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Minimalist lifestyle is closely related to how your mind perceive it. There are no rules in defining the lifestyle you want. Not to mention the how to lead a minimalist lifestyle. You can’t let people decide what action you ought to take. So take your time to practice and continue what you find is helpful to you.

The origination of everything in this world is coming from your mind. The first step is to define the lifestyle you want. A lifestyle that you can take control now without having to think too much about future.

Minimalist lifestyle is the combination of mindfulness and contentment. Through mindfulness, we pay attention to what we think, speak and behave. Through contentment, we understand what we really need and control our lust over things.

Being mindful is constantly aware of yourselves. You are thinking in the present about your surrounding. You feel the sensation with each breath you take. You are paying attention to everything you eat, realizing that the body will take in and react the food you eat, leading to a healthy lifestyle.

Getting to know mindfulness can help you start adjusting your current lifestyle habits. Try to change your eating and sleeping habit, be mindful about your health. Don’t think ahead, but think now and feel the present.

Contentment is the gateway to control your lust over things. Only buy the things you need. Ask yourself if you will use the items if you really buy it. Instead of storing the things you don’t use or you think you might use in the future, donate it or throw it away. Sometimes due to the financial condition, you will need to feel content with what you have. Getting in debt for the sake of lust over items is not a good idea.

Contentment can lead you to seek the answer for the essential needs in your life. True happiness doesn’t lie within what you have, instead lies within how you think.

Starting a minimalist lifestyle is not necessary to throw everything you have. A word that can describe minimalist lifestyle is “just enough”.

Safari is becoming more beautiful with the support from several top notch extensions. Most of the extensions I install on Safari are interface tweaker. It literally means that none of them are heavy to your browser experience because they only override the CSS. You don’t need to install all of them, so take your pick only the sites you visit regularly.

The first sight of #NewTwitter is beautiful compared to its predecessor. Eventually I feel overwhelmed by the new interface. This extension will clear all the clutter and things you don’t like. I have to say that this is one of my favorite extension.

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There are several extensions that modify Google Reader. Some of the like Snow Leopard for Google Reader does a great job until I discover Pure Reader. Both extensions do a great job in providing minimalist interface. But I prefer Pure Reader purely because its clean interface and icons.

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For most of the students, copy and paste from Wikipedia is a common task (admit it). Beautipedia tweak Wikipedia interface from good to very good. If you are one of the people who prefer cleaner interface, this extension will is highly recommended.

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So every artist or curator, DeviantArt is probably the best extension for all Deviant out there. I don’t visit DeviantArt often, but once I install this extension and visit DeviantArt. I feel at home with these clean interface again.

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The first impression when I visit macrumors is how not my taste their interface is. This extension will get rid the forum-like interface and turn in into blog-like interface.

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Install and feel the magic. And that’s how most people think about Steve.

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Less IMDB rearrange the website interface so it focus on the movie information. I highly recommend this extension for regular IMDB user since this is the best extension for IMDB I have seen so far.

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Pure Flickr adding touch to Flickr by replacing the default logo with the clean one (without by Yahoo!) and adding more whitespace to give the spacious impression.

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For most of the OS X user, MacThemes is probably their favorite place for getting beautiful wallpapers and icons for free. Of course you will expect one of their user to create an extension that modify the site itself.

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Instapaper default design is enough for me. But if you’re looking for alternative inteface. Considering Instapaper Greystyled for a different UX.

2/1/2010 - I’ve found another extension that suits me better. Check out Minimal Instapaper

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That summed all the extensions I found. I will add more once I discover more beautiful extensions. Follow Sayz Lim for his small effort in curating this list.

The little packages that fine tuning what Apple will not. If you don’t like the aqua scrollbar, consider the mod by Max Rudberg. It is the form of beauty and simplicity.

There are 3 mods in there, I find that the second type is the best one since I don’t like the black menubar.

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Syncing is one of the important feature in technology devices. Now you can sync your iPhone with your Mac, your Mac with your iMac, your iMac with your iPad and so on. Syncing is awesome and powerful. It works like a magic as if you own one machine in many forms.

Cool as it is, the question arise after the long time of using these devices. Do you really need to sync everything? Is syncing a must for all your devices?

Syncing is necessary only if you need it.

You don’t need all your iTunes library synced to your iPhone. You also don’t need your MacBook synced to your iMac. You need to know what you want to do with your devices. Like what I want to do with my MacBook. And what I need with my mobile phone.

Of course no one can tell you what you need to do. I am in no position to teach other people how to do stuff. I am merely sharing how I do stuff.

Sync wise. Not obsessed synced.

You will learn some tips to organize your iTunes library and speed up your iTunes a little.

Delete all the albums you don’t listen for past a year. Delete all the albums that you don’t like. Delete all the albums that is not complete. Or you can move them to somewhere else. I never store music for more than 10 GB.

Indexing the unorganized library is a huge task for iTunes. Start by filling the missing information of each album. The easiest way to locate information is not on Wikipedia. Instead, visiting the artist page can give a more correct information. If you’re stuck. Visit the brain of music for the largest music data collection.

If you feel anxiety because the uncertain genre or composer. Stay calm. For genre, fill whatever you think is right. For composer, there is always an option to fill with “Unknown Composer”. You never browse music by composers anyway.

The ideal image size for album cover is around 500px. If you don’t have options. Use the medium size.

It is a magic button iTunes never tell you. Once you got each of the album information right. Head over to File->Library->Organize Library. Check all the available options. And it automagically arrange your library under the neat folders and sub folders.

You don’t really need to know how many times you have listened a song. Neither do you need to know when was the last time you listened to it. Try to hide the information you don’t need. Type cmd + j can give you access to all available options. For your insight, the picture below shows you how I display my library.

Tell your iTunes to maintain your library. Copying the music to the iTunes folder location is always a nice choice. Afterward, you can delete the source files because your files has been saved into the iTunes folder.