Fumio Sasaki

There's some useful advice in this book, but the vast majority of content isn't.

The good/interesting bits:
- Gets you thinking about consumerism and how it affects us
- Question your need or desire to collect things just for the sake of collecting them ("your home isn't a museum")
- Each piece of clutter you have lying around is part of an implicit to-do list, which is one of the reasons why too much stuff around us affects our mood and our focus negatively
- If there's something you can't let go of because of its emotional value, you can take a photo or otherwise save it digitally before getting rid of it

The bad bits:
- The quality of writing and research is, overall, very minimal. Both in terms of prose and in terms of use of sources, this book could have been written by an average high school student
- It's overly simplistic: Sasaki tells you to throw away everything that spark any passion in you (reminiscent of Mari Kondo's approach)
- Literally has a subchapter titled "Don't think, throw it away!"
- Contradicts itself by telling you at several points how minimalism is not about how little you possess or how much you throw away but rather an attitude towards your possessions and your consumption patterns. Then Sasaki showcases some minimalist cribs and they are all completely empty and even he himself brags for several pages about how he only needs 30min to move houses
- The author digresses to other topics, which is fine if you read it as a report of his personal experience/opinions, but in terms of structure and content, it's bad
- The author uncritically idolizes people like Bill Gates, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, most of all, Steve Jobs, and yes, even Mark Zuckerberg, saying that they are minimalist because they are successful and/or rich
- Sasaki loves Apple products and he will let you know multiple times. When he gives us the short list of possessions of one of his minimalist idols, he tells you the brand and model name, complete with a one-sentence advertisement. There's no need to elaborate further, this is just off-putting in so many ways.… (més)