: Somebody reached out to me and told me to keep going and that they love what I write. And that is organically beautiful. Deep down, I think that I'm doing something here. Writing is a liberation for me, it gives me joy. It's also a way of decompressing my thoughts and a channel for connection. That said, I keep reminding myself that nothing lasts forever and that we're here visiting - so let's make the best of it. Let's read and write, get inspired and in love, pass the torch, and leave a legacy. Do I have any doubts right now? Nope. Am I going to have some tomorrow? Probably. What can I do? One thing is for sure, I can thank you for reading. UNIFY As an attempt of doing more with less, last week I've experimented trying to unify the website with the feed. The architectural changes were pretty clear, summarized in these three steps: 01 POSTS: Stop using plain text files for posts. 02 FEED: Adopt the RSS Atom syndication format. 03 UNIFY: Website and feed within the same file. Steps one and two did happen - going back to a single-page-blog (including posts) and having more flexibility in terms of maintenance with Atom - three, unfortunately, did not happen. Darek Kay and his "Style your RSS feed" [1] post inspired me. For blogs that are just text, XSLT is a great idea - basically keeping the site and feed on a single XML file that gets styling and XHTML output from an XSL template. I've played with that and found out that the template can do more than styling, it can automatically generate my POSTS menu; so, every time I post, I just need to write it, save the file, and commit my changes. That's awesome, right? But, what happened? Browser compatibility happened - particularly Safari's unavoidable popup asking for an RSS client and Opera's built-in feed reader. Others would avoid these issues and assume that the vast majority of users are under Chrome and Firefox, but I just can't, it goes against my values. That said, I might go back to testing phase in the future; watch the space. It was a fun ride, though. I've learned from this experience. The main lesson that I'd like to share is about keeping it simple and following the standards. For now, HTML is HTML and RSS is RSS. Because sometimes, unifying doesn't work - and that's okay. P.S.: I've fixed the Opera issue after a week, and Safari's popup only shows up on Desktop - so I've decided to make the change, and I'm so proud of it. [1] darekkay.com/blog/rss-styling/ TASKS First, I'd like to share that I'm halfway there towards the initial scope of this project. I want to thank you for reading and everybody who encouraged me to keep going. This is a task that gives me joy. And on that note, this post talks about tasks. We're used to them, we constantly do them on a daily basis. Workspace project management, personal shopping lists, weekend planning, you name it. At the end of the day, what's the minimum that we need to do a task, even if it only happens inside our minds? Here's an approach: 01 WHAT: I mean, that's specifically needed. There's no task without knowing what the heck we're doing. Sometimes, with optional dimensions such as description, type, and tags among others. That would have been enough a century ago. The current days of immediacy and micromanagement require what comes next. 02 WHEN: Knowing the due date it's crucial because time is ticking. We can call it orientating estimation, as it relates to the amount of tasks that we manage or the sense of urgency. Here you have a Minimum Project Management Software (MPMS), just copy-paste and edit: [X] TASK 1 (2023/11/01) [ ] TASK 2 (2023/12/01) [ ] TASK 3 (2024/01/01) Essentially, this is all we need to perform any task, even without writing it down. I'm going to have ice cream (what) now (when). Alright, we're done here - thanks for reading. After a couple of decades working with tasks, I realized the "why" is more important than anything else. 03 WHY: It's a liberation, sometimes, an opener of a can of worms. It can simplify or make the task irrelevant. Things would be different if more "why"'s are asked, rinse and repeat. Too simple for you? No worries, let me share three bonuses: 04 STATUS: This one can add value, especially in collaborative environments. To do, doing, and done; wonderfully displayed in a Kanban board. The physical act of drag and drop. 05 WHO: Another one for teamwork. Although, sometimes it exemplifies the lack of clarity when managing teams and making decisions. It helps hold ourselves and the team accountable. 06 PRIORITY: Prioritization is relative, everything can be high or low. The question here - again - is why. When I want ice cream now, I don't care about priority medium. Why do we need tools to manage our tasks? Perhaps we're doing too many things at the same time - empowered by the capitalist-induced concept of more, more, and even more. Acquisition, revenue, profit - sounds familiar? Stop, take some distance, and ask why. Doing less and doing it in a more meaningful way. Remember that these are tools and that sometimes, you don't need a task. INBOX The folder where all our emails land. A place that's full for some, empty for others. Introducing the inbox personas: 01 WHATEVER: All emails live in the inbox, read or unread - like a visible history of thousands of items. The whatever just doesn't care. 02 FILTERER: Incoming emails are manually filtered with a label - and sometimes moved into a folder. The filterer is extremely organized. 03 AUTOMATE: Like the previous one but with automatic filtering - trying to achieve an inbox zero. The efficient version of the filterer. 04 ARCHIVER: Everything gets archived independently of reading it or not - a permanent inbox zero. Select, maybe read it, and archive it. 05 REMOVERS: Only the important messages have the luxury of staying - an act of simple liberation. The extremist version of the archiver. I've been all of them. Currently I'm an archiver professionally and a remover on a personal level. Which one are you? STYLE The irruption of mobile devices drastically changed web design; it made it evolve with responsiveness, and, in my opinion, it added partial simplicity. It looks like we're going back to the basics. If we compare it with the fashion industry, it also has its shows and awards, as well as trends that suddenly emerge and become best practices. The majority of them are pure fluffiness - rounded corners, gradients, animations. Why? To fit in or to solve a problem? Back to the essence of the web, examples like Motherfucking Website [1], koray er [2], or this very site show that the extremes can be a good thing. Quoting the first one, "all the problems we have with websites are ones we create ourselves". I wonder why there's the general, unwritten opinion that Times New Roman and blue links are ugly. I can tell you. Adoption of trends. Now, what's the most important thing for you? Content, interface, or both as an experience? These days, people with an average attention span are used to digesting short pills of information and content got "call-to-actionized". Visuals are more than needed because people don't read. What's the balance - if any, between design and readability? Something that fascinates and irritates me in equal parts is the default CSS values for HTML elements. Serif is like a traditional outfit, one that is timeless. This site uses the pre element because of its formatting and because it loads with a monospaced font. Why do these defaults not change? When was the last time that changed? I wonder. I think that a few improvements would make our lives way easier. Here are my top five: Responsive and dark/light mode meta tags, margin auto, ∼600px of max-width, and system-ui as font-family. Not to mention a more than desired automatic rendering of Markdown. Damn. People are used to certain experiences like call-to-actions, infinite scrolls, horizontal carousels... What's the equilibrium? When do we succumb? Now, the rise of smaller devices like watches and glasses will make things even smaller and simpler. The web is going to evolve along these lines. We need to wear clothes, and we need websites. The extremes are wonderful, and the trends are mainstream. The IndieWeb is there. At the end of the day, how do we design? For the audience, or by following our values and principles? Can we really influence and change these behaviors? I hope, because the web is not going out of style. [1] motherfuckingwebsite.com [2] korayer.de CABLE Dear Wi-Fi, I'm sorry for your loss - 40% of bandwidth on average. I can't rely on you, as you work on radio waves. And, on top of that, you can't keep secrets. Instead, you get cracked up. Not to mention your cousin Bluetooth, which makes devices unstable and sooner or later has battery and charging dependency. Drop the Air and get a cleaning, you just had too much personal space. Trusted Ethernet, my old friend. You are always there; you have never failed me, and you always give me all your undivided attention. I hope our categorical friendship never ends because of third-party sources. Look at you, USB. Many generations that preceded you gave you your current prestige. You're simple, timeless, and universal - no matter your size or conversion. Even the forbidden fruit ended up adopting you as a standard, no more sins. We need more cables - you connect them, they work, and you're done. It's a physical manifestation of connection, and that's what we embrace as human beings. What is more minimalist, going cableless and charging these devices with cables, or using cables in the first place? It makes me wonder. Believe me, behind your perfectly clean and empty table lies your router - and from there, whatever goes out of the building is wired. TOOLS 01 HARDWARE: MacBook Air M2 Midnight. MOFT Carry Sleeve Black. Belkin USB-C-Ethernet. Nokia 800 Tough Black. 2019 White Seat Ibiza. Ludos Clamor Earbuds. 02 SOFTWARE: Google Workspace. WhatsApp, still. macOS Sonoma. LanguageTool. DuckDuckGo. Confluence. 1Password. Newsboat. Safari. Proton. Twilio. Figma. Slack. Authy. Okta. Jira. Wise. Zoom. Lynx. Vim. Git. 03 PERSONAL: Wallet: ID, drivers and credit cards. House/office keys attached to Nokia. FREDY C-1 BLACK by XavierGarcia. Grey polo, black chinos. Black Nike Wearallday. SPEED We're typing the domain name of this site, clicking a link from a friend, or reading the RSS feed. From a browser installed on our brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max, we'd be fine with an iPhone SE. Via an Internet Service Provider that brings us 1000 Mbps, it'd be enough with only 100 Mbps. All of that in a matter of milliseconds. 50 on average, to be precise; that is just 0.05 seconds. Paraphrasing Daft Punk: "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." A couple of French visionaries. Computing performance is getting stuck and not fiercely advancing like it used to. The average user doesn't need 70% of this power; that said, the lifecycle of devices is four years. What's growing and growing nowadays is the size and resources that a piece of software needs to run properly. Unnecessary fluffiness, infinite scroll, real-time video streaming - you name it. Unconsciously, the way we operate computers changed. It's messy, applications running at the same time, dozens of opened tabs that don't go anywhere, critical updates pending installation, and zero-day vulnerabilities waiting to be triggered. In my opinion, something that must be taught is the value of thriving while using fewer resources. A brutal experiment would be isolating a group of teenagers on Pentium II's on a 56 Kbps network and telling them to surf the web. Defibrillators might be needed, along with a guide about how to use a mouse. But nope, this never ends; it's designed for that purpose. We hate waiting digitally, and at the same time, we can wait hours in line to get to a store and buy the next deprecated thingy. Perhaps I should say wAIting? I'm not sure if there's a way out - it might be too late, and it's already coming at cruise speed. ADOPT The Technology Adoption curve of a given product gets embraced by society because of power, money, timing, or the combination of the three. Take WhatsApp - launched in 2009, when smartphones were with us for about five years. WhatsApp solved the main problem that people had back then with the ability to send instant messages across platforms for free. This before and after and other releases like iMessage or Facebook Messenger, killed SMS. Great timing and key problem-solving made WhatsApp a big success - way before being acquired by Meta and way before the audio and video call functionalities. People loved it, adopted it, and made it the standard. Then, the whole thing became a monopoly. I remember initially resisting using the App. Obviously, I've ended up succumbing and using it, as well as performing a series of tests. Went back to a Nokia 100 for about six months and felt pretty happy without the "smartrush". The downside of that was that - literally - I was out of my circle of friends and family, some folks answered my calls and there was an uncomfortable and intimidating annoyance floating around. Then, I've started promoting more open and secure messaging Apps, like Telegram and Signal - quite an evangelist. Some people joined, nobody stayed. I don't need a smartphone. I'm not on social media, just make calls and occasional texting. Everything else on the Internet gets done from my laptop. A couple of years ago, I found balance discovering KaiOS and using a Nokia 800 Tough, that comes with WhatsApp - a big phew for everybody around me. It's been working well, especially battery-wise. The main problem is that Android and Apple don't understand each other - the robot uses the Rich Communication Services (RCS) Open Source protocol for their Messages, and the fruit their Push Notification service (APNs) proprietary protocol for their iMessage. Other standards like SMTP, IRC, RSS are really universal; you can communicate and use the client of your choice. Something that, probably, the creators of SMS had in mind. Perhaps Apple will switch to RCS and call it a day for the sake of universal communication not tied to a specific device. Wouldn't be nice to use your operating system's native messaging App and just write and send messages to people? Communicate, a pretty simple action that gets divided or monopolized by three of the five Big Tech - what a coincidence. Until then, there are some projects that solve part of the problem by unifying messaging Apps into one, like Beeper - currently beta-testing - or Texts. Hopefully, corporations will start looking at the real user problems and trusting that people will adopt it. P.S.: On November 16, 2023, Apple announced that they will adopt RCS in 2024. PLAIN Plain text has been with us since the sixties - and it doesn't look like it's leaving. We have been using it without being aware of it, via text editors - present on every single operating system - across emails, instant messaging, and last but not least, on social media posting. Before that, we go back to typewriters and handwriting. It's universal. It's simple. It's intuitive. It doesn't lose formatting. It just works. Twenty years after, the irruption of word processors during the eighties, apparently brought some "richness", also known as headings, bolds, italics, underlines, and lists - organized and unorganized. The nineties came with HTML, the new century with the cloud, and the rest is history. Let's talk about digital footprint. I've created a simple plain text file that contains a title, subtitle, two lorem ipsum paragraphs, and two lists. Then, I did the same with rich text, markdown, and HTML. The results are here in bytes: Plain: 487 Markdown: 487 HTML: 788 Rich: 9069 Plain text and markdown have the same file size, HTML is 62% bigger, and rich text is 19 times bigger. Yes, nineteen times. These documents occupy extra local and cloudy space, they live somewhere, they don't die. Perhaps it's time to start or follow a Plain Text Movement, defined by our small daily actions like taking notes with a text editor or switching to email plain text composing. In my opinion, it's also a matter of the way that we write and highlighting our content above its appearance. I'm writing this post from vim - an improved version of vi - that comes after their grandparents, qed and ed. Everything else follows the same principle. The most successful written stories don't have formatting. Do we need our words to be richer? I don't think so, plain and simple. DRAFT Something unsent, a work-in-progress, the first version of a document. We're very familiar with drafts, used in writing - when ideas come to thoughts, sentences, and paragraphs - and also in technology, especially with messaging tools. In essence, a way of saving some words for later. I knew what I wanted to write about when this project started, so I wrote the titles of the 28 posts that I've committed to write in the manifesto - and these are saved as an email draft. Of course, having that in mind helps simplify the drafting process. I know what I'm going to write the next week, so I think about it when doing other stuff, like walking. When it's time to write, I follow a method that consists of a) Bullet-point-list the structure, b) Write the thing, and c) Edit and publish. That's it, and that's what I did for this post: 01 INTRO: Meaning, usage on writing and tech, benefits. 02 STEPS: Titles, week think, bullets, writing, editing. 03 MODEL: This post, stages with tools, only one draft. 04 CLOSE: One way, think first, time it, question end. The initial unwritten thoughts help me to get inspired beforehand. The bullet-pointed structure makes me focus, so I can write a post in 30 minutes from one draft - without procrastinating and getting lost in perfection. I use vim to write without distractions, LanguageTool for the final edits, and git to commit the HTML and RSS changes to my repository. You know what you want to write about. Think first, time your work, and just publish it without looking back. In this post, I wanted to share my way, what works for me, and how does it work - that's what it is, one way. What's yours? Email me and let's share. PACES At your pace, reading this post will take as long as you want. According to research from the Lund and Kristianstad Universities in Sweden, all mammals take their first steps at the same point in brain development. Baby camels can walk just thirty minutes after they're born; a milestone that it usually takes a whole year for us, humans. Cultivating the brain across life is like hiking a flat-top mountain with many starting paths - it begins and ends slowly, and it has a steady, rushed peak tied to academic education, profession, and social responsibilities. In the 2009 documentary short "Dealing with Time (Le Temps Presse)" by Xavier Marquis, they have measured anonymous people walking in major cities during rush hour, between 1998 and 2008. It's no surprise that the walking pace increased by 10% during this decade. A pace that probably is even faster after fifteen more years. The cause? Essentially, the expansion of clocks from factories to homes and everything that happened after we started measuring time. Perhaps factory workers needed more support when throwing rocks at the clocks. During my time working at Amazon Frontlines, I had the privilege of spending about a week with the Waorani Indigenous Nation from the Nemonpare community, in the Eastern Amazon rainforest of Ecuador. This was one of the most wonderful experiences that I ever had. One of the first things that I've faced inside my western brain, was the urge of planning. The Waorani don't have alarm clocks, they wake up with the Sun and decide what to do right there - maybe hunting, maybe fishing - depending on how they feel and what the öme (forest) and its universal language tells them. Survival wisdom on a daily basis. According to Microsoft, our average attention span dropped from twelve seconds in 2000 to eight in 2013 - what is called "The Goldfish Effect" as this animal's average is one second longer. I can't imagine the current number; I must admit I didn't dare to research it, and that it's definitely not growing. That's not a surprise if we analyze how we operate our lives since the alarm clock tune, and until the bedtime notification. In my own experience, this phenomenon doesn't only affect young generations - it affects everyone. Casual conversations are becoming workplace briefings, where you better be concise, or I'll move on to the next thing. Let's do a quick dive into the workplace - the main contractor that outsources your pace towards a path that you don't necessarily want. Time is precious and the busyness, workaholism, and preservation of status quo are defense mechanisms that wonderfully protect and support that. How many times have you heard the classic "I don't have time for this"? At the end of the day, people, no matter their rank in the pyramid, tend to be afraid of changes, failure, and being left out - fears that create a cold and comfortable frozen paralysis. It's like stopping the time-space, and no, this is not science fiction. When we find our best pace, we have too many paths to take in front of us. The concept of horror vacui, or fear of emptiness, travelled with us since the times of Aristotle, across cartography, art, and lifestyle among others. Claudio Naranjo (1932-2019) extensively talked about this social phenomenon in his work; and the fable of Nasrudin is a good example. A man who looks for his house key under a streetlamp in the market, knowing that he lost it at home; because there's more light. We are looking for the key in the wrong place. This makes me think about pursuing our peace through noise and comfort distraction, a delicious appetizer that is present in every meal. All these constant and nonstop inputs move us towards the opposite. Of course, we better not stop, otherwise, we'll have time to think, do introspection, deal with silence - and that is, indeed, scary. Don't get me wrong, there is value in time too. In the end, it's an adapt or die situation, and there is always room for balance. Nature has its own imperfect pace; our species thrived by following it instinctively and without measuring time. Finding our pace towards a path takes a while, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong about slowing down, stopping, and even falling - it actually brings a whole new perspective solely spotted from that very angle. You decide your own pace, and only you can take the first step. BLOGS Storytelling is, essentially what makes us human. Everybody has something to say; the two writing challenges that arise are "what" and "them." What am I going to write about? And, what if nobody will ever read it? I will read it. Following Manuel Moreale's* powerful initiative that empowered me to start this blog: 01 BEGIN: Create a blog. There are plenty of platforms out there; find yours. 02 WRITE: Start typing. Don't rethink; don't look back. Just publish your post. 03 SHARE: Send it to me at minimblog[at]duck[dot]com and I'll be your first reader. If you have an RSS feed, I'll keep reading, and I'll add your blog to this list: *manuelmoreale.com hussainaajala.com alexisalzate.com lukealexdavis.co.uk coleroberts.dev renecoignard.com EMPTY The concept of emptiness and how it's socially integrated truly fascinates me. In a consumer-centered society, the word empty means useless, disposable, without meaning - an empty car, an empty bottle, an empty pool. You see it, think about its opposite, and move on to the next thing, like infinite scrolling. In the end, the social meme gets in the way wonderfully. Other examples make some quotidian objects a little bit more meaningful, like an empty bed, chair, or table. Good, the fact that they are empty is a good thing; I can use them. I mean, the majority of these objects were designed with a clear purpose. That said, we can use the bed as a chair, the chair as a table, and the table as a bed. The value of emptiness changes as soon as you go bigger, out of the object, and into the space. Opportunity and inspiration come when we think about an empty room, house, or building. The purpose of this blog is not to lecture you about the amount of possessions and the value of living in an empty home; there are plenty of spaces that talk about this. What do you see when you enter a completely empty room? I see space, I get creative, and I normally end up thinking about what to put in there - inevitably, objects also get in the way. Now, if we move away from the object and its contained space, what is empty then? Is there any emptiness at all? Up to multiple interpretations and perspectives. I don't think about how empty a forest is when I walk through it, how useful it would be to plant more trees on top of these bushes, or perhaps how this tree can be used as a potential table. It is what it is, especially because we didn't create it, purchase it, or exploit it. The essentials get more essential when you start removing layers. Picture yourself sitting on a chair inside an empty room in the middle of the forest. If you remove the chair and open the windows to let the breeze in, does this make the room emptier or less empty? Seeing the glass half empty is also good - it's a matter of perspective. MINIM From the Latin word minimus, meaning "least" or "smallest". The minim.blog manifesto in ten principles: 01 GOALS: Write about existential and digital minimalism. 02 SCOPE: One post a week for six months until 03/2024. 03 TIMED: Every Sunday for a maximum of thirty minutes. 04 POSTS: Between 300-500 words in digestible plain text. 05 EDITS: Only allowed within the wonderful thirty mins. 06 TOOLS: Vim, LanguageTool for the final edits, and git. 07 CODED: Web and feed in one file, no CSS, plain text. 08 COSTS: Domain name only, €10 first year, €25 renew. 09 SHARE: Send an email at minimblog[at]duck[dot]com. 10 PROMO: This blog will not be promoted on social media. BEGIN Enough procrastination. It's time. I can't explain what made me finally start after these months, but here I am. I guess I will write about it once I find it. Welcome to minim.blog, a place that talks about existential and digital minimalism and that is crafted and hosted minimally. I commit to writing every Sunday - I will share a manifesto soon. Because it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. Thank you for reading. Raul minimblog[at]duck[dot]com