We recently did an interview with our friend Joel Zaslofsky on his always thought-provoking podcast, Smart and Simple Matters.
We discovered Joel and his great website full of valuable, free resources as part of our ongoing process of simplifying our family life.
Joel’s groove fit with our own so well that we flew to Minneapolis to attend the inaugural SimpleREV Conference in October of this year, which Joel founded.
It’s reviving to be around Joel. He is genuinely interested in people and genuinely interesting.
If the idea of improving some aspect of your life for yourself or your family appeals to you, keep reading.
Odds are, Joel’s already got you covered.
1. Curate Your Experiences
Joel outlines experience curating concisely in this video.
As joel states in the video, curating is your ticket to whatever you need to do. A curator saves and archives the richness of daily experiences to make them valuable to himself, and also to others.
Joel advocates using spreadsheets to curate but understands that others may choose their own tools.
I am a huge advocate of Evernote to manage curation for myself and my family.
The key is, before I met Joel, I was only using Evernote for work and household information management; tracking bills and work tasks and things like that.
After learning more about the power of curation, I began to use Evernote to capture the richness and context of my daily life with the people who matter the most, my family.
I now regularly update notebooks which I named ‘My Happiest Memories,’ ‘Mr B.’ ‘Mr C’ and ‘Sarah’ with joys, sorrows, minutia, context, funny moments, insights and experiences of all kinds.
These notebooks are slowly becoming the permanent, digital story of the most important and valuable parts of my life.
The value this has delivered is already clear and every year the value will compound, like a money market savings account of memories and experience.
This is much, much more powerful than “journaling” or snapping pics with Instagram. And what better way to get exposed to it?
After all, Joel’s passion for experience curating led him to write the book on it.
2. Rev Up
Attending the SimpleREV Conference this year crystallized some ideas and inspirations which had previously just floated around fluidly for years in the back of my mind.
i think what made that happen for me was meeting many different kinds of people from many different walks of life, learning about their own individual journeys firsthand and discovering over and over that I was not alone in my thinking.
See if some of the declarations of the SimpleREV 2014 conference resonate with you in the context of your family’s journey:
Ignorance is Expensive. Awareness is Cheap.
Purpose Comes From Intentional Experiences, Not Stuff.
Know What’s Important and Release What’s Not
Declutter Your Heart, Brain and Soul.
Do you know where you won’t find these declarations?
In 99% of television, 99% of print media, 99% of holiday traditions, 99% of your favorite social network, 99% of texting conversations, 99% of chats with work colleagues around the water cooler, 99% of modern Western culture.
Therein lies the profound value that meeting and talking and sharing ideas and experiences and laughing and spending time with others for whom these declarations also resonate.
This kind of personal connection with strangers on topics like this just doesn’t happen in the wild. Talking about these ideas at your place of work could even be a “career limiting move.”
If any of these or the other declarations resonate with you, all I can say is, join us in the conversation.
A good place to start are the SimpleREV podcasts.
In Conclusion
Joel Zaslofsky and his Smart and Simple Matters podcast, along with his valuable free resources at Value of Simple are the best possible starting point for you to begin exploring ideas around simplifying your life, both for your own benefit and for the benefit of your family.
At the time of this writing I am 35, and I really wish I would have had all of this a decade ago.
I can’t give Joel and his work a more emphatic or authentic endorsement than that.
Just for the record, I’m super duper grateful for your friendship and all the nice things you wrote about me. I’m glad I’ve helped you and I hope my work, your work, and our work together helps a few million people (or so).
Agreed Joel! We are so lucky to have found you. You make our life better just by being you! Happy New Year!