Downshifting

Abstract

Downshifting can be defined as a long‐term strategy to improve one's quality of life, involving significantly less income or consumption in relation to one's potential level. The concept of downshifting spread in the United States during the 1990s, starting with Amy Saltzman's book Down‐Shifting: Reinventing Success on a Slower Track . The main idea is to focus less on paid work and to cut out unnecessary expenditures, in order to have time to do more of the things one wants to do. Ideas about an ascetic or simple life are well known in most major religions, as well as in literature. One example is Henry David Thoreau's Walden , which describes a simple life in the forest far removed from urban stress, and which is still popular today. Downshifting is a form of voluntary simplicity – a term which was introduced in the 1930s by one of Mahatma Gandhi's followers and which became widespread after Duane Elgin used it in the title of his 1981 book.