Simplify your life

anti-complex movement.
When a technologically challenged grandparent in the rural areas can work out how to use an iPhone in two hours you know that you have created a simple product.
Open two browser windows next to each other on your computer. In one startup Google, in the other Yahoo. Count the number of words on each page.
Now which one would you rather use?
Have you ever sat down with a person who is infinitely intelligent?
They know it and they tell you their friends know it.
This is the sort of person who starts to describe the conversation they had with themselves this morning in the small corner of their left brain.
Technology people are renowned for this.
Consider this simple scenario. You sit down with a web designer and ask: “Can you create my website?”
The tech person looks at you and says: “There are a few things we should consider. Would you like to use php, html, stratosphere, pilgrimage, or we should consider a backend with a double megabyte boost speed system, outsourced coders from India which would require a two-week flap flip bing.”
So he may not have used purely nonsensical terms, but he may just as well have. It is all gobbledygook to me.
Then there are business deals where you are told: “We can negotiate a deal incorporating a 2 percent cut off the top split between a 25 percent equity with a              . . . ”. Just stop. Please stop.
If you cannot draw it on a 5cm square card and explain it then it is too complicated.
Is there fogginess over your life caused by the haze of clutter? When putting something together ask: “Did we make it clear or leave it hanging because of complexity?” Simplify your life. There are a few tips to do this.
Eliminate the waste. Declutter everything business, home and your equity spread.
Go through your schedule. Cut the meetings that achieve nothing and where you have no contribution.
Keep a travel diary for a week. See where trips can be combined or cut. Do you really need a sugar-filled dessert every night, letting that go may declutter you waistline.
Go through your investments and look at where you can cash in those odd little percentages that are doing nothing for you.
Shift through your wardrobe and toss out everything you have not worn in the last year.
A warning though, do not throw out the wife or children’s clothes during this exercise (unless perhaps the children are 34, drive a better car than you, and still stay at home).
Start simple. Keep new ventures uncomplicated. If you are in research and someone offers you a deal to do research for a mining company in exchange for a small amount of equity, that deal has already got complicated for you.
Just have them pay you unless you can see a really good reason to go in with the more challenging deal.
Make it easy for others. Just because you know what a “dynamic interchange” is does not mean that everyone else does.
Keep the jargon out of your presentations.
If you have an urge to show off your superior knowledge then save it for the appropriate situation (when you are around like-minded people who actually understand).
Breakdown big figures into something everyone can relate to.
I do not care if you have 34 percent of the market share, because I do not know how big the market is.
Tell me you sold the equivalent of a unit an hour for the last three months, now that I can understand.
Pastors and religious leaders, should not give me a 27-point sermon on higher theology, they should give me a three-point, practical message that I can apply to my life.
Simple means completion. Because I explain what I want simply then someone understands and can follow my demands.
Simple reduces stress.
You are no longer tracking a million little things around, just focusing on a few majors.
Simple makes things easier. Too many people had a clear vision that has been lost because the vision is obscured by junk.
Clear out your life and you may just have a better grip on your purpose.
P.S: Never talk “tech” while selling me website design.
l Feedback: [email protected]