It’s a more useful skill than “living with.” Additions to our lives require adjustments, new habits, and then the maintenance of those habits. Not adding leaves all that space unoccupied for future use, and actively subtracting creates it where before there was, perhaps, too little of it.
When Tim Ferriss did a dopamine detox, he brought his usual “human guinea pig” rigor to it: For 30 days, Tim had no caffeine, no alcohol, no sex, and nothing even remotely sweet. That’s a lot of without! “I was curious what my real baseline was like,” Tim says, and, as it turns out, “baseline Tim does really well.” He had his “best sleep in 20 years.” He woke up wide awake each morning, had tons of energy, and got a lot done.
If that sounds somewhat like a child, that’s because it is. Take away all the substances and supplements most adults are on to some degree at any given time, and what do you get? “What you actually felt like when you were 12 or 15,” Tim says—and who wouldn’t want to go back to those years, at least physiologically? In a way, living without is returning to our true selves.
This isn’t to say we should all become monks and move to mountain cabins, but when life presents us with new, with more, with “better,” perhaps, instead of asking, “Do I need this?” we may want to start with, “Can I leave this alone?“