The Most Compact and High-Quality

A thought about equipment, tools, clothing, and things:

Optimize for the most compact thing, with the highest quality and condensed power.

Luxury minimalism

What I’ve realized — the new luxury is minimalism. The luxury of owning just a few things, but all of them the highest quality.

For example my clothes are all merino wool, but I only own around two pairs of everything.

Or the RICOH GR III — the most compact yet the most premium and high-end digital camera on the market.

Luxury minimalist apartments

I currently live in a minimalist luxury apartment, and I love it. It is insanely compact, clean, and hyper modern. I got a washer and dryer inside my ~350 square unit. All my appliances are new and clean. The whole apartment building is regulated at 74 degrees, even in the winter. Hyper fast WiFi. Everything just works. This means less worrying about my apartment, more focus on just doing my creative work.

Our minimalist “luxury” studio apartment layout. “Minimum viable living”

Why compact?

A realization about cars and driving:

99% of the stress of driving a car is finding parking.

One of my favorite cars was my old 1990 Mazda Miata I had in college. I could park that sucker anywhere. But nowadays even mid-size sedans are impossible to park in a city. This is why I think Mini Coopers have taken off so much — super compact yet very high in build quality. Maybe this is also why the Tesla Model 3 interests so many people — it is smaller and easier to park in a big city!

One reason my new dream car is a McLaren, not a Lamborghini.

Compact flying and traveling

The trend in flying:

Just one carry-on luggage, optimally fits in front of your front seat.

Nobody likes to pay for extra luggage fees, nor does anyone like standing in line to wait for your luggage. Thus the goal is for you to make your stuff as compact as possible — one backpack for your entire travels seems like the optimal solution.

Compact phones

A big thing:

Being able to text and use your phone with one hand is essential.

No matter how “good” the phone is, if it is too big, it sucks. The smaller the better, and the more premium, the better. Currently the best phone by far is the iPhone Pro, then a refurbished iPhone XS.