I think that one of the tendencies that most of us have to fight against is the tendency to overcomplicate things. I’ve tried with all my time management systems to design them so that they are as simple as possible and need the minimum of “props”. Yet I’ve noticed that one of the first thing that happens when I issue a new system is that an army of people descend on it and think up ways to make it more complicated.
What are the advantages of simplicity versus complexity?
To answer that, just think of a few things which people by and large really hate:
Then think of a few simple solutions which suddenly cut through all the complexity:
Now please note that a simple system for the user may be the result of a very complex process. To produce any of these three examples of simplicity required a lot of thought and a lot of very sophisticated technology. But because the manufacturers were thinking “How simple can we make this?” the end result was something that revolutionises its field.
So a good question to keep asking yourself is “How simple can I make my life/my business/this particular project”? This is not “simple” as in living in a cave eating vegetables, but “simple” as in “makes it easier to do it than not to do it” or “makes it easier to do it right than to do it wrong”.