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elly29 's review for:
Love People Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works
by Ryan Nicodemus, Joshua Fields Millburn
informative
medium-paced
The best thing about this book is the title.
I think "Love People, Use Things" has some good advice but was mostly skippable for me. I felt like I already knew that joy does not lie in things, but rather in good and mutually respectful relationships, in feeling productive and like I contributed at work, in doing hard work well, and in learning new things. After a certain amount of material comfort, charity and contributing to one's community are how we can buy happiness. The book talks about financial health, which again didn't really apply to me (though I don't have thousands of dollars of consumer credit card debt, it was a reminder to recalibrate my finances).
That said, it is a good reminder that being able to let go of stuff can lead to greater simplicity: simplicity of routine (you don't have to clean or maintain or store or water or do X for all of your stuffs), of focus and time. And it is practical to scrutinize the things that come into your life (items, people, commitments) to make sure that you spend your time and attention with intention and in alignment with your values. The most worthwhile discussions, for me, were around phones, and the idea of distraction vs tool. They did have some practicable advice, in re-orienting my relationship to screens.
I listened to the audiobook, and JFM’s voice makes me want to punch him. Some of the ideas and things he subscribes to undercuts my trust in the other things he has to say. For example, he referenced Jordan B. Peterson, effective altruism (the thing that guided Sam Bankman-Fried to defraud his investors, thinking that to do the most good he had to amass the most money in order to donate [”donate”] a portion of it), and Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy.” For the Bloom book, I can see that there is nuance to the definition of “empathy,’ but JFM glossed over that entirely.
So… read at your own risk.
I think "Love People, Use Things" has some good advice but was mostly skippable for me. I felt like I already knew that joy does not lie in things, but rather in good and mutually respectful relationships, in feeling productive and like I contributed at work, in doing hard work well, and in learning new things. After a certain amount of material comfort, charity and contributing to one's community are how we can buy happiness. The book talks about financial health, which again didn't really apply to me (though I don't have thousands of dollars of consumer credit card debt, it was a reminder to recalibrate my finances).
That said, it is a good reminder that being able to let go of stuff can lead to greater simplicity: simplicity of routine (you don't have to clean or maintain or store or water or do X for all of your stuffs), of focus and time. And it is practical to scrutinize the things that come into your life (items, people, commitments) to make sure that you spend your time and attention with intention and in alignment with your values. The most worthwhile discussions, for me, were around phones, and the idea of distraction vs tool. They did have some practicable advice, in re-orienting my relationship to screens.
I listened to the audiobook, and JFM’s voice makes me want to punch him. Some of the ideas and things he subscribes to undercuts my trust in the other things he has to say. For example, he referenced Jordan B. Peterson, effective altruism (the thing that guided Sam Bankman-Fried to defraud his investors, thinking that to do the most good he had to amass the most money in order to donate [”donate”] a portion of it), and Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy.” For the Bloom book, I can see that there is nuance to the definition of “empathy,’ but JFM glossed over that entirely.
So… read at your own risk.