Proper Planning for Success: Simplify
Sometimes we sabotage our own efforts without realizing it. A bad plan can doom a project even before the first step is made. Proper prior planning prevents pitifully poor performance.
There are many guidelines for a successful plan. One of them is so important that there are different ways to describe it: Less Is More. Parsimony. Occam’s Razor. Keep It Simple Stupid.
The rule is a familiar one, yet it’s a common reasons why a plan fail. What can we do to avoid this mistake?
Simplicity is such an important aspect of planning that the US military identified it as one of the nine principles of strategy. Having a simple plan is seems obvious enough that it’s taken for granted. However, it can take more effort to make a plan less complicated. Whether you’re making a plan for others or for yourself, here are some tips on keeping things simple.
“Important” Does Not Mean “Big and Complicated”
“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
A common mistake is having the expectations of an important task being big and complicated. The level of importance should set the level of attention, not the level of difficulty. If it’s important, all that means is it needs more monitoring rather than more complexity or effort.
Stop Trying to Do Too Much
It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
We live in a hyper-productive world and we’re increasingly wanting to multi-task and to add goals on top of more goals. Typically, these extra goals are frivolous and do not add value as much as add distraction from the most important things. Pare down goals to their bare essentials.
Shortest Distance is a Straight Line
Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means.
-Koichi Kawana
Sometimes we get so caught up with the process that we lose sight of the purpose. As a techno-geek, this is a big weakness of mine. I would want to show off a cool gadget that I need to add more complexity to a problem in order to use the gadget.
Do you ever find yourself doing something in a convoluted sort of way because you were more interested in how to get there rather than the destination itself? That can be OK only if you know up front that you’ve prioritize the path over the destination.
Use Reliable Means
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-Albert Einstein
If you do something with a 90% chance of success, you should feel pretty confident that you will succeed. If you have to do it repeatedly for ten times, you should feel pretty confident that at some point you will fail. Don’t take unnecessary shortcuts for the sake of simplicity, because it can be more expensive in the end.
Our lives are frittered away by detail; simplify, simplify.
-Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity is not just a way to plan, but is also a way of life. The most important things can be lost if we don’t make the effort to keep things simple.
. Indeed, a success...
I am working very hard at doing less, or not starting so many things. Finish one thing first is my new mantra.
Hi Stephen - absolutely agreed. I think people tend to confuse “busy” with “productive”.
Al, I absolutely agree with you on this. Focus is the key and one of the ways to hit few birds with one stone is to find a goal that (when accomplished) actually fulfills and satisfies various aspects of one’s life.
This way, you won’t sell yourself short.
Cheers,
Ellesse
Hey Al
Thanks for this. In true synchronistic style, it is very much what I needed to see this morning. I am working through a big issue of mine and various unconscious beliefs are arising, one of them is that what I want will complicate my life and I LOVE simplicity.
In love, light and abundance x x x
Hi Ellesse - good point about the “hitting two birds with one stone” goals. They’re the ideal ones since it’s not really multi-tasking of several goals, but simply having one goal that is multi-functional.
I also think the key thing with the two-birds-one-stone goals is to prioritize which goal will be most important and to make the other goals secondary, just in case if the situation changes and the goals conflict with each other.
Hi Lola - you and I are very much alike… I don’t just love simplicity, I L*O*V*E simplicity
It’s kind of ironic - sometimes it’s hard work to make things simple. Good luck with the big issue you’re grappling!
Very good points here, simplicity seems to be the big topic at the moment (indeed I’ve been writing about it this week). The biggest steps I have ever taken have been to do one (no multitasking) thing at a time (everything is a next action) which I actually complete before moving onto something else (easier to do when work is broken down).
Hi James - it’s nice to see how you were able to get big things done without having to multitask. I think a lot of us have to unlearn multitasking as a productivity tool.
I don’t think that all multitasking needs to stop. For example, I think it’s OK for someone to listen to an audiobook while driving a long commute. Trying to write a text message with a phone while driving on the highway might be pushing it.
What amazes me is how amazingly simple life can be? For some reason, we buy into the complications.
Recently, I’ve been influenced tremendously by books such as “4 Hour Workweek,” “Getting Things Done,” etc. While none of these books individually have provided me all the answers that I need, they do get me thinking about simpler, more efficient ways to work work and live. Simplicity and efficiency is the key.
Hi Jose - “Simplicity and efficiency is the key.” I completely agree with how amazingly simple life can be, but often we intervene to muck things up.
I like how you’re also reading a number of different books to get ideas on how to simplify. I think the reason why we complicate things differ from person to person, so picking different parts from how other people simplify things is the way to go.