Keep it Short and Simple

In modern society, every aspect of our life is focused on complexity.

The older you get everything gets more difficult to understand, tools gets more complicated to use, service gets more bureaucratic and even simple things like having an interview gives us anxiety because you have to be mindful of how you seat, which clothes you use, what color, what you speak, how you speak it, etc. etc. etc. because you might send a wrong message to your hopefully future employer. The simplicity of childhood leaves and you are left with the increasing complexity of society.

Business Insider Simplicity

When I was in the University, I noticed that the more complex I did my homework or labs, the higher the grade I got; there were a few exceptions but the overall trend for everyone was that we need to go way deeper, use big technical words and write a lot about a particular subject.

When I went to work and I submerged myself in the world of Analysis, I encounter something very interesting. I wrote my Analysis the same way the University taught me how to, I explained with luxury of details what was happening but apparently all was wasted. What happened?

The people who took the time to read my work skipped the most important parts and always asked me afterwards: "what was that report about?". I was surprised, a little angry but I found that people want things simple, they want only what they need, not any complicated mumbo jumbo. I was forced to destroy my University teachings and began to taught myself how to keep my work Short and Simple.

What happens in the other side of the Business

Customers were the same as my employers. They wanted things simple, short, fast and without any kind of complicated bureaucracy or conditions. I noticed that this was a trend not only in my work but in every business related aspect of every modern company. This was a huge area of opportunity waiting to be exploited!

How does this constant search for Simplicity affect us?

After all, not only we are employees, business owners or students in some way or another, we are customers too! We know what we want and how we want it; it's a little confusing why we are unable to offer the same simplicity to our other customer companions. 

In order to exploit this area of opportunity inside and outside ourselves we must be mindful and practice the following simplicity rules:

1. Unlearn: Not all the knowledge and actions are necessary or useful. Don't doubt when discarding useless knowledge, more so if you are presented with new knowledge or opportunities.
2. Relearn: If you Unlearn then you must Relearn something. Life is a constant learning process. If you want to know more about it read my previous article Learning your way to have a better reference.
3. Adapt: Knowledge is useless it can't be applied. Remember to adapt what you learn to your current or future situations and keep yourself ready for sudden changes. 
4. Improve: You must change what you learned and practice to be better than before. Here is where Simplicity comes into play. Reduce complex procedures and actions and maintain the bare minimum.

Apply these 4 steps to reach Simplicity to every aspect of your life. You will begin to see that not everything requires a very specific and complex knowledge to do so and your path will be as clear as the picture at the right; this is specially true to Entrepreneurs who think that starting something on your own means that we must know about all the aspect of the world.

Remember that there is something called "Paralysis due to Analysis" which prevent us from doing anything because we are waiting to decipher all the complex details of something; it's a really serious decease but it can be cured with Simplicity. After all, "Less is More".

As a side note, I will be making more simplistic post from now on so I can remove the obvious and leave you with what is really meaningful. I don't want to bore you with long stories and roundabout text so expect more straight to the point point writing from me. See you next time!