The phrase "keeping things simple" is in itself so simple that you may wonder why it warrants an article! But as we will see below, achieving simplicity challenges how you think, how you don't think, how you behave and how you live.
A dictionary definition: "making something easy to understand" which delivers some very powerful benefits, it:
[1] Know your circle of competence
A major part of filtering is knowing the boundary between what you know and what you don’t know. This is about understanding your circle of competence:
Charlie Munger says:
"Part of that [filtering], I think, is being able to tune out folly, as distinguished from recognizing wisdom. You’ve got whole categories of things you just bat away so your brain isn’t cluttered with them. That way, you’re better able to pick up a few sensible things to do."
************************
"Confucius said that real knowledge is knowing the extent of one’s ignorance. Aristotle and Socrates said the same thing. Is it a skill that can be taught or learned? It probably can, if you have enough of a stake riding on the outcome.
Some people are extraordinarily good at knowing the limits of their knowledge, because they have to be.
Think of somebody who’s been a professional tightrope walker for 20 years—and has survived. He couldn’t survive as a tightrope walker for 20 years unless he knows exactly what he knows and what he doesn’t know. He’s worked so hard at it, because he knows if he gets it wrong he won’t survive. The survivors know."
The best way to establish and expand your circle of competence is to act as though your life depended on it [literally].
[2] Filter the essential from the non-essential
Einstein’s greatest skill was not his mathematical capabilities but his capacity for first principles thinking as demonstrated by:
In his short biographical memoir on Einstein, John Wheeler points out that this ability was developed consciously as an adult. Einstein said:
“I soon learned to scent out what was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things that clutter up the mind."
It was in his 7 years in the Bern patent office that Einstein learned this skill.
Einstein's boss gave very strict instructions that he required a single sentence, explaining why the device will work or why it won’t; and why the application should be granted or why it should be denied.
As Wheeler says: “Who else [but a patent clerk] could have distilled this simple central point [the theory of relativity] from all the clutter of electromagnetism than someone whose job it was over and over to extract simplicity out of complexity.”
The key to filtering the essential from the non-essential is to apply
first principles thinking, focus on function rather than form, and
express it in one sentence.
[3] Recognise the noise bottleneck
Living in the digital age we are drowning in information. As voracious consumers of information we are seeking the substance beneath the froth and bubble or striving for "more signal and less noise" according to Nassim Taleb.
We believe that the more information
we consume the more signal we receive, but in practical terms this is just not true, it is a cognitive illusion.
Taleb calls this "the noise bottleneck".
Taleb argues that as you consume more data and the ratio of noise to signal increases, the less you know about what’s going on and the more inadvertent trouble you are likely to cause.
"The more frequently you look at data, the more noise you are disproportionally likely to get (rather than the valuable part called the signal); hence the higher the noise to signal ratio."
"... in a natural environment, a stressor
is information. So too much information would be too much stress..."
Taleb suggests that our brains are not hardwired to extract the signal from the noise and to understand the key point:
"...so we overreact emotionally to noise."
"The best solution to the noise bottleneck is to only look at very large
changes in data or conditions, never small ones." [Nassim Taleb]
An online search for keeping things simple will throw up lots of tips for de-cluttering and streamlining your personal life, and techniques and processes for doing the same in a corporate or organisational environment.
This is all good stuff and very useful but as with everything in life it all starts in your mind.
[1] Learn the art of not thinking
The stated purpose of this site is to show you how to cope in tough times, and to provide you with the tools to do this successfully. This is all based on knowing how to think effectively and it matters because the outcomes that you experience in your life are determined by your responses to the events in your life.
The gateway to keeping things simple is a quiet mind.
[2] Know how to think
The skills involved in knowing how to think include the capacity to:
These skills are based on good thinking skills which includes analytical thinking and independent thinking using mental models, and an understanding of cognitive biases and distortions.
Key mental models to keeping things simple are:
Keeping things simple by knowing how to think not what to think.
[3] Live Antifragile
Antifragile is a term coined by Nassim Taleb to represent things that benefit from disorder.
The key qualities of living antifragile are based on keeping things simple:
Keeping things simple by being prepared - adopt the boyscout mentality.
[4] Knowing when to quit
Knowing when to quit is an important skill in keeping things simple and applies to several areas of your life, notably your relationships and your career and business.
There is an important difference between quitting a project or a job and quitting a relationship. Quitting a project or a job is about opportunity cost whereas quitting a relationship is to do with toxicity
3 Key questions to ask yourself:
Keeping things simple by knowing when to quit.
I don't often recommend that visitors to this site buy a book, but this is an exception and just to be very clear: I don't receive any commission or income from sales of this book! I bought this beautiful little book, in hardback, about 2 years ago and use it nearly every day. As Masuno says in the introduction: "Changing your lifestyle doesn't need to be difficult. Slight changes in your habits. A subtle shift in your persepectives." Sample images of pages: Articles about the book Introductory article in Japan Times Buy the book online: Amazon [Global with exceptions]Recommended Reading
Return from "Keeping Things Simple" to: Mental Models
Just Because You Have A Spectacular Failure Doesn’t Mean The Game Is Over. The thought that you could fail can really slow you down. But the problem is not the failure, the problem is your relationshi…
Are You Lost In Transition? To be in an alien North African city, late in the evening, in the dark, completely lost in transition from the main market square back to the obscure location of our Riad…
Do You Believe What You See Or Do You See What You Believe? Like the characters in "The Matrix" we are fooled by the illusion that what we see is how things really are. Why? Because this is the mind's…
What Impact Will You Leave In The Lives Of Others? If you knew you were going to die tonight and you were given a few minutes to reflect before that happened, what would you say was the meaning of yo…
If You Want Others To Be Happy, Practice Compassion. If You Want To Be Happy, Practice Compassion. Compassion is derived from the Latin words "com pati" meaning to suffer with. It has been defined as…
The Power Of Expectation Of An Outcome Regardless Of The Lack Of Any Substance To That Expectation. Traditionally, the placebo effect occurs when false, or dummy, treatments of inert substances [that…
This Is What Will Happen After You Take It.
"This is your last chance," rebel leader Morpheus tells Neo, holding a coloured pill in each hand. “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in y…
This Has To Be One Of The Best Ways For Living The Best Life You Can Possibly Live. An online search on life hacks will invariably provide you with multiple links to ways of increasing your productivi…
The Blessing And The Curse Of Impermanence. There is a story of a king who sought wisdom. Eventually he heard of a man living in a remote part of the kingdom who had a reputation for great wisdom. The…
The Stories That We Tell Ourselves Are A Matter Of Choice. The stories we tell ourselves form the backcloth and the tapestry of our lives. These narratives shape and define our sense of self and how a…
Trust Is A Choice And It Creates Your Reality. Nothing in life is permanent and nothing lasts forever. Every relationship ends in tears. Somebody leaves or somebody dies. This is how things are. This…
Finding This Hidden Value Is The Key To A Huge Upside. Most of us spend our lives working to linear rules where there is an equal relationship between effort and result. Work hard you get a result. Wo…
How To Be There When Preparation Meets Opportunity. The growth mindset holds the core belief that your intelligence and personality is something you can develop and that you can expand and grow. The p…
If you can't think of the right thing to say, say nothing.
The concepts we employ, the categorizations we apply and the words we choose and use to articulate a direct experience put us in a double bi…
To Believe Or Not To Believe - That Is The Question. Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its beliefs and dogmas. The religious and cultural beliefs that sanction and allow or impose…
How To Stay Far From The Madding Crowd. Herd mentality describes how we make decisions based on what everyone else is thinking and doing. It is also known as a mob or crowd mentality. We follow the he…
We Suffer Every Time We Believe A Thought That Argues With What Is. When your mind is perfectly clear, what is, is what you want. If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try…
Slack Is The Capacity To Effect Change And The Resource To Deal With The Unexpected. Many organizations are obsessed with efficiency and try to ensure that every resource is fully utilized to its full…
Less and less do you need to force things, until you arrive at non-action. We are brought up to believe that we get what we want in life as a result of what we do, by the actions that we take, that ha…
Is It Helping You Or Hindering You? Your point of focus is the central point of your attention. Your point of focus is a binary choice and the result of that choice is critical to your happiness, your…
To accomplish any success in life, you must identify accurately what it is that you hunger for, thirst for and long for. The purpose of this article is to look at the foundation of the secret for succ…
Discover The Joy Of A Quiet Mind Can you stop thinking? According to Zen Buddhist priest Shunmyo Masuno the art of not thinking about anything is not easy to achieve. Even practising monks find it dif…
What Is Holding You Back From Pursuing Your Dreams? Your self confidence is based on ability. Your self confidence is all about your level of trust, faith and belief in your abilities [your power] and…
Learning how to overcome fear and perform powerfully is a skill that we all need to acquire as fear of failure affects most of us at some point in our lives. Whilst it is natural to feel a level of fe…
You are creating hell on earth when you are too subsumed within your underlying and deeply embedded negative energetic states. To counter your dissatisfactions and misery you initially go unconscious…
How you mentally characterize a situation has a profound impact on how you respond to it emotionally. There is a direct causal link between how you think about a situation, the words you use to articu…
What good is a universe without somebody around to look at it? What Conclusions Can We Draw About Living In A Participatory Universe? The inescapable conclusion is that the world and the universe (wit…
The journey home to the energy of life does not consist in arriving at a new destination it is a coming home to one’s self. [1] How are you feeling, what is your dominant emotion right now? [2] Where…
You have to be willing to suffer today in order to reap enormous rewards tomorrow. The long game is so hard to play because it involves taking a series of very small steps, that people rarely see, per…
How To Build Self Esteem In my early life and until my early twenties I suffered from a deep inferiority complex and low self esteem. Forty years later and, said in sincerity and with humility, I have…