# Minimalism & Well Being ##### A reflective understanding on Theory of Minimalism and well being by Kasey Lloyd & William Pennington # The Reading gives a sense of how a minimalistic approach is boosting a healthy well being without any chaoses, complexity, anxiety, depression etc., instead focussing towards minimal and necessity objects and believing in buying experiences than investing in materialistic objects. Lower consumption lifestyles is leading people to liberation of the users from the societal expectations and the monotonous routine. As a result they are able to spend time more on things which are productive such as spending time with their family. The more the number of choices more chaotic it becomes for the mind to choose one so having lesser options are easy to filter and less stressful for the mind. When they follow this approach people tend to see what makes them “authentic” understanding their own likings and disliking becomes much more clearer. It helped them understand and create space between their own mental space and the world around. When it comes to connecting minimalism and anti consumerism with the dopamine neurotransmission in our body, We tend to feel pain and pleasure within the same part of the mind, and “Craving” is one such emotion which challenges our lifestyle of adopting minimalism. Minimalism is a natural progression which when adopted could lead to a balance levels of pain & pleasure than being dominated by the craving which is a conscious lifestyle than a conscious mind. When we are in the initial phase of the minimalism we might witness pain for sometime but for the longer run it brings a joy and happiness leading to lesser anxiety and stress as stated as a short case study of a patient who was engaged into a lot of gaming and when adopted to discipline his habits and adopting a disciplined and minimal lifestyle he scheduled it 2 hrs in a day, twice in a week which was painful for a while but he witness a healthy state of mind after a point which he never felt before and there along lived happily after. While reflecting upon my understandings from the readings when we were exploring our area of interventions to develop an hypothesis for a design experiment we were interested to work with (based on our observations made on the data collected for screen time and painful/pleasurable task with the time spent upon) I could recollect the instances of pre-requisite to understanding of minimalism w.r.t using chrome on the basis of online session and offline session) My necessity to use chrome increases when in an online session (easy to distract) than my necessity to use chrome when it decreases in a controlled environment in an on-campus session. I tend to witness more questions in the mind when am using teams which utilises my time surfing through chrome than in an offline session which I could utilise that time in doing something else which could be more productive. This would help me track the amount of time that I spent on various domains of chrome and evaluate my necessities on surfing through chrome in an online session and the extras to reduce my screen time and thereby try to attain a mental balance w.r.t pain (while in an online session) and pleasure (while doing something more productive).