Maximizing to Simplify Your Life

There is a better way than downsizing and organizing

There are countless articles on the web about simplifying your life. Almost all of them talk about cleaning up your house, reducing the number of items you own, paying off debt, and so forth. For example, here is a list of 20 things you can do. These are probably good things for the right time, but often they are not all about simplifying. They are about minimizing and organizing, which does not necessarily lead to simplifying.

For example, life is not going to be simpler if you throw away your vacuum or limit yourself to cars you buy with cash. Nor is it going to be simpler if you spend hours carefully labeling and storing things. These kinds of minimizing and organizing activities only make sense if they lead to maximizing the utility of your time, money, and other resources.

So true simplifying is more like a skillful archer: It is better aiming, quicker action, and efficiency of motion. It is like a smoothly drawn and well shot arrow. Here are three ideas to help get you started.

Simplification of Intention

The foundation of simplicity is clarity of intention. In archery terms, what is your target? Your target is your intended outcome, which will enable you to determine the best application of your time and resources. If you aren’t clear on your intentions, you will be prone to doing and buying things on a whim. You will be tempted to add both mental and psychological clutter.

Of course, in practice, we often have goals in different areas of our lives, but the idea is to have a simple clarity on what they are. As Apple co-founder Steve Jobs famously said:

“That's been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains”.

Getting simple in your intention might take some thought and introspection to fully understand why you are pursuing certain things. There are two approaches I like for this.

The first approach is simplifying your intended outcome down to one clear thing. I draw this from Keller and Papasan’s widely acclaimed book The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results which proposes this guiding question:

"What's the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

Your response could be a goal that is years in the future. You normally want it to be big and inspiring to you. For example, let’s say the goal is to create a successful hair salon. Then, the next step is to ask:

"What's my ONE thing right now?"

Your response to this question should be a step that you can do today which will lead toward your overall one thing. Maybe it is “File paperwork to start a company.”

To deepen this thinking, you can add other steps between today and your overall goal by creating one thing for different time frames. For example,

• Today: File paperwork to start a company

• This Month: Open a hair salon

• This Year: Have 50 regular clients

• Five Years: Be the top hair salon in the city

Real life has a lot of uncertainties, so you likely will not know all the steps for certain. Or they could change. What’s important is the mental activity of attempting to prioritize down to a sequence of one thing.

The second method for simplifying your intention is sharing it with others. These are some guidelines I captured from a management offsite years ago:

1. Get a deep understanding of your intention.  Formulate your intention into something crisp that you can explain clearly to others.

2. Describe it to someone. If it is not understandable to them, keep revising your idea until it is.

3. Have courage. You need to be willing to be bold and remove unnecessary elements of the idea. Don’t get too attached to aspects that don’t contribute to it.

4. Extreme focus is necessary. You aren’t going to be able to get this clarity without focus. Avoid distractions.

5. Identify a few big leaps to take with your ideas. Don’t make it incremental. Taking some big leaps and being a little scared makes it inspiring, meaningful, and challenging.  

6. Practice. This process might take repetition to learn effectively.

7. The gift. In the end, it is your deepened understanding that truly matters.

Simplification of Operation

You can simplify your daily activities by aligning them with your intention. Using our archery metaphor, you want to make the drawing and aiming of the arrow very smooth. To accomplish this more easily in life, here are some guidelines about how to categorize the possibilities and decide on the best way to manage them.

Inspired by Steven Covey’s Eisenhower Matrix (which is for task management), I created the Simplification Decision Matrix below to convey one approach. This matrix is based on optimizing your activities based on a) the importance of you personally doing the activity, b) the regularity of the activity, and c) the importance of the activity.

Start by listing the activities you have on your “to-do” list in each category. Then, you can read the matrix this way:

• Needs You, Is Important, and is Ongoing (upper left). For regular activities that are important and need you to do them, like doing your job or supporting your family, then seeking to simplify what it takes to get these done efficiently and effectively makes sense. This might involve actions like these:

  • Organizing your space

  • Obtaining quality tools

  • Having a schedule

  • Installing proper furniture

  • Removing distractions

• Doesn’t Need you, Is Important, and Is Ongoing (lower left). Since these activities do not require your personal skills, you might consider simplifying them like this (finances permitting):

  • Having a landscaper take care of your lawn

  • Investing in a robot vacuum

  • Using a financial advisor to manage your money

• Needs You and Is Not Important (upper right). Sometimes we over-commit to valuable activities that are good to do, but not in alignment with our purpose. These kinds of activities, once committed to, might not be worth streamlining, but need to be completed to fulfill the commitment. Even though doing some of these activities might beneficial, this list needs to be managed to not take too much of your time. Examples of items that might be on the list include:

  • Participate in a food drive

  • Serve on the board of your homeowner’s association

  • Play golf with friends

  • Attend parties

• Don’t Need You and Not a Priority (lower right). These activities should be dropped if they go beyond an appropriate level of relaxation. Examples of these kinds of items might include:

  • Playing video games

  • Interacting on social media

  • Talking on the phone with friends

Don’t take the examples as absolutes. Categorizing your activities is subjective and depends on you and your intentions. The best approach is to consider the priorities of the matrix and consider how to manage what you are doing in life so that it makes sense for you.

Simplification of Decision Making

Decision-making is another life area that can be simplified. Of course, we need to make good decisions. Yet, we often take too much time on decisions that don’t matter all that much.

The first method is “no regrets.” I’ve used this one often throughout my life, and I recently found out that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also recommended it. As reported by Fast Company, he asked the question like this:

“At the end of my life, will I regret not having done this?”

So, if the answer is no, then the action is probably not worth doing. But if the answer is yes, or even “maybe,” then maybe it is.

Secondly, Bezos has offered a matrix for decision-making that is like the Eisenhower Matrix but focused on determining how much time you should spend on decision-making.  This is a 2x2 matrix, shown below, that is based on whether the decision is consequential and whether it is reversible.

As shown, less consequential and reversible decisions are made using available data and intuition. Reversible decisions can then be checked again in the future. Conversely, extensive analysis and time-consuming analysis is reserved for consequential and reversible decisions.

The Habit of Simplifying

In this world of continuous distraction and enticement, it’s hard to avoid having too much mental and physical clutter. Each day, we have only so much time and so much energy. All the distractions of the modern world plus our added responsibilities sap our energy and concentration, draining it from our goals—whether they are career success, supporting our families, or enjoying a favorite sport or hobby.

As discussed, rather than simplifying your life by minimizing and organizing everything, it is better to focus on maximizing your time and resources. This might result in some minimizing and organizing, but focusing on maximizing what counts will keep you from minimizing for the sake of it. You can do this by sharpening your intention and using the decision-making aids discussed in this article so that your life’s motion effectively directs the arrow of your actions directly to your target.

Finally, simplifying must become a habit. This will take practice, but there is a significant payoff.  So get out and do it!