The Minimalist Creators' Paradox & Future of Thoughtworthy

Hey there reader! Today’s date is 28th June 2025. A piece of trivia: on this day in 1997, Mike Tyson took a bite(literally) out of Evander Holyfield’s ear in one of boxing’s most infamous bout. Don’t worry though, our newsletter today is a lot more drama-free.

The Minimalist Creator’s Paradox

Here’s a messy truth: creating content about minimalism sometimes requires being not-so-minimalist.

Just take a broken plate we’ve had for a while as an example. When we broke it, a couple of ideas immediately came to mind. Maybe we could do a video about Kintsugi and upcycle the broken plate? Or it could be the perfect prop for our next decluttering video.

Just like that, we kept it for many, many months. In our defense though, we did eventually use it as a prop in our Valentine’s Day video. 😅

The irony of being a minimalist content creator, is we sometimes need things we don’t need for the sake of storytelling. Everyone probably has their own version of this paradox; so this is just a reminder that it’s impossible (and unnecessary) to achieve perfection when it comes to minimalism.

For now, we’ve decided we would probably never get to making that Kintsugi video, so we’ve gotten rid of the broken plate.

Do Things You Didn’t Think You Could Do
by HL

I’ve never thought of myself as an athletic person (because I’m not one!). Talking to Glo recently, I realized I’ve also never thought of myself as being a physically strong person either.

But he pointed out something odd about my thinking. When I see a woman doing pull-ups and pistol squats, I would not hesitate to consider her “strong”. That is, a woman apart from myself, because despite being able to bust out a few reps of those exercises today, I’ve still been clinging on to the self-image of being physically weak.

I took a long time to achieve those humble “feats of strength”. They didn’t feel special, because I thought “anyone who put in the time and effort like I did would have been able to do the same, likely in a shorter time”.

Then again, putting in time and effort is a requirement for anyone to become anything. That’s why I’ve been challenging myself lately by picking up tennis and bouldering. Two sports that look fun to me, but definitely things I would have avoided in the past, because I was convinced I was not athletic enough to even try them.

With enough time and effort though — along with hellish coaching from Glo — maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to a point where I can think of myself as someone who’s “athletic”!

Burnout & The Future of Thoughtworthy

This is not the first time you’ve heard creators talking about burnout. Heck, this may not even be the first time you’ve heard us talking about it. Unfortunately, we must admit we’ve been in a state of chronic burnout.

Honestly, it’s been hard to feel excited about creating content for a while now, evident from irregular uploads and posts on YT and IG; even this newsletter took way longer than it should to complete.

Right now, our solution is to do more of the things that would energize us and avoid the things that drain us, rather than trying to power through them.

We’re not sure what exactly that’s going to look like just yet. If we’re lucky, we’ll find our mojo and it’ll be business as usual. But there’s also the possibility of even less frequent (or no) uploads, or maybe we’ll create content about topics that interest us, rather than relying on our assumptions of what viewers expect from the channel.

Either way, change is gonna have to happen. We’ll share more details once we’ve figured it out.

The full tour of our new desk setups. Not much more to say, watch it if you haven’t!