Take one of the book’s many personal anecdotes as an example: the author notices that he’s hitting the ‘snooze’ button on his morning alarm clock more often and deduces from this that he’s not sleeping well enough. The author might disclaim any idea that Hello, Habits is meant to instruct or guide readers, but there’s scarcely any other conceivable reason for the book to exist, and my, my is it an unsettling prospect to get life-advice from somebody who, translator Eriko Sugita’s efforts notwithstanding, comes across as more than a little dim. It’s precious little comfort if he’s sincere, unfortunately, if he’s also dumb as a post. Cluttered surroundings full of junk you neither need nor want, they quite correctly argue, leads to cluttered minds full of junk you neither need nor want.Īlthough the minimalism movement has been thickly encrusted with cynical grifters since the moment it proved lucrative (simply go to YouTube and type in “minimalism” - the first 100 video results will be by not minimalists but rather by evident frauds lying about being minimalists)(expert advice: so will the second 100 videos, and the third), it does no harm to grant that Fumio Sasaki is one of the true believers. Dedicated minimalists will tell you the goal is not to discard possessions but to need fewer things, to simplify your outer life in order to free your inner life.
Like all stereotypes, this is oversimplified. Such was the strength of the movement Goodbye Things helped to popularize that you can probably picture its stereotypical depictions: clean white walls, empty floors, gourmet coffee makers, no bookshelves (1 Kindle instead), strategically-placed plants, Instagram photos of beaming minimalists surrounded by what they witheringly refer to as their things: 1 pair of shoes, 2 pairs of pants, 4 shirts (all black), a meditation mat, a treasured coffee mug, and a 2018 MacBook Pro (bearing no stickers, of course). The book described the author’s quest for less, his decision to dispense with the vast majority of his possessions and live in a mostly empty apartment. World-famous minimalist Fumio Sasaki’s first book, Goodbye Things: The New Japanese Minimalism came out in 2015 and sold a mountain of copies long before it was translated into English in 2017, whereupon it sold mountains more copies. Hello, Habits: A Minimalist’s Guide to a Better Lifeīy Fumio Sasaki (translated by Eriko Sugita)
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