5 Ways to Get to What Matters Most
- This gently self-deprecating one on where to find ideas: “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
- This one on the sweetness of our existence:“There are only two ways to live your life.One is as though nothing is a miracle.The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
- And this one always makes me laugh:“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
But why is that so difficult? I suspect the reason I’m always parrotting Einstein is that I keep finding myself tipping towards to complicating and muddying and confusing things, rather than staying clear on what matters.
In this excellent book Getting to Maybe I first came across the Simple – Complicated – Complex model. It posits that everything we do falls into one of those three buckets.
Simple is like baking a cake. A few straightforward steps – add egg and water to powder, mix, bake for X minutes and Y temperature – and even a person of my limited culinary gifts can pull off an OK sponge.
Complicated is like getting a space shuttle into orbit. It’s quite a few more steps than the cake, but if you follow all the steps in the right order you’ve got a decent chance of getting the rocket up in the air.
And finally, Complex is like how a flock of bird flies together or how to raise a child. Suddenly, step-by-step lists don’t work any more. You don’t see geese flying South with a project management spreadsheet tucked under their wings. Rather, these systems are governed by a few key principles. Specific rules don’t work because every situation is different. Principles are required because they give guidance on how to manage each situation. So if you’re a starling in a flock of starlings, you
- Avoid running into other birds
- Fly as close to the other birds as possible and
- Fly towards the centre of the flock.That’s all the guidance system you need to shape your behaviour.
Fair enough. The point of sharing this model, is that so often what we do is Complex – requiring some governing principles to manage around – and what we do is treat it as Complicated. You see here the source of bureaucracy, the continued invention of more and more rules and processes to tell you exactly what to do in every situation.
So if you’re finding things getting overly complicated, here are five ways to get back to what matters.
2. Pick the thing.
The one thing you’re going to focus on. I’d call it a Great Work Project, but you can call it whatever you want. What’s the thing that, for the next 90 days, you’re going to give your focus to? Make it Work or Not Work. Make it Significant or Not Significant.
But make a choice that something will get priority. Otherwise, you’re reduced to just processing all that comes at you, as if getting through things was the point of it al
3. Figure out your principles.Obviously, you’re not a starling. So flying to the centre of the flock won’t be much use to you as a guide to behaviour. So what do you use to guide you?
- Create Impact
- Have Fun
- Pursue Elegance
- Tread Lightly
- Be Generous
What I’m learning is that articulating your own principles can be done fairly quickly – but finetuning them takes quite some time. The first exercises from Find Your Great Work gets you started on this, and I also really like the exercises here in Is Your Genius at Work? and here in the Via Surveys.
4. Unsubscribe.
Maybe Einstein’s quote needs to be expanded to:“Only THREE things are infinite, the universe, email and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
Get ruthless about unsubscribing to emails that are excess to requirements.That means contacting those who CC you on emails that you don’t need to see.That means spam filters that work. That means subscriptions to newsletters.
5. Subscribe to mnmlist.
You may know Leo Babauta’s blog Zen Habits. It’s one of the most popular self-development blogs in the world. Leo’s recently started a new blog that’s about simplicity. I not only love the witty title, but I love how it practices what it preaches. And that it’s full of wisdom about getting the essence of things.
Smart people thinking out loud about simplicity.
“The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.”
Warren Buffett, businessman
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Leonardo daVinci, artist
“A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.“
Groucho Marx, comedian
“I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.”
Henry James, author
“It’s simple, if it jiggles, it’s fat.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger , actor/politician
“Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.”
Bill Gates, businessman
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Confucius, philosopher
“‘Think simple’ as my old master used to say – meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.”
Frank Lloyd Wright, architect
