Passive Mustachianism: Don't renew your magazine subscriptions

I got an easy win in the mail today. It seems my Scientific American subscription is up.

Urgent! Give us more of your money!

I used to really enjoy reading SciAm. Actually I still enjoy reading SciAm, but I hardly ever do anymore. After a few months of my subscription I found that I didn't make as much time for reading, yet issues kept coming month after month.

My subscription has been on autopilot for a while. Get a magazine in the mail, look it over, think "oh that seems cool", put it in a pile with the other issues I haven't read yet. Come to think of it, "autopilot" describes many areas of my life, areas I haven't shone the cold light of Mustachianism yet. Usually it takes time and effort to start a new good habit or break an old bad one.

Deciding not to renew my magazine subscription was super easy. Luckily — or did luck have anything to do with it? — I didn't set up an autorenew feature. There was no having to go to a website, reset my password, log in, unsubscribe. It's rare to get a win this easily. Any time I feel like I miss the subscription, or I think "Maybe I should sign up for SciAm again", I'll remember how big that pile of magazines was, or better yet, how big a pile of books I have checked out from the library.