Food for Thought // #01

Personal photo - St Mandé lake

Introducing a new series of posts, based on series such as Becoming Minimalist's Weekend Reads. I discovered a lot of worthwhile reads through that type of posts, so I thought I might also share the articles, videos, or newly discovered websites I find interesting. Also, because I tend to forget where I read this and that and these posts can serve as an archive of my inspirational finds. Here is the first edition...


On Unclutterer - How to Avoid Impulse Buys
Aspiring minimalists or not, we all entered a shop one day and made an impulse/unplanned purchase. Some turn out well, some, not so well. In this article, Unclutterer offers a very interesting "waiting" strategy to counter most unfortunate impulse buys...

New Site - Nerd Fitness
When I say "new", I really mean "newly discovered", as this site has been motivating nerds to engage in fitness activities for years. The site was suggested by a commenter, and it applies the "level up" principle I mentioned in this post. Their blog posts are very insightful on fostering healthy habits and initiating positive changes, and most of their advice apply to many more areas than just fitness or sports.

New Site - The Restart Project
I discovered this initiative through my tumblr feed, and love the idea! Basically, their concept is to promote repairing objects (mainly electronics, from what I have read so far) instead of buying new ones each time. They seem to be organizing parties in the US and UK to create a "community repair", and they have useful links and tips on how to make our electronics last longer.

On Harvard Business Review - Please stop complaining about how busy you are
We live in a society that promotes busy-ness, having as many activities as possible, running around the place and "not having a moment for ourselves". People actually boast about being busy. This article tackles the subject on a business point of view: there is nothing to be proud of, as too busy means less productive. We do need some down time to be more efficient, and I liked the reminder.

Kali's featured TED talk: Life in the "Digital now"
Abha Dawesar was one of those who lost electricity after the Sandy hurricane in New York, and explains, from this experience of people looking for charging plugs as desperately as they were looking for a shower and food, the place the digital world has taken in our lives, and how it has changed our approach to time and life. Definitely food for thought.



That's it for this first round-up, I hope you like this post concept as much as I like reading these on other blogs. I am on holidays this week so I have a lot of time to discover new sites and read articles, I don't know when I will have gathered enough interesting reads to make a second post like this one. Besides, I need to find a way to bookmark and save the links for later. Maybe just by creating a draft post on Blogger? Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best. Please do let me know what you think of the idea, and if you have any good reads to share, I'm all ears!