#012 ✰ An intentional wishlist
Say hi to our first guest, Gian Segato.
Good day to you!
I am excited to introduce you to our good old friend, Gian. Today, he’s the one running the show.
Gian is the founder of Uniwhere, an app to facilitate students must dos’ while attending university. We met in Berlin, couple of years back, grinding days & nights (literally) in the same building, thanks to WestTech Venture. Like me, he’s no professional writer but enjoys the process of writing down in order to process ideas. (His post about why he writes despite the imposteur syndrome is really good ; if you’re thinking of writing but need a trigger, here it is.)
I wish you could enjoy the following read with his so-enthusiastic-Italian accent.
Generally, without checks and balances, I'm a rather bad consumer.
I'm impulsive, which means that the right Instagram ad can be quite dangerous for me. Also, I'm easily persuaded, so branding, FOMO, and other psychological tricks can push me to buy a wrong item for a reasonable need.
Being aware of my personality, I needed to find a mental framework that could help me become more intentional with my consumer habits, without — however — restricting my freedom.
Luckily, the model I came up with is quite simple: you just need to convince your future self by answering a couple of questions first.
An odd coincidence is that the very same biases that make me a bad consumer are also risk-factors on my job.
A mistake I'm likely to make, if I'm not careful, is to get overly excited when it comes to building new products. To have no thinking between idea and building — just raw, constant, creation. Many fellow startup founders suffer from the same condition.
The symptoms are very easy to spot:
There's no real problem behind the idea → the solution is coming before the problem. This usually means that people won't care about what you are doing.
The technology used is not the right one, and it's been chosen just because it's cool (you have no idea how often this happens) → implementation before solution. The consequence is that the development ends up costing exponentially more than what it should.
As you can tell, the connection between bad startup management and bad consumer habits is striking: when you buy something you don't need, you're putting a solution before a problem. When you are buying an overpriced item because you're in love with a brand, you're putting the implementation before the solution.
Luckily, these are known biases in the startup literature, with known fixes. Most of the times, you just need to ask yourself the right questions.
The very same questions can be deployed to become a more conscious consumer.
An intentional wish list
Simple things work better, so the foundation of the system is just a wish list.
First, I put in the list everything that I'd like to buy and that would cost me more than $30. The limit prevents the system from becoming too bloated, and I rarely buy trivial frippery. Also, in my experience small purchases are not really moving the needle when it comes to financial, environmental and physical allocation impact.
There's no limit to the amount or the nature of what I put in it: if it implies a monetary transaction of more than $30, it goes in there.
Before granting myself permission to buy something, I then need to answer two questions:
It sucks that...
It's the best option because...
The first one is taken directly from Dan Shipper — a former startup founder turned leading expert in productivity and personal development. It-sucks-that helps diagnose true problems, and be sure that you're not tricking yourself into buying something you don't really need (or build something people don't really want, for that matter).
The second helps make sure that the purchase is the best choice among those available, and you don't fall trap of dark patterns like artificial luxury.
The wish list then looks like this:
- Apple Magic Keyboard
- **It sucks that:**
- After a day of full typing my hands aches
- People complain that I make a lot of noise with my keyboard
- **Why it's the best option**:
- Travel time is very short
- It's very quiet
- It's fully synced with my environment (and potentially with a future iPad too)
- Physical books instead of Kindle books
- **It sucks that:**
- I can't highlight a book
- I can't scan a book / read "surgically" / "selectively"
- **Why it's the best option**:
- There's no real alternative: either Kindle, or physical book Why it works
By answering those two questions, I effectively make the case for the purchase in front of my future self: I argue with him about the reasons why I need to buy the thing. If my future self deems the reasons valid, then I actually move forward with the transaction.
The system reduces the dopamine derived from the purchase: it's an analytical transaction, not impulsive buying. I noticed that I crave less the moment when the box will be delivered: at some level, it's like I already solved the problem I wanted to fix.
It also intrinsically reduces impulsive purchases, as it takes time to go through the process.
It's not a big deal. At the end of the day, it's just a wish list with some bells and whistles. But trust me: it's good enough to do the trick.
Try it and let me know!
Gian.
Before we had even started working on myStvff, Gian had built a list of all his possessions, using Notion. The reason he started this list was because he related to the minimalism philosophy, was -still is- a heavy traveller and wanted to know what he had. He ended up deleting this list because its maintenance was too big of a hassle…
📣 Know a minimalist-with-a-list?
We want to speak with (minimalist) people who already have made the big work of building a list of their possessions. If you’re one of them, hit reply 👋 ; if you know somebody, we’re down for an intro 🙏
🍷 How’s your 🔺 challenge going?
We’re halfway there! Can you smell this sweet breeze of Porto wine just yet…?
My bet is you’re struggling, just as I am. Good news is, I am here to help! Hit reply or reach out to me on Slack, I’d be down to organize a live-session with you 🍹 #closetfun
Documenting is about giving each of my items a couple of minutes ; enough to realize if I need / like it, or if I am ready to kiss goodbye to it. No matter what I decide, its existence is now saved somewhere 📲
Have a great day! 🎯
Mathilde
