Alright, let's talk about comfort. Five years ago, I went from making 120k a year to about a third or even a fourth of that. Am I less happy? Hell no. Do I still have a beautiful life? Absolutely. This shift happened because of one set of conversations I had over and over again.

When my son was about to be born, like any new dad, I was freaking out. So, I asked dads with older kids what they wished they had done differently. Every single one told me the same thing: I wish I had been more present during the first four years. Those early years when kids don’t have school or friends yet and just want to be with you are really precious. Later on, kids get busy with their own lives.

Based on that advice, I decided to cut down on work hours to be more present for my little one. Obviously, this meant cutting my salary drastically. This forced me to rethink everyday comforts. Guess what? Today, I still live comfortably.

This experience taught me that things we think are absolutely necessary can become forgettable once we live without them for long enough (1).

Plus, there are often great alternatives to the comforts we’re used to. We can definitely live with less, even if it feels uncomfortable at first. The human mind is amazing at adapting to new normals—good or bad.

Action question

What elements of your work, life or service, could try to remove for just a few weeks to see if you could live without it?

Footnotes

(1) That’s also why at the moment I’m doing a bit of challenge where I try to reduce drastically my smartphone usage.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

• Written with AI help: This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.