Minimalist in Doing—–One Thing at A Time, No Multi-Tasking

Minimalism has been made trite—as youtubers churn out more and more videos of similar themes.  Today, I want to name a new form of minimalism—do one thing at a time—in addition to decluttering  stuff in your home.

Be a Minimalist in doing. If not, it can be very costly. It costs me not only time but real money—–over $2000 and several days of fret.  Let me tell you what happened to me this eventful week.

Multi-Tasking Cost Me  Two Hours in Searching for Things.

This Saturday I signed up for a hiking trip through meetup in the front-range mountains not far from where I live. I packed a lunch and got into my car, only finding out that my Prius told me it cannot detect key fob signal; but car key was not in my bag. 

I had to message the event organizer to cancel the trip. 

After searching all crevice and nooks in the house in vail, I paused and tried to retrieve my own traces. The last time I used my car was on Tuesday—after having to cancel and rebook my costly international trip on Monday–I went to Costco for a therapeutic shopping. It got to be in that purse I carried. Locating a purse is certainly easier than locating keys.   

I repeated the search process in my entire house, but the purse did not show up.   Finally, I vaguely recalled that I tidied up the garage right after pulling in my car after return from Costco on Tuesday, so Why not return to the garage and continued the tidying up.  Sure enough, not long after I started to tidy up, I found the purse–it sat in a box where I put my biking accessories, and the keys were in the purse.   

I put down the purse, and started to clean the garage after  unloading groceries from my car—multi-tasking. By the time I finished tidying up the garage, I forgot and left the purchase in the box in the garage!  

Next Let me tell you the cost of owning two travel bags–including a newly purchased one.

Owing Two Travel Bags Cost Me over Two Thousand Dollars, 2-week Delay

Last Monday 6/26, I was supposed to catch an early flightsback to China. I called Uber and was ready to leave my house.

Just a last check for the most important item for international trips–passport—- on the top small pocket of my newly purchased travel backpack-Tomtoc. Oh, no, it was a different document of navy, but not my passport.  I was pretty sure I put it  there yesterday. I had to tell uber driver to wait for me.  Then, I started to search all the pockets of the Tomtoc backpack, and all the pockets of another backpack (a lowpro camera backpack).  No, the navy blue passport was not in either of them.  How can it be?

I laid down the suitcase, and unload all stuff packed in, and searched for the passport. Still , the passport was not in it. How?   It seemed to have grown a pair of wings and left on its own.   

I had to tell the uber driver feel free to leave without me.  Then I recollected myself and thought back what I did when packing. I packed the backpacks on my bed, so I searched all the surfaces of the bed and took a peek at the floor below the bed, but still the passport was not in view at all. Half an hour had passed. The Uber driver has left.  I was nervous and feared that I would have to cancel my flights.   Only one hour and a half left before my flight took off at Denver International Airport, I knew I would have to cancel the trip.

This seemed to have released the tension off me. I searched another time on the carpet below the bed. Surely, there was sth lying at the corner between the bed and the white sofa. I sticked out my arm and grabbed  it. Surly, it was the navy-covered passport. By this time,   there was only one hour before the flight to Los Angeles took off. It was too late. 

Then, the whole day, I was scrambling trying to contact the airlines, and the online agency I bought the ticket from. I was told I had to cancel the flights and the agency cannot find tickets issued from AA at a reasonable price.  Their prices had gone up to $5000.  By the time, I knew I had to search for tickets from elsewhere at a reasonable price on other website, it was 3pm. My supposed flight to Los Angeles was 7am. 

Anyway, I was exhausted both mentally and physically after I rebooked flights that would depart from Denver in two weeks and had to cut the duration of the trip by one week. After all, it was in 2019, the last time I visited my aging parents and siblings in China. I have been longing to see my family and friends in China.

If I had only one backpack for travel, I would not have to choose between the Lowpro camera backpack and the new Tomtoc travel backpack as personal items on the flights, and the passport would not have slipped out of the backpack pocket and dropped to below the bed without me noticing it, and I would not have to go through the whole frustrated processes: cancel flights, debating in-between cancelling the trip plan or rebooking flights, and all the sequence of tasksI did on June 26, and of courses more than $2000 less in my pocket.

Summary

Another reason that contributes to my above two mishaps was that I experienced several house-related eventful issue just before the trip

• I had to hire a lawyer to evict tenants in a property located in another state.
• I had to fix the irrigation system at the current house– my first house that comes with an automatic irrigation  system.
• I had to buy and set up an indoor irrigation system for my house plants.

This again proves the two points below:

Indeed,

• While we cannot live without stuff, but stuff owns us too.   
• Multi-tasking may not get more things done; on the contrary, it may deter us from getting things done. 

Be a minimalist in action:

• Do one thing at a time thoroughly and completely.
• Decompress regularly to let stress out.

If not, you may experience one damned thing after another.  It is so true bad things beget worse things if we do not find ways to decompress ourselves.