Practice These 5 Mindsets To Simplify Your Life
Complexity is seductive but simplicity is the way.
When Steve Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997, one of his boldest moves was to streamline the product line from a bloated 350 to a core 10. Everything they sold now fit on a small table.
The pruning exercise was to eliminate complexity and get the company focused again. It ignited a new golden age at Apple. We know the rest of the story.
We value simplicity but act on complexity.
Why? Complexity is seductive. It’s new, sexy, and unknown.
Simplicity is plain, boring, and familiar.
But if you look closer, complexity’s beauty is skin deep; whereas simplicity has an inner beauty you can marry.
In everything from work and relationships to fitness and investing, always apply the 'Keep It Simple, Stupid' (KISS) philosophy.
Here are 5 mindsets to pull you towards always doing just that.
Execute on the Simple & Hard Over Searching for Magic Sauce.
Society is filled with complex solutions. Simple solutions don’t sell.
Take climate change. Green energy sounds better than energy efficient. But if everyone bought less junk from Amazon, remembered to turn off their lights, and ate a little less meat — it would make a huge dent.
But that is boring and difficult. Easier to buy a Tesla than to eat less meat.
We want the magic sauce. And feel short-chained if we don’t get it.
But if you execute on doing the simple, boring stuff thing first, it ends up being enough. We avoid it because it doesn’t cover up hard work.
Before leveling up to something complex, do the simple hard stuff first.
Work from an End State, Not an Extraneous State
Start with the desired outcome then work backwards. This way you avoid detours and take the straight path to the mountaintop.
One of my goals this year is to write 24 articles.
The straight path is finding more time to write in my week. A simple rule could be “Write 1 hour everyday”.
The zigzag path would be to create a content strategy, leverage social media, and read, watch, and listen to other people talk about how to be a writer.
These things are just a way to avoid doing the hard work. They also waste time and keep your brain cluttered.
Bat away everything else and go straight.
Don’t Let Knowing Prevent You From Going
The famous psychologist William James said: “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
If you want to start journaling, grab a notebook and capture your life.
But our minds don’t work that way.
We need to know what are the best prompts. Should I buy a new journal? What are the pros and cons of digital journaling versus paper?
This is death by 1,000 paper cuts. It kills momentum.
I’ve always been tech-savvy but envy the ignorant. They pick the default and overlook other options.
Practice a “Less, But Better” Mantra
Complexity and overcommitment are two sides of the same coin. Our tendency to spread ourselves too thin prevents us from executing on a few great things.
Internet writing embodies this mantra. Good writing is about compression. Use fewer words, but better words to convey meaning. Spend more time crafting sentences, not paragraphs.
Every project, calendar event, piece of clothing, phone app, and pasta brand is another source of jumbling our mind.
One way to practice “less, but better” is the 1 in and 1 out rule. For everything you add, remove something else.
Buy a new sweater. Donate one.
Install an app. Delete one.
Start a new habit. Let go of building another.
Beware of the Novelty and Newness Trap
I have an odd tendency to judge books not by their cover but their copyright date.
I’ll flip to the third page and stare at the year it was published. I am biased towards anything pre-2010.
Recency bias is widespread on the internet. It’s rare to engage with anything a few years old. Why do so many creators add the current year to their titles? Because they know 2024 will make you click.
Unknown information creates dopamine in our heads. It gets us excited. But often makes things more complicated than they need to be.
Once we are in the arena, there is no way out. The alternative is to spend less time scrolling and more time reflecting. The solution is usually already in your head.
In a recent podcast, Tiago Forte, Author of Building a Second Brain said,
I need to just capitalize on the information and knowledge I already have, explain it better, explore the implications more deeply rather than just find and accumulate more stuff."
Thanks for reading! 🙏🏼
P.S. What did I miss? How do you keep things simple? Would love to hear from you!
Irfan
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