259. How Minimalism is Linked to the Creative Process

 Author, web developer, and Asana Pro Bastien Siebman discusses how minimalism can generate creativity and reframe productivity.
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Check out Bastien's LinkedIn:
https://fr.linkedin.com/in/siebmanb/en

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the podcast for people who write, edit, read, or listen. Today, author, web developer, and Asana certified pro Bastien Siebman is joining us. This is "How Minimalism is Linked to the Creative Process."

Jennia: Thank you so much for being here! This isn't something we've covered before, so I'm interested to hear about it.

Bastien: Yeah, my pleasure! I love minimalism. I love writing. So, yeah, I think it's a good combination to talk about.

Jennia: So before we start, how would you define minimalism?

Bastien: I think minimalism is usually about enough, having the right amount of things around you, the right amount of time spent on something—

Jennia: Mmm.

Bastien: —not less, not more, just the exact right amount of things.

Jennia: Do you think that minimalism is a word that is often misunderstood or maybe just has a loose definition applied to it?

Bastien: Yeah, I think so. I think people usually think it's about not having enough and sacrificing yourself, especially when it comes to belongings and things around the house. People will usually hear minimalism and they think having one table, one chair, and that's it. When in fact, it's about having more space, more time, more money. So having less clutter, but actually having more in the end.

Jennia: Yeah, I like that you're bringing up that it's not just about physical items, but it's also these intangible pieces of our world, like time. So that kind of goes into then too, so when you talk about minimalism, we're not talking about just physical items, but we're talking about mental space even, also. And does that also apply then to like, digital clutter?

Bastien: Yeah, exactly. And I think actually sometimes minimalism is about having more things. I do have an example for you. I have one pen, okay?

Jennia: Mhm.

Bastien: My pen here, I have one. It's under my desk. I do have a second pen. It's in my bag. The reason I have two pens is that when I go and travel, I don't want to have the need to remember to put my pen in my bag. So I'm trying to save some time and mental space by having things twice in two different locations for two different ways of using them. I have the same thing with my computer mouse. I have two mouses. I have one in my bag, one there on my desk, because I want to be able to leave without having to do all of that manual work of moving things around. So in some cases, it's actually having more rather than having less. And yeah, digital clutter also plays a big part in minimalism. If you look at my desktop. I do not have anything on my actual page.

Jennia: Mhm.

Bastien: Everything is well organized into folders. It's not a big mess like it usually is with people.

Jennia: I'll admit that having someone share their desktop with me recently inspired me to clean up my own desktop because I thought, "What am I doing to myself by having all these folders and files everywhere?" I can never find what I want right away. So, yeah, I love your example too, because I think that just shows so well that it's exactly the opposite of what we think minimalism is sometimes. Because, you know, you think about how many times you are running out the door and you forget your water bottle or something else of great importance. And if you'd had a second one, you wouldn't even be in that situation.

Bastien: Yeah, exactly. But at the same time, having five or six bottles doesn't make sense. It's a bit too much. We do have another example in our home. We recently changed the table that we have, and we decided to buy a circle table, a round table, because it's only the four of us, my two kids and my wife. So 99 percent of the time we have a very small table with only four chairs, because it's actually much better to live in a house that doesn't take too much space for the table. And I know that, especially people in the US, they usually have a very big table. They sometimes have a dining room in addition to the kitchen, and they have two tables with six or eight chairs. That's actually a lot of space being taken, when in fact, most of the time you only need four. So we have small table, four chairs. The other two chairs are actually elsewhere in the house, in different rooms, and they serve a different purpose up until the day you actually need more chairs because you're bringing people over. But then the next day those chairs go back to being something else in a different room.

Jennia: Well, moving into creativity, when did you first notice there was a link between that and minimalism?

Bastien: I think that's when I wanted to write about minimalism. I've read lots of blogs, and books, and looked at lots of movies, and I wanted to put everything I learned into a book. And the way I wrote the book, I think, was aligned with the minimalism values. So I basically decided I wanted to write a small book. It would be only 30 small chapters, I split the book into 30 chapters. I've decided on the title of each chapter, and then I worked on each one. I think it was one Saturday and one Sunday at a time. That's really a way to tackle a book pretty quickly—30 chapters goes by very fast. Basically two chapters per week. That's 15 weeks of work, and it doesn't take long to write a very small chapter. I also decided that the book was going to be about things I already know, so I wouldn't have to do any research. I would only share things I know. So that was really an interesting way of tackling a book, which is sometimes something that's pretty scary to do.

Jennia: Right.

Bastien: And I think the end result is pretty good. It's not a massive book that millions of people read, but I think it's a pretty nice book that really consolidated everything I learned.

Jennia: Oh, interesting. So what were your takeaways after that process, and how did you take some of the information you learned to help other people?

Bastien: The approach I took is something I use in my work pretty often. When you have something quite big to create, try to split that into smaller steps, obviously, and then walk the way towards that goal one step at a time. In my case, 30 steps did not seem that much. Especially if you only do two steps per week. It's pretty easy to do. You can really see the progress and you can pretty quickly get to the end result. And once you have that small book of 30 chapters, nothing prevents you from expanding some of the chapters to make that book a bit bigger.

Jennia: Ahh.

Bastien: Or you can realize that actually writing 30 chapters was not that enjoyable. You thought it would be nice, well, it actually wasn't. So in that case, you can stop and you realize that with an actual book being finished, instead of writing two massive chapters and stopping and having nothing to show for it. So I think it's also a way to test your willingness to work and how strong your motivation is.

Jennia: Yeah. Or even just reevaluate your goals. Is this really something that you want to do? Yeah, that's interesting. So as far as minimalism and the actual writing process, are there any minimalism rules that you use when you're writing?

Bastien: What I do right now is I delegate quite a lot. So that means—I have a team right now, so whenever I write something, for example, a post on LinkedIn or a video for YouTube, as soon as I'm done with the core creative process, which is either recording myself or writing something, I then hand this over to someone else, because we know that the rest of the process usually takes a long time.

Jennia: Right.

Bastien: For example, the editing of the videos, the publication of the video, publishing on LinkedIn at the right time, on the right channel or group—that takes time. So this is something I delegate and I really focus my time on the core creative process, finding the ideas and actually writing the words or recording the videos, and the rest is delegated to someone else.

Jennia: Yeah, that's a great way to go back to tying in the minimalism related to the increase in available time to each individual. Well, how can people recognize if they're not doing enough delegation?

Bastien: I think procrastinating would be the number one reason you're not delegating enough, or that the goal is not clear. Maybe the goal was too big. If you keep procrastinating, you either don't have the right goal or you misinterpreted the motivation that you had, or you haven't delegated enough.

Jennia: Right. I've read too, it can also be a fear of failure, which could also be a sign of not delegating something that would be better suited for another person, just because on some level you might realize you don't really have that skillset. And so maybe you're just waiting for that miracle to happen where suddenly you do have that skillset or the research for it, but you don't really want to do the research for it.

Bastien: Yeah, exactly. And that's also why I've decided to always talk and share about things I know myself, so that I don't have to do so many research and spend a lot of time doing this. It was a way for me to hack the system and release something. That was the goal—release something as fast as possible. So that solution was to only talk about things I knew from the angle that I knew and not research a lot to share other-people angles, basically.

Jennia: Did you notice any other positive changes apart from an increase in time when you started doing that?

Bastien: I think you can basically get much more done. You can test a lot more things. When you look at writing, especially writing for social media, for example, it's important to test different types of posts, different approach, different catchphrases, and you want to do that as fast as possible so that once you find the right approach, you can then replicate and apply that approach to other posts. So it's really a way to test very quickly to find the right approach. We also know that in some cases, you do have to publish quite often in order to be seen, in order to be recognized, in order to find the right idea. So the faster you can publish, the faster you're going to find that breakthrough ideas that you needed.

Jennia: Yeah. Even just from a logical standpoint and understanding the amount of time that each of those tasks is going to require of you, it becomes pretty simple pretty early on, just looking at that list and realizing one person cannot possibly do all these things.

Bastien: Exactly, yeah.

Jennia: Well, what other benefits, though, have you found? I mean, have you felt like you're more creative as a result? Ideas come to you easier? Is just writing in general easier?

Bastien: I think knowing that I can test an idea pretty quickly makes it easier to generate tons of ideas. Let's say you have a new idea, but you also know that you have 1000 other ideas written down that you haven't tested yet. You might be tempted to discard that new idea that you had because you know it's never going to see the light of day. But if you know that any idea you have could be tested very, very quickly, you can really write something, put something together very quickly and test that right away. That can really boost your energy and make you want to test even more and even more frequently.

Jennia: Oh, yeah, that's so true. So we talked a little bit about minimalism in writing, but does that also apply to your physical setting at all or your workspace?

Bastien: It does. I'm trying to have a desk that is as clean as possible. You can see there's not a lot around me. Everything is there for a specific reason, because I think I really can't be creative if I have stuff around. I really need things to be very organized. For example, I have one pen, it has one location, it's hidden away. I'm trying to really hide things away. I have an empty glass next to me. It's a bit too much clutter for me, so I do have to put this away. If I want to be creative, I really want to make sure that I don't have anything around me to disturb me.

Jennia: Well, how is that important for the creative process itself, at least what you've noticed for yourself individually?

Bastien: In my case, I can't work if I have clutter around me. So if my brain wants to declutter around me, it cannot think and be creative at the same time. And I actually, I would find myself cleaning the house sometimes because I can't work if the house is not clean.

Jennia: Yes (laughs).

Bastien: And I know that some people, especially creative people, they do need the mess and the chaos to be creative. It's really not the way I work.

Jennia: Mhm. Well, how do you take into account those differences in writers then, when you're bringing up minimalism, you know, addressing that, yes some do need some sort of clutter or just the right amount of chaos in order to thrive?

Bastien: Yeah, I think each person needs to find what works for them. It took me a bit of time to actually find out that minimalism was a thing. It took me awhile to research as well what it was. And it took me awhile to adopt and adapt that approach to my own way of doing things. Some people, they want to remove lots of items from their life. Some others, they want to remove only types of items. For example, some people are okay with having tons of books around. In my case, I just have one or two books that I read and then as soon as I'm done, I just give them away to someone else. So everybody has to find the right way to apply minimalism to their life.

Jennia: Do you have any tips on how to do that or to recognize if it's right for someone?

Bastien: I think you have to identify what doesn't work on a daily basis. And we all have those little frustrations every single day. For example, having a pile of papers on the desk, that could be a frustration. So you have to really see yourself behaving every day and try to recognize what are, all those little frustrations during the day and try to fix them one by one by finding the right location for each item or deciding that you need to get rid of something or replace something by something else that works better. So really try to be aware of your environment and the way you behave, and that would be the first step before actually implementing improvements.

Jennia: Yeah, that all really does make a lot of sense because I think sometimes it's easy to jump on whatever is trendy. And not just minimalism, but anything that applies to our way of life. And it can be so easy to try something and then find out maybe a little later than you should have that it's really not working for you. And perhaps you were just so enthused by this new idea that you jumped on it without really giving it enough thought.

Bastien: Exactly. It's really hard to triage between the next shiny idea or the actual good idea that it's going to become. And that takes a long time to be trained on being able to identify what's shiny and what actually is something you should work on.

Jennia: Yes, that's really great advice. Well, apart from the physical surroundings, can we talk a little bit more about digital clutter? And I think that's just because it's such a huge problem for so many of us. So how do we get that under control so that it's not a constant reminder in the back of our heads while we're writing or pursuing some other creative endeavor?

Bastien: I think we have to be honest with ourselves. Most of the things we touch in a digital environment, we will not need that in the future. There are very few emails that you actually need to reread beyond one week. Most of the things, you will not need them. Most of the email could be archived in a massive archive. And if one day you do need to find that email, it's going to be really easy to search this archive. I've thought a lot about the inbox zero approach and really making sure that you have no emails in your inbox—

Jennia: Mhm.

Bastien: —and some people tell you that they're fine, they have lots of email, but they know exactly what's in that list. And others actually triage everything in very specific folders and subfolders and it takes them a lot of time.

Jennia: Right.

Bastien: My advice is archive everything that you can. There are lots of ways now to find something that we've archived. There are also lots of ways to find things we've deleted if we have to. So archiving everything in a single folder is actually perfectly fine.

Jennia: Mhm.

Bastien: And I can guarantee you that you will be able to find what you're looking for later down the road. But in most cases, you will never have to look for this. Once you understand this, it becomes quite easier to really clean up that inbox and really reach that level zero with no emails. And that's the ultimate minimalist dream. In my case, I almost reach that level every day and it has been amazing. It really unlocks your productivity. It unlocks the next level of your productivity because something that comes in suddenly has a specific importance, because that's the only thing in your inbox. You're going to treat that either very, very quickly because you want to go back to inbox zero, or you're going to take the time to process that email because that's the only one you see. So you're really going to take time to process this. I think it has lots of benefits.

Jennia: Yeah, I can definitely see that. I'll admit I do that with my work email account for those exact reasons, that I know if I have an email in there, that it's something I need to attend to, it's not junk or a newsletter that I may or may not be interested. It actually has value to me or my response will have value to the recipient.

Bastien: Exactly. And again, some people think they don't need inbox zero, but I'm pretty convinced that everybody needs inbox zero. Even if you have 20 unread emails or 20 read emails, it's a lot of mental business to see those 20 emails every single day and try to remember what you're supposed to do with them. And this is just mental clutter, basically.

Jennia: Do you apply some of the same ideology also to social media?

Bastien: I do. I actually recently started doing a LinkedIn inbox zero. Messages in LinkedIn, you have an actual inbox and you can do exactly the same thing. You can archive them, and I've started to implement the same thing. I realized that I had messages that were from almost ten years ago, when LinkedIn started. I had very old messages, and right now my inbox is like three or four different messages, but those are important. I'm waiting on an answer, or I need to write an answer. So it's really important to try to reduce that level of noise and really go back to just that very small number of items you have to deal with.

Jennia: Have people ever come to you for advice about this or had a specific problem that they're encountering when they're trying to adopt a more minimalist lifestyle in order to bring their creativity to a higher level?

Bastien: Yeah, so basically, my love for productivity and minimalism led me to become a consultant, an Asana consultant. So Asana is a project management solution. My team is actually one of the most active in the world in the Asana ecosystem—

Jennia: Oh, congratulations!

Bastien: —and that's literally our job—thank you (both laugh)—it's literally our job to help people be productive, especially in Asana. But we can also help people be productive by using emails differently and using meetings differently. But the core work that we do is actually related to Asana, the tool itself.

Jennia: Oh, that's excellent. Can you explain a little bit more what that's like? Just for any listeners who might not be aware of what it is.

Bastien: It's a work management platform that really allows you to collaborate with your team members on a daily basis. And in Asana, you can manage everything from tasks, project portfolios, all the way to the goals of the company and the goals of your team. So basically, all the day to day collaboration could be done in Asana. It replaces every single email you send internally to each other. It replaces a lot of the Excel file you have around, and it really allows you to have a frictionless collaboration.

Jennia: Ah, wow, that's so excellent. What a good idea!

Bastien: Yeah, we did not invent Asana. We only consult and help people use Asana.

Jennia: Well, but still, you know, sometimes that's what we need is just that person to help us even understand what we're doing and how we get to that point because I think with so many things, it's easy to listen to someone talking about it and thinking, "Yes, I should do that." But then when it comes to actually trying to apply some of those principles on our own, we can just feel overwhelmed, or lost, or we don't even know where we should start. And so that ends up more procrastination, we don't start!

Bastien: Yeah, exactly. I love my job, and I think that there's a lot of people who has a "haha" moment when they realize they can actually take back control on their task list, take back control of their email inbox, and really gain some clarity.

Jennia: Yeah. And then just seeing how that changes everything in your life as a result too, because I can see this definitely having those sort of ripple effects like you were talking about. You know, you no longer have to spend an hour a day going through your inbox and sorting it. You're no longer feeling at a loss when you look at your desktop cluttered with tons and tons of icons and folders.

Bastien: Yeah, I think what's really hard is when you go very deep in the productivity, as deep as I go, you see everything as a project or a task. It does have some impact, even on your personal life, because seeing everything as a project or a task, it does have some problem attached to it. It's a bit hard to differentiate from that consultant you are during the day, especially when being a father or husband. It has challenges, but it's also helping for so many topics.

Jennia: Yeah, I can see that. Well, thank you for being honest and pointing out the possible negatives as well. (both laugh)

Bastien: No problem.

Jennia: So for anyone who's interested in getting started or learning more about how they can have a more minimalistic approach, do you have any favorite resources or tips you'd like to pass on?

Bastien: No, I think they should just be aware that minimalism is actually a thing. There's actually a YouTube documentary called... I think that's called Minimalism, actually. It was initially on Netflix, it's not on Netflix anymore. It's on YouTube only. It's pretty good. The first one is pretty good. The second one is not that good, so just watch the first one. That actually opened my eyes to the minimalism world. And there are actually lots of books around that topic, including books by Marie Kondo, applying minimalism to the house and the object we have around us. Yeah, if you're interested, just look for a book, and that's going to lead you to probably other books and a couple of videos.

Jennia: Well, great advice for our audience, who is mostly made up of other authors. Books are sort of our thing (both laugh).

Jennia: Well, thank you again. That was fantastic!

Bastien: Yeah, my pleasure! Thank you!

Jennia: And that's all for today. Thank you for listening, and please check out the show notes for more information. And then please join me next week where we're going to learn how to successfully co-author a book. For that episode, we'll have two authors here providing their insights. Repeat guest Lillah Lawson, and Lauren Emily Whalen. Thanks again!