How to Build a Hut for Your Psyche

"They need you to rewrite the entire thing, David. The client changed their mind again."

Not the news I wanted to hear after spending the entire previous week designing and programming a sound and lighting system for a finicky customer—especially one over 1,800 miles away.

I felt the anger rise from my chest, creep up my neck, and wrap itself around my temples like a smoldering hug. I managed to stop it before it reached my mouth.

"No worries. I assume the deadline hasn't changed?" I asked calmly.

My boss sighed. "No, they still need the files Wednesday morning."

It was Monday.

I hung up the phone, took a deep breath, grabbed my machete, stepped out into the Central American heat, and began hacking away at the weeds taking over my yard. With each swing of the machete, I imagined I was chopping off a little bit of my frustration, slowly whittling it down until both my yard and my mood were level again.

It was 2011, and I lived in a small house at the end of a dirt road in El Salvador. It covered about 300 square feet—practically a hut by U.S. standards. I worked remotely as a programmer for a U.S.-based audio/visual company, earning around $800 a month—more than enough for a comfortable life there, though by American standards, we had very little.

Life was simple and peaceful in many ways, despite the ever-present threat of gang violence and the long immigration battle we fought to secure a U.S. visa for my wife. We eventually won that visa and moved to the U.S., where my income has since grown—and with it, our house. It now occupies roughly 2,000 square feet—a mansion compared to our home in El Salvador.

Materially, our life is far more comfortable now. But I’m a little quicker to anger than I’d like, less patient with my kids than I want to be, and stressed out by a million things I never even thought about when we lived in Central America.

I’m frustrated by my inability to recapture the simplicity I once had in my little Salvadoran home. And while I could—and should—simplify my material life, I’ve realized that the more important challenge—the way forward in these stressful, trying times—is to simplify my mind.

I need a hut for my psyche.

From the vantage point of our hustling, modern lives, a hut nestled in the bush, perched on a mountainside, or resting by a lake stirs a deep longing—for serenity, for solitude. We might hang a picture of one on our wall to inject a sense of tranquility into our living space. And if we can afford it, we might take time off and rent a small cabin at a lofty price, indulging in the peace we cannot find at home.

Yet for most people, today and throughout history, huts aren’t romantic or luxurious; they are essential. They are not vacation spots; they are homes. They are not built to escape society’s turmoil but to escape the elements. They are not exceedingly small; they are just big enough.

Many philosophers and poets have noted the transformative power of small spaces. In a 1936 letter, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote about the productivity boost he felt while working in his small cabin on a fjord near Skjolden, Norway:

I can’t imagine that I could have worked anywhere as I do here. It’s the quiet and, perhaps, the wonderful scenery; I mean, its quiet seriousness.

In his 1934 radio address Why Do I Stay in the Provinces?, German philosopher Martin Heidegger reflected on how the seclusion of his hut sharpened his thinking:

On a deep winter’s night when a wild, pounding snowstorm rages around the cabin and veils and covers everything, that is the perfect time for philosophy. Then its questions must become simple and essential.

My small Salvadoran house wasn’t remote; it sat in a bustling town. There was no "quiet seriousness" and certainly no snowstorms to "veil and cover everything." And yet, I too experienced a kind of calm clarity.

That clarity, I’ve come to realize, came not from location but from limits—and the unexpected abundance that remained even when convenience had been stripped away. In this conclusion, I am not alone.

In his 13th-century memoir Hōjōki, the Japanese poet Kamo no Chōmei observed that despite the smallness of his hut, it met all of his needs:

Small it may be, but there is a bed to sleep on at night, and a place to sit in the daytime. As a simple place to house myself, it lacks nothing.

Six hundred years later, American transcendentalist Henry Thoreau came to the same realization about his hut on Walden Pond:

All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room… it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all.

This was my experience—not solitude, but the sense that what little I had was enough.

When you give up an electric washing machine, you realize that, despite its convenience, it does less to alleviate the life's anxieties than a little manual scrubbing.

A hut, it seems, is a shortcut to a simpler life. But what gives huts this elusive power? If we can understand this effect, perhaps we can construct a different kind of hut—one that exists in the mind rather than in physical space. Then, we can carry it with us wherever we go.

Huts have four key benefits:

1. They are easy to clean.
2. They are easy to maintain.
3. They use fewer resources.
4. They eliminate unnecessary possessions.

All of these stem from a hut’s defining feature: it is small.

A mental hut is no different. To rein in our thoughts, we must keep our mental space small and contained. We need to stake our claim and erect boundaries to protect it, creating an architecture of inner calm.

To begin to build a mental hut, you might:

• Keep a journal to process your thoughts and free your mind from the burden of carrying them.
• Turn off notifications, step away from social media, and tune out the news. Replace the content firehose with a few trusted sources. Consume frugally.
• Spend less time at parties and in crowds of strangers, and more time developing deep relationships with two or three close friends.
• Make time to be alone with your thoughts. Go for slow, meandering walks in the woods. Meditate. Or simply lie in bed and daydream.

When you stop juggling a thousand competing priorities at once, it's easier to clear your mind. It’s easier to maintain balance. You can finally tend to your own thoughts, sort them out, and let go of the ones you don’t need.

A mental hut is not a vacation place; it is a permanent home. Some of history’s most resilient individuals have learned to live in one. They don’t retreat to it to escape the world; they dwell in it so they can confront the world as their authentic selves. When your psyche resides in a hut, your spirit is unshakable.

Consider Bozo, a London "screever"—a street artist—from George Orwell’s 1933 memoir Down and Out in Paris and London:

When I knew him he owned nothing but the clothes he stood up in, and his drawing materials and a few books. The clothes were the usual beggar's rags... and his knees, from kneeling on the stones, had pads of skin on them as thick as boot-soles. There was, clearly, no future for him but beggary and a death in the workhouse. With all this, he had neither fear, nor regret, nor shame, nor self-pity. He had faced his position and made a philosophy for himself.

And just what was Bozo’s philosophy? In his own words:

If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in here"—[Bozo] tapped his forehead—and you're all right.

He had made his hut and lived in it.

The danger of romanticizing huts is that it makes life in them seem easy. This is, of course, untrue. To embrace the simplicity of a hut, physical or mental, one must sacrifice comfort.

I don’t aspire to be poor any more than the poor aspire to remain so. There’s nothing romantic about squalor. What I want—what I think many of us want—is a simpler life. I want to be like Bozo: to know who I am and to live unapologetically as myself.

To paraphrase Thoreau: I don’t want to be good; I want to be good for something.

But if you’re to stand for something, you need to know what that something is and where to find the courage to hold onto it.

Build a hut for your psyche.

And when the weeds of distraction grow wild—

Pick up your machete.

Cut them down.