The telephone was an aberation in human development. It was a 70 year or so period where for some reason humans decided it was socially acceptable to ring a loud bell in someone else’s life and they were expected to come running, like dogs. This was the equivalent of thinking it was okay to walk into someone’s living room and start shouting. it was never okay. It’s less okay now.

-Rick Webb

This sums up my thoughts on the telephone in a more eloquent way than I ever could. The only person I actually enjoy speaking to on the phone is my wife. That's really a testament to how much I love my wife, when you consider how much I truly despise the telephone.

In nearly all instances, phone conversations can be handled more efficiently and less intrusively by another means of communication. Email, text messaging, and Twitter come to mind.

Let me give you an example. Let's say a friend of mine is working on a project, and needs to borrow my hammer. A phone conversation might go something like this:

RING RING

Me: Hello?

Friend: Hi Rob.

Me: Who's this?

Friend: It's Toby, silly.

Me: Oh, hi Toby.

Friend: So how are the wife and kid?

Me: Oh they're great. How about yours?

Friend: My wife is great, but the little ones are really a handful. They keep poking each other in the eyes, over and over again. I'm really afraid they might do some real damage.

Me: .......

Friend: But enough about me, what's up with you?

Me: Not much, just enjoying life.

Friend: Haha I wish I was. I work so much these days. Last week I must have put in 90 hours. Have you ever worked in a light bulb factory for 90 hours? Let me tell you, it's not as much fun as it sounds. You can only check so many light bulbs before you start going insane.

Me: ...crickets...

Friend: Listen so anyway, I'm working on this project. I'm building a new doghouse for my son. Since he won't stop poking his sister in the eyes I figure what better solution than making him live in a doghouse? I was wondering if I could ask you a favor.

Me: Uh, sure what's up?

Friend: Do you have a hammer I can borrow?

The trivialities are outrageous.

Now let's see that same conversation in text message form.

Friend text to me: Hey Rob, can I borrow a hammer?

Me: Sure.

Quick, simple, to the point. No loud ringing in my home, no interruption, no excessive BS before getting to the point. Just the way it should be.

This morning my grandmother passed away. She spent the last few weeks of her life in the hospital; and she's had numerous major medical problems the last 5-10 years. Several strokes, a heart attack - you name it, she's probably had it.

I spent much of today reflecting on my grandmother's life here on earth. The more I think about her, the more I realize she was an absolutely incredible role model. Granted, I never thought much about it when she was alive, which is very unfortunate. But she lived life the way she wanted; she dealt with the tough situations life handed her very graceful.

She lived a very, very simple life.

As I look back on everything I know about her, one thing is strikingly clear: she didn't care about material things. After losing her husband (my grandfather - he passed years before I was born), she certainly wasn't wealthy. She lived in a modest home; much of it built by my grandfather. She did not own a car - in fact, she never had a driver's license. Driving and owning a car simply didn't appeal to her in any way.

She never chased the latest electronics, never had the latest gadgets. She only got a computer within the last 2 or 3 years. She did not care about fancy clothes, or expensive furnishings. Her home was decorated in a very simple manner; beautiful without being extravagant.

The only thing I know that my grandmother really and truly cared about was her family. Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter were always held at her house. Aunts and uncles, cousins, children and grandchildren.... all of us would come to her house to spend the holidays together.

She absolutely loved it when I would visit - see, I live halfway across the country these days. When I would bring my wife and son to visit, she was always looking to make her great-grandson a snack, or get him some toys to play with. Often the same toys I played with as a child.

Be an optimist

My grandmother seemingly did not catch a lot of breaks in her life. She lost her husband at a young age, she did not have much money, and she spent too much of her last years in the hospital. Yet in spite of all this, she was one of the happiest, kindest, most generous human beings I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Instead of worrying about things that would never make her happy, she cared about the things that did make her happy. That is the lesson for today, folks. "Stuff" will never make you happy, even if it briefly seems like it does. Spending time with your family will.

Make some time to spend with the people you love. God will eventually take them away, and he never calls ahead of time to let you know.

The difference between Mac and PC can best be summed up by what happens when you try to print something.

When I print something on my iMac, which is rare because I like to be as close to paperless as possible, printed sheets come out of the printer.

I'll say it again. When I tell my iMac to print a document, magically the requested documents appear on my printer. No fanfare, no fuss, it just does exactly what it's told.

At my day job, I'm forced to use an ancient Windows XP box. I need to print quite a bit more at work than I do at home, but this is unavoidable. So, what happens when I tell Windows XP that I want to print something?

OOOH OOOH Look at me! I'm printing! I'm doing what you said! OOOOH LOOKIE LOOKIE LOOK AT ME!!!! Did you see what I did? I PRINTED!! OOOH!

Windows XP feels the need to announce to the world, via a large pop-up dialogue box, that it did exactly what I told it to do.

Why in the world would I need this box? The pages coming out of the printer should tell me that the request worked. I don't need an additional, extremely annoying popup to tell me what I already know.

Not everyone can afford a full-sized scanner or all-in-one device. Nor does everyone need such a device. If you scan very infrequently, then it seems quite wasteful to buy a scanner. At this point in my life, I fall into that category. I'm scanning more and more over time, but I don't scan regularly enough to warrant a scanner. So, what to do?

Build your own scanner.

Before you say it, you don't need any mechanical ability to build your own scanner. Sure, mechanical ability helps, especially if you want your do-it-yourself scanner to look good. However, an ugly scanner works just as well as a pretty one. As you can see from my pictures, I have no mechanical ability whatsoever, and have built the world's ugliest scanner. That's ok, because it works fantastically well.

You can find step-by-step directions on creating this amazing simple device here. I can't take credit for the idea - I just followed the directions. The result is simple and brilliant. With the use of two coat hangers, a couple wire ties, and a rubber band, I created a homemade scanner. In the picture my iPhone is mounted to the stand - and it works ok, except for lack of a flash. If you have good lighting, it does the job just fine. I actually prefer to mount my digital camera, since it has a flash, which solves the lighting problem.

How does it work?

Mount your iPhone or digital camera using the rubber band. Place your document under the stand, and snap your picture. Rinse and repeat for any document / receipt you want to scan. Hook up your digital camera to your computer, and copy all those documents over to Evernote. Evernote will work it's magic, and make all the text in those images searchable. Any time you need one of those documents, just search inside of Evernote, and voila - it's there.

While a homemade scanner isn't the prettiest thing on earth, it does qualify as an exceptionally simple answer to a quite complex problem.

My favorite movie of all time is Fight Club. If you haven't seen it, I won't ruin it for you, but I will be using some of the best quotes from the movie.

One of the main characters in Fight Club is a man by the name of Tyler Durden. Tyler is many things, but for the purpose of this article, he is a man who lives quite simply. His ideas and concepts are brilliant. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

Simply brilliant. With the constant bombardment of advertising that we're all subjected to, it almost becomes second nature to buy more and more. Tyler made the simple connection that buying too much stuff can lead to you being stuck at a job you hate, simply to pay for the stuff you don't need. Stop buying stuff, starting doing what you love.

I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.

Could there really be a better definition of a simple life? Sometimes good enough is good enough - there's no need to be perfect.

You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis.

Too often we feel the need to define ourselves by the things we possess. Things do not make us who we are. Accepting that is the first step to owning less, and living a simpler life.

The things you own end up owning you.

Too many possessions, too much stuff... you will end up spending too much of your time on the maintenance, upkeep, organization, and repair of your stuff. Don't let your stuff own you.

We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

To the average person, 500 channels of high definition television is vastly more important than poverty. I'm not saying you have to change the world and feed all the poor. But realizing how backwards are priorities are can help you live a better life, less focused on material things.

Fuck what you know. You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship, and especially about you and me.

If you really want to change your life and live more simply, then you must forget everything you know. Your current / old way of doing things is wrong, and the things you've learned must be unlearned. Forget these things so you can learn all over again.

What do you want? Wanna go back to the shit job, fuckin' condo world, watching sitcoms? Fuck you, I won't do it.

Once you've experienced a drastically simplified life, whatever that may mean to you, there's no way in the world you will go back. The benefits are too dramatic, too fantastic, too wonderful to give up.

Tyler Durden is a fictional character, of course, and has his share of deep-rooted issues. But when it comes to living a simple life, he knows what he's talking about, and has tons of advice to offer.

Simplicity is about cutting back on the needless things in your life so you can spend more time doing what is most important to you.

Time being the key here.

Every day, every month, every year that goes by is lost. Gone forever. No matter how badly you want it, no matter how much money you have, no matter what your job title or position in life, you cannot turn back time.

This, my friends, is why it's important to reduce the crap in your life. Too much stuff, too many commitments, just plain too much in your life leads to wasted time. Wasted time with your spouse. Wasted time with your children.

Ye Olde Cliche

It's a cliched saying, of course, but children grow up too fast. Way too fast. One day they're in diapers, and before you know if they're heading off to middle school, then high school, then college. In fact it takes years, but it seems to pass in the blink of an eye.

Wasting time with things that don't matter costs you time with your kids. Time that you'll regret losing for years, maybe forever. When they're teenagers and don't want to talk to you anymore, because you're not hip... you'll miss the days that you didn't spend with them when they were younger.

I realize that not everyone has kids. If that's you, that doesn't mean it's OK to just waste away as much time as you like. Time still ticks by, ever faster. While you won't be missing time with your nonexistent children, you will miss out on enjoying life.

That's why it's so important to figure out what matters to you. Your kids, spouse, parents, church, business, charity, whatever. You get the idea. Time wasted on meaningless things is time that you miss out spending on meaningful things.

Maybe that sounds obvious.

Have you ever thought that the extra 10 minutes every day you spend trying to find your wallet in the pile of crap on your desk adds up to 60 hours a year? That's sixty hours of time that you lost.

Note that this is far different from sixty hours spent relaxing. There is great benefit to taking things slow, relaxing, and purposefully doing nothing. With these things, inaction is a choice, and is great for your state of mind. I know of no one who benefits from frantically searching for their things.

Cut the clutter. Get rid of stuff you don't need. Cut back on non critical commitments. Get your time back, and do something fantastic with it.

Evernote is one of my favorite programs / web services of all time. If I had to define Evernote simply and easily, I would call it "A way to organize every digital thing." Really that describes it quite perfectly. You can use Evernote to organize your notes, ideas, receipts, pictures, web clippings, PDF's, audio clips, and just about anything else you can think of.

Evernote is accessible from any computer - just go to their website, log in, and your entire "notebook" is available to you, easily searchable. Of course, this isn't the best way to access Evernote, but it's good to know that you'll never be without your information. Evernote offers a desktop application for Mac OS X, Windows, and they even have an iPhone version. No matter where you are, your information is quite simple to get to.

Search is the killer feature

After uploading months of notes, receipts, clippings, and various text files, even tags have their limits on organization. Enter the killer feature of Evernote: search. The search function looks at the title, tags, and even inside the file. If you have text in your images, Evernote looks in there too. Yep, it does OCR. Premium users get an additional level of search - all PDF's are searchable. Absolutely incredible.

Get the desktop app

Anytime I buy something online these days, I ⌘+P to print, then click on the PDF drop-down box, and "Save PDF to Evernote". Automagically, my receipt / page / whatever is saved into Evernote, and is completely searchable. No more trying to remember where I put the printout, or trying to find the email. Search for a word or two, and Evernote will find what I'm looking for.

Try it out for free

The basic Evernote service is completely free. You get to upload as much as 40 MB per month, with no total storage limit. For all but the most ardent users, that's plenty. If you choose to upgrade, it's $5 per month, or $45 per year. For your support, you get an absurd monthly upload limit of 500 MB, and the killer PDF search feature. Easily worth the price, many times over.

Unclutter your hard drive, organize your life

Forget hundreds of text files, PDF's, and receipts littering your Documents folder. Upload them to Evernote and delete them from your hard drive. Organize and simplify.

When it comes to speaking, writing, emails, tweets, instant messages, whatever – we often say more than we need to. Services like Twitter help with that, with the 140 character limit. But no such limits exist when talking to another human in real life, or composing an email. Since limits aren’t built in, you need to create limits.

Get to the point

Instead of blabbering on, get to the point. The meat and potatoes. Say it and get on with it. Don’t write for 8 paragraphs, building up to what you want to tell me. Just tell me. If the message is good, I’ll be interested, and glad that you didn’t waste my time. If you make me wait, and the message is weak, I’m going to be a little ticked off.

Simplify, simplify

If you don’t have to come up with so much “fluff”, you’ll be free to do more. Or less. The point is, simplifying your words gives you more time, more freedom. Do what you want with the extra time, even if what you want is nothing. Doing nothing is doing something, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.

In all areas of our lives, we strive for perfection. Every project at work has to be perfect. We look for perfection in our finances. In our marriage. When raising our kids. Even mowing the lawn - we demand perfection. And to a point, that's a good thing. Doing a great job is something to be proud of, as long as you are reasonable.

Rather than stress over making every single area of your life perfect, choose some things where you accept that "Good enough is, well, good enough." Spend a reasonable amount of time and effort to do a good job. Then stop. Don't spend hours of time, and tons of energy trying to make it perfect. Not only will you exhaust yourself, you won't succeed in making everything perfect. This doesn't make you a quitter - in fact it makes you a brilliant human being.

Use your energy wisely, as it's a finite resource. Reducing stress can go a long way toward helping you live the kind of life you want for yourself. Eliminating the need to be perfect is a huge weight off your shoulders. Go ahead, try it. The next time you're working on something that isn't absolutely critical, do a good job. And then stop. Do no more, and move on to the next task. If your to-do list is complete, then it's time to rest and enjoy a little down time.

Your week has been hectic - you worked too many hours, and did too many chores around the house.  You're exhausted, and looking forward to that trip out of town with your wife to relax.  Friday afternoon comes along and your phone rings - it's your sister.

Rob, can you watch my kids for me?  My babysitter canceled!

No sis, I really can't.

See, that was easy.  Sure, your sister's plans are ruined, and that's a shame.  But it's not your problem.  Say no, gently, nicely, but firmly.  You have plans in place.   Sure, the plan is to do nothing - and that's exactly what you need after a long week.  Don't be afraid to tell family and friends no.  And don't feel guilty about it either.  Living a simple life isn't about catering to everyone's needs, and filling every moment of your time.

Your wife wants to take kung-fu pilates classes with you, but you would rather sit on your back porch and mellow out?  Just say no.  Don't agree just because you think you're supposed to.  Say no, do nothing, and relax.  Living a simple life is about enjoying the moment, and not filling the moments with things that don't matter.  If you're honest with your wife, she will understand.  She'll appreciate your honesty too - and you'll enjoy yourself.

So stop being afraid, start saying no, and slow down your life.  You'll be amazed at what you've been missing all these years.