July 24, 2023: Advancing minimalism: reduce socks, underpants, trousers

July 24, 2023. The following day, I woke up at five in the morning, probably due to the late consumption of cola the previous day. My dream was about sex and was so intense that I would have liked to give in at that moment, but the NoFap experiment prevented it.

I was awake, so I began reading something about eye health on my laptop. After experiencing blurry vision, I decided to follow the recommendation to regularly look out the window, especially while working on the laptop. This should not only help relax the eyes and counteract the progression of myopia, but also provide space for thoughts about my current activity. However, after reading, I felt exhausted and decided to nap until the alarm rang at eight.

When the alarm went off, I didn't have breakfast, as my morning hunger had decreased lately. This not only extended my fasting period but also spared me the morning toothbrushing routine. The question of whether it was really necessary to brush my teeth twice a day had been on my mind for a while, so I continued my experiment to find out if brushing only in the evening would suffice without compromising dental health.

By nine in the morning, I was already in the library and felt as if I could fall in love with someone right away. But there was no one to fall in love with. Instead, I read a book about digital minimalism and occasionally looked out the window at the roof of the Allianz building. I also moved a little further away from the screen to maintain a distance of at least twenty centimeters. This tip stuck with me after reading the article on eye health this morning. I wanted to make it a habit so that my myopia wouldn't progress any faster.

The minimalism book didn't really teach me anything new, except for one thing that inspired me. What if I neither liked nor disliked the content of YouTube videos? What if I didn't write trivial short comments or chat messages like "Oh, how cute!", "Great!", or "The video is awesome"? What would a world without constant ratings and almost meaningless statements look like? I wanted to try it out and turned off the rating function on some of my YouTube videos. This made it impossible to see how many likes or dislikes the video had. This made it impossible to determine how good the video was based on the number of likes. To improve the quality of comments on my videos, I turned on the "strict comment mode." This filtered even more spam under my videos.

I also toyed with the idea of completely giving up WhatsApp. But it seemed somehow impossible because I could communicate with Galja for free via WhatsApp. To reduce the temptation to reach for my phone, I installed WhatsApp on my laptop.

While having coffee, I remembered that I never actually used my "Multi Colour Cream," which a salesperson had persuaded me to buy for my black leather shoes. So I decided to dispose of it. At some point, I planned to get rid of my leather shoes anyway, as clothing made from animal material did not align with my pursuit of a non-violent world.

At home, I took another close look at my wardrobe. A pair of socks had a small hole, so I disposed of it and decided not to replace it for now but to get by with the remaining five pairs of socks. I also realized that I never got around to wearing my light blue underwear. So I decided to get rid of it as well, and now I had a total of seven pairs of underwear.

Today, I also took the step of bringing my olive-colored pants to the clothing collection container. Now I only had two stylish everyday pants, one in light beige and one in black. On the way back from the clothing container, I got the idea to permanently delete my Telegram account with all the chats. Although I hadn't used Telegram for a long time, my account still existed. I did this when I got home.

On my MacBook, I activated the downtime from 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM and on my smartphone from 11:00 PM to 8:00 AM. By having the downtime feature turn off later on my phone, I wanted to prevent myself from reaching for the phone in the morning and wasting time on it. During this time, it was not possible to work on my MacBook because most programs, such as the browser and the email app, were blocked. This was meant to counteract my habit of staying up late on the laptop. Surprisingly, it worked: When the digital display on the laptop struck eleven o'clock and I was forced to continue reading the next day, I closed the laptop. As soon as I lay down and lay there for a short while, I noticed how tired I actually was, but the laptop had been keeping me from falling asleep. It didn't take long before I fell asleep.

1. When I have finished reading a chapter in a non-fiction book or completing a subtask, I look into the distance. This helps me internalize what I've just read or worked on and simultaneously relaxes my eyes.
2. I maintain a distance of at least 20 centimeters from the screen when working for extended periods to counteract the progression of myopia.
3. I no longer use shoe creams.
4. Reduced the number of sock pairs from 6 to 5.
5. Reduced the number of underwear from 8 to 7.
6. Reduced the number of stylish pants from 3 to 2.
7. I have set the downtime function on my MacBook from 11 PM to prevent myself from staying up late and neglecting my sleep. On my smartphone, the downtime function deactivates later than my usual wake-up time. This prevents me from wasting time on my phone in the morning while lying in bed.