How to lose 10 pounds of junk in one day

If you’re a mobile warrior, you’ve probably gained some weight. Not from candy bars and fast-food drive-thrus, but from all the gadgets you’ve collected.

Go ahead. Add up the laptop, PDA, headphones, thumb drives, cellphone, music player, and the various adapters you’re carrying around. That’s at least 10 pounds of extra weight in electronics.

So how do you slim down and get your trim body line back?

Get a smaller bag.

“But wait,” you say. “My briefcase/purse/backpack is already too small. I need a bigger bag, not a smaller one!.” But let’s remember Parkinson’s Law: data expands to fill the available space for storage. In short, it’s always too small.

So resist the urge to upgrade to a bigger bag, and, instead, downsize. It’s like stomach-stapling for your gear.

With an itty bitty bag or purse, you force yourself to ask, “do I really need this?” The answer’s likely to be “no”. Or you’ll find some ways to reduce your overall gadget footprint:

An iPhone instead of separate PDA, phone, and music player
A mini-laptop instead of a full-sized one
Or no laptop at all!
Earbuds instead of DJ-sized headphones
Money-clip instead of wallet

Being a digital nomad means being agile. So get rid of that Costanza wallet. Ditch your giant briefcase. And yes, banish that heinous PDA/Phone belt clip forever.

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Comments (3)

by Paul Rodrigues / September 11, 2008

To the authors: I’m a CEO that travels every couple days. (A Jantsch fan). I hesitated to subscribe to the feed because I didn’t want commercials. You’ve kept it clean, and have great content, so I subscribed. Keep up the great work.

Really.

Paul
by LouisinLondon / October 27, 2008

I agree with you completely on “slimming down”.

A few months ago I stopped carrying a laptop bag and only took a backpack (purposefully to small to carry everything I use to)

This weekend I *finally convinced myself to get a iPhone and brushed up on everything I need to know to try to leave my laptop altogether and continue working mobile. (quite a breeze actually… just wish the iPhone had a Network Cable Port )

Moneyclip -> Here in London you always walk around with your Buspass holder, which happily holds all your other credit cards and Paper money and doesn’t bulge in your trousers (the english word for long Pants).
by Dorian Garcia / November 12, 2008

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