Review: Living the Simpler Life by Sam Spurlin

Not long ago, we posted an interview with Sam Spurlin from thesimplerlife.net about his new book, Living the Simpler Life: 8 Essentials to Practice Everyday. Since then he has had some other great interviews, as well, at Grokkery, and just last week at RowdyKittens. We promised you that we would review the book soon, and here it is! We’re each going to share our thoughts, in a simplifi.de Siskel &  Ebert sort of way!

Barbara…

I always look forward to reading something that will help me on my journey to simplify. My hope is it will either give me a gentle nudge to do something I know I should be doing,(but haven’t) or give me a new idea I hadn’t thought of before. Sam Spurlin’s new eBook, Living the Simpler Life, gave me both.

I appreciated the reminder on how to cultivate “mindfulness.” In one of his tips, he challenges the reader of the value of focusing on one thing at a time rather than multi-tasking. Since I frequently switch between a management consulting and coaching business, a singer-songwriter career and posting on www.simplifi.de, I often feel “scattered.” I had realized I needed to chunk my time into single-focus blocks, and when I read Sam’s book, it just confirmed that this is something I needed to start today!

Sam has pulled together tons of tips and resource links so the book is filled with some very practical information that will benefit the reader. On the other hand, it contains so much information in so many areas that it can feel a little overwhelming to distill it down to manageable chunks that I could incorporate into my daily life. For me, this will be a book I will use as a reference guide and digest in bite-sized pieces as needed.

Luke…

Most of my growing up years, I had two siblings: my sister Andrea who is 5 years younger than I am, and KJ, who is 10 years younger than me. Now don’t misunderstand me, I love my brother dearly, but there were lots of times when we fought like cats and dogs (we’re better now). But while we had our moments, I always got along with Andrea well… there’s just something about being closer to the same age that makes things easier – we have more in common.

Interestingly enough, the same thing is true for blogging, as well. The time frames are a little different, and it’s certainly not that that I don’t get along with “older” blogs, it’s just a feeling of camaraderie with bloggers who started their website around the same time as you. And that’s the case with fellow simplicity blogger, Sam Spurlin. He started in October of last year and our first posts on simplifi.de were in December.

So it was with great anticipation that I read Sam’s new book, Living the Simpler Life: 8 Essentials to Practice Everyday. It’s a very practical book, filled with tips and thoughts for dealing mostly with the harder side of simplicity… the inside.

Like Sam said in his interview with us, he tried to go beyond the “low-hanging fruit” of decluttering in Living the Simpler Life. I appreciated that about the book; you could live in Thoreau’s cabin, but if you thoughts and inner person aren’t under control, then you are NOT living the simpler life.

The chapter that challenged me the most in Living the Simpler Life was Essential 3: The Willingness to Say No. It’s something that I know, but it’s easy to forget to put into practice on a regular basis. This sentence is the one that really caught my attention at the end of the chapter: “You owe it to yourself not to be swamped beneath a bevy of low-impact commitments when your big chance arrives.” I wonder how many times big chances have come and gone because I was toiling away on stuff that didn’t really matter. This chapter poked and prodded me in just the right places, so that I would be more aware before I accept new responsibilities.

So that’s how it helped me. No matter what stage of the simplicity journey you’re on, I’m sure there are things in it that will help you too. If you’re typically not a book reader, but you like to read blogs, then this is a good eBook for you to consider, because it reads more like an extra long series of blog posts.

So my final analysis: it’s a good overview of the critical components of simplicity, and a great first foray into the eBook world for Sam and thesimplerlife.net,