Today I helped lead a strategic planning retreat, during which a key component of the work product was to keep things simple.
How does one “plan” simplicity? To me it’s rather, well, simple.
Say “no” to a lot more than you say “yes.” Throw out a heck of a lot more than you keep. Learn your few core strengths, build your life around them, and grit your teeth if you must but push to the margins those activities that are good but not exemplary by any means.
This is swimming against the tide. Each day, there is a mostly unintentional conspiracy raging about to keep you distracted by mediocre tasks and pursuits. Some of these are of your own doing because your ego or ambition can’t let them go. It is time for an emotional, intellectual and spiritual decanting; too much sediment is making it hard to see or taste the very best wine.
What to do first?
Go to your Outlook calendar, Franklin Covey planner or whatever tool you use to ostensibly plan your life. Whack off 30 percent of the time mismanagement that is masquerading as things you “have to do.” Be ruthless. You’ll feel better momentarily.
Next? Take a look around your office. Locate books you’ve never read and probably never will read. Start a Good Will pile. See all that paperwork strewn about? Recycle 95 percent of it, and put a process in place that significantly reduces hard copies of anything in your life. Head into your wardrobe and dressers next, and collect at least 25 percent of your garments to add to that Good Will pile. Next, go to the garage…and so on.
The space around you is psychological. It communicates. It either propels you forward or hinders you.
The illness of this age is not that we fail to accomplish our dreams, but that we have no earthly idea what they are because of all of the clutter smog.
This is war—a war for simplicity and against irrelevant complexity. But you’re not alone…
