What simple living actually is
Every tradition that thought hard about the good life arrived at some version of the same move: subtract. Seneca watched Romans give away their years to obligations they hated. Thoreau moved to a pond to see what was left when he stopped. Laozi built an entire philosophy on doing and wanting less. The furniture changes; the diagnosis doesn't.
The modern version has one new opponent, and it lives in your pocket. Which is why the practices below start there.
Five practices, in ascending order of difficulty
One: phone in airplane mode until after breakfast. We named the company after this move, so consider the bias declared, but the first phone-free hour remains the highest-return simplification we know. Two: one in, one out, for objects. Three: a weekly empty morning with nothing scheduled and nothing planned, defended like a meeting. Four: unsubscribe and unfollow for a month; anything you genuinely miss, reinstate. Five: audit the standing obligations. The calendar is a possession too, and it hoards worse than the closet.
The reading list
| Book | What it is | Read it when |
|---|---|---|
| Walden · Henry David Thoreau | The 1854 original: two years in a cabin, interrogating what's necessary | You want the source document, digressions and all. Skim permission granted. |
| On the Shortness of Life · Seneca | A Stoic essay, around 49 AD, on where lifetimes actually go | You want the sharpest hundred pages ever written about busyness. It reads like it was posted this morning. |
| Digital Minimalism · Cal Newport | The 2019 case for treating attention like the scarce resource it is | The phone is the thing you most need to simplify. Includes the 30-day declutter protocol. |
| Tao Te Ching · Laozi | 81 short chapters; the deepest treatment of doing less ever written | You want the philosophy under all of this. Our translation guide picks your edition. |
| A Quaker Book of Wisdom · Robert Lawrence Smith | Plain-spoken life lessons from the tradition that made simplicity a testimony (1998) | You want simplicity with a moral spine: silence, service, and speaking plainly. |
| 365 Days of Tao · Airplane Mode | The Tao Te Ching spread across a year, one page each morning | You want the subtraction habit at a daily dose. Five minutes, one verse, done. ★4.7 across 219 Amazon ratings, July 2026. |
Start smaller than feels serious
Simplicity fails when it launches as a renovation. Pick the phone-free hour or the empty Saturday morning, run it for a month, and let the results argue for the next subtraction. The free daily Tao email makes a decent companion: one calm page a morning, and it never suggests you buy storage baskets.
Common questions
What's the difference between minimalism and simple living?
Minimalism, as commonly practiced, is about owning fewer objects. Simple living is the wider project: fewer inputs, fewer obligations, fewer commitments, of which stuff is the easiest third.
Where should I start with simple living?
Subtract one input, not one possession: the phone-free first hour beats a closet cleanout for immediate quality-of-life return.
Do I have to be frugal or move to the woods?
No. Thoreau himself only stayed two years. The move is deciding on purpose what stays, at whatever income and address you already have.
What should I read first?
Seneca if you feel busy, Newport if you feel scrolled, Thoreau if you feel crowded, and the Tao Te Ching if you want the philosophy underneath all three.