Comment by davej | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davej | Hacker News Reader

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I am utterly dumbfounded by some of the comments here. I feel like people have completely misunderstood his philosophy.

To me, Dustin is advocating a very practical position of minimalism. It's about starting from scratch and thinking carefully about everything you own. There is a huge upfront investment involved but you will get that time back (and much more) because you trust your tools. They won't let you down, They won't break, They will work exactly as intended and you will understand why they work in that way. This frees you up to spend more time on the things that are important to you.

I spent a few months travelling this year and I spent an awful lot of time thinking about what I wanted to bring with me. I bought almost everything from scratch and each item that went into the backpack was meticulously researched. I ended up with only 7.5kg (including backpack) of stuff but I had everything I needed and everything I needed was important. I was suddenly less anxious about setting off on my adventure. When others found that their backpacks were coming apart at the seams, mine was as strong as the day I bought it. When spending a month motorbiking through Vietnam, it took my friends 15 minutes to strap their 20KG+ of luggage to the bike every morning, it took me one minute. I always had the perfect clothing for whatever activity in whatever weather (despite the fact that I had about a third as much clothes as everybody else). While others were wondering around rural areas looking for a launderette, I had everything I needed to wash my own clothes (The liquid I used for washing clothes could also be used to wash my hair and shave, and I only needed a few ml of it). I got better sleep in dodgy areas because my fellow travellers were sleeping with one eye open while my bag was securely locked and tethered to something grounded. I could go on.

The bottom line is that I spent less time worrying and more time enjoying the moments and being with the people I was lucky enough to spent those moments with.

>To me, Dustin is advocating a very practical position of minimalism. It's about starting from scratch and thinking carefully about everything you own.

Very many people would agree with this. They'd agree with it even if Dustin Curtis said it. This is not the bit that people have trouble with.

Dustin Curtis goes on to say:-

> Reasonable people would probably not spend the time to read a book about the history of flatware, buy twenty sets, and test the feeling of each metal utensil against their teeth. That sounds completely insane. But who cares about reasonable people?

The set he likes sells at MOMA for $50. $50 * 20 = $1000 just on evaluation sets of cutlery.

I can safely say that my cheap cutlery cost me significantly less that $1000, functions well, and will last me the rest of my life.

It's great that there are designers who like this kind of thing. It's great that there are publishers like Phaidon who sell books about door handles or flatware or whatnot. (It's a shame they have a viciously unpleasant website - (http://www.phaidon.com/designclassics/) )

But, really, "good enough" is for many people good enough.

At least Dustin Curtis is saying "buy things that are beautiful because they perform their function well" and not "who cares if it does what it should do, look at the nice twiddley bit on the handle". See, for example quite a lot of stuff at Yanko.

Personally, I think that 'huge upfront investment' is excessive and I don't believe that the return on it is enough. Compare Tom, who bought the first backpack he saw in a store, Bob, who spent an hour or two looking up backpacks and then bought one, and Dustin, who spent four weeks studying the history of the concept of luggage. Bob's backpack is likely to be just as good as Dustin's. Dustin can look at Tom, who got a crappy backpack and is sad, and say 'see how valuable preparation is?!' but there's an extreme on both ends, and both of them look stupid to non-extremists. The bottom line is that Bob probably spent less time worrying about his 'stuff' than Dustin across the entire lifetime of his ownership of it, which to me is more minimalist and more desirable. Sure, reasonable people can debate where the line of 'too much thought' is, but only an unreasonable person would say that it is always at the extreme Dustin end.

The trick is to cultivate a list of people who are unreasonable and then just ask them. Here's a place to start: http://www.reddit.com/r/buyitforlife

This is exactly my philosophy. I've found so many superb things from that subreddit, without having to go through excessive research and testing.

Sure, the law of diminishing returns applies, just like it does with most things. I don't know Dustin, so I couldn't guess where he falls on the curve. What I can say with a degree of confidence is that most people position themselves too far on the other end of the curve.

Some context though: Dustin's article expresses that he enjoys the process of researching products that are well-designed. Therefore, I think it's reasonable to elongate the curve just for him and others like him.

Having good tools is great but throwing away 20 sets of flatware until you stay on with the 21th is a form of minimalism only for the rich, and absolutely not practical.

I'm assuming that this is hyperbole on Dustin's part, but you're absolutely right, that's not practical.

He didn't say he threw them away -- I assumed he returned them

I would argue that shipping around 20 sets of flatware is excessive in and of itself.

Ooops, I always forget you guys have that option.

What about the people in the countries you visited, I guess their lives weren't constantly bathed in that rosy glow of knowing they had the best backpack.

I am always baffled by this "best==most expensive, therefore by looking for the best you have to be a spoiled rich person" mindset.

Some of the best tools I've owned cost less than the average tools you can find at Walmart.

And if I may expend the discussion to softwares (which are also tools to me), some of the best software tools I love are free -- vim for eg.

It's fantastic that nearly all the software I enjoy using is free, and fascinating that that model works. But, here we're talking silverware, not software. Things to put in your backpack to go traveling are not free. And if they're the "best" then they're probably the more expensive of available options.

That sounds awesome. Have you done a Reddit IAMA or described your travels (and how you packed so efficiently and minimally) anywhere? I would be interested to read it if so.

Please write up what you brought with you. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to benefit from your research (and field testing)!

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