Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

Tag: wisdom

  • Living minimally

    “The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”
    – Lin Yutang

    Yesterday I posted the above photo on social media with the caption: 

    “This year I decided to go ALL OUT for Halloween.” 

    A friend then responded and said: 

    “A minimalist does Halloween. Love it.”

    I’ve been called a minimalist many times before. And it is certainly something that I think about. Oftentimes I feel like life is a constant battle against physical and mental clutter. But that the more you can rid yourself of that clutter, the happier and freer you will feel.

    It’s why I scan most of my paperwork into Evernote and then throw out the hard copies. It’s why I tend to wear a lot of white dress shirts and black t-shirts – it keeps life simple and reduces decision making. And it’s one of the reasons I’m so attracted to laneway houses and small spaces. I don’t think most of us need as much home as we think we do.

    If this is something that also interests you, I recommend checking out a blog called The Minimalists. I just recently subscribed to them.

  • When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

    Steve Jobs