It's a minimalist Monday edition of Optimal Living Daily Episode 1011,

five ways to live more intentionally by Anthony and Garo with nosidebar.com,

and I'm Justin Mollick, the guy that reads to you every single day of the year

to help you optimize your life. Today's post is from Anthony and Garo,

I narrate from his site Break the Twitch, but this is actually a guest post from him

on the site No Sidebar. Now let's get right to it as we optimize your life.

Five ways to live more intentionally by Anthony and Garo with nosidebar.com

I often find myself referring back to the quote from Annie Dillard,

how we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. It is an excellent reminder that

every day is a thread that weaves the fabric of our lives. Each thread is just as important as

the next in creating the life we imagined. Unfortunately that hasn't always been obvious to me.

The trouble started when I signed up for Amazon Prime, the online super stores 2-day delivery service.

I started out ordering a few books here and there, and it was incredibly convenient.

I found it amazing that I could order something and it would show up on my porch two days later.

It saved time and allowed me to get the things I wanted without even leaving the house.

Eventually what started out as an occasional convenience became a not so occasional habit.

Individually those small daily purchases didn't seem like much, maybe $10 on a book,

$15 for a cable, perhaps $50 for a new kitchen gadget every now and then.

With an effortless tab of the one-click purchase, money flowed out of my bank account while a brown

cardboard box was prepared and shipped to my home. Not even the monthly credit card statement

set off any warnings, and the worst of months they were a few hundred dollars at the most.

While it was never an issue to pay off, the purchases steadily ate into my income each month.

...