"Less Words": my private minimalist project of reducing my vocabulary
written by Višnja Željeznjak on March 10, 2010
I'm into minimalist living lately. It's sort of a movement I first heard from bloggers like Leo Babauta from Zen Habits and Everett Bogue from Far Beyond The Stars. Their main point is that "Less is More" (or, better yet, in words od 37 Signals' Jason Fried: "Less is Less"). The minimalist philosophy is simple: stop buying shit, stop using shit, remove excess, and you will be happier. It applies to anything you do in your life, including: writing, developing software, talking, thinking. So far I can testify that it works for me.
Minimalists are into getting rid of excess stuff and cutting their personal posessions down to 100 things or less. They choose not to *own* anything they don't need. You can use stuff, but you don't have to own it. It applies to cars and houses, too. If a thing is not empowering you and making you happy, you should get rid of that thing.
Lately, I've been into NLP too. Words are a big thing in NLP. I've always been fascinated by words and their power to rule a person's life (my life, to be more precise).
It was probably a spur of the moment, and a combination of minimalism + NLP, that made me tweet this one day. And probably the fact that I was reading Seth Godin's amazing book Linchpin (not an affiliate link). This little free ebook called "How to create a movement"gave me an idea or two, too.
A personal project of intentionally stop using disempowering words was born. For now, I call this project "The Less Words Project". If a word takes away my power in any way, or disempowers people capable of hearing me speak, I will not use that word.
The list of my Less Words is short for now, but I will be adding to it with time.
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