Today I will be writing about simplicity…
It always seems to me that people are overcomplicating pretty much everything. Business processes, everyday decisions, parenting, starting new ventures and life in general.
Da Vinci said it 1500 years ago and he was right. People who are struggling with pretty much anything usually are just overthinking or overcomplicating things.
This counts not only for design but for pretty much any area of modern life. This post will focus on the concept of “simplicity” and it’s application in everyday life, rather than the beauty of simplicity in art, design and technology.
We often don’t realize that most things don’t have to be as hard as we think, because we don’t look at the bigger picture and because most of us are wannabe-perfectionists.
The problem is… In many things objective “perfection” doesn’t exist. Let’s say you’re writing a blog post and you just won’t hit the “Publish” button because even after 56 revisions, you’re still not entirely satisfied.
Well guess what, no matter how perfect you might think it is after the 89th revision, probably not a single visitor will think of your writing as “perfect”. And even if they do, it won’t be because of two or three out of 1859 words, but because of your message and your general writing style.
Making things harder than they are often leads to frustration and depending on your willpower you might not even go through with whatever you’re trying because of it.
If you’re thinking about how hard the task at hand is gonna be before even starting, you will most likely procrastinate and again just not do it at all. Instead, if you take a step back, look at the bigger picture and start breaking down the process to the simplest steps, you will often realize that it doesn’t have to be as complicated as you thought.
For instance, starting a business. Yes, we’ve all heard that you need a great business plan before doing anything. If you follow this, you will either start making money in a year or more or you will never have the “perfect” plan and therefore not start your business at all (of course, you could also just fail).
If instead you have an idea and immediately start working on it, even if it’s the most basic stuff like coming up with a brand, buying a domain or starting to look for customers if you offer services, you will very often start making money pretty quickly and you will still be able to optimize your business and everything around it.
Nobody expects perfection, so don’t waste your time!
Your customers usually won’t expect perfection because, believe it or not, they’re humans too! Most of those Homo Sapiens are very understanding if you’re transparent with them.
Here it is again. If you have some kind of problem like longer shipping times than expected and you start thinking about how angry and disappointed your customers are gonna be, you will very likely just hide and hope that your customer will forget about the product until it arrives and then he will be even happier than he would’ve been before. Yeah, I don’t think so…
Much more probable is, that after a couple of days (maybe even before the communicated shipping date) your customer will contact you asking about his purchase. You will then either lie because you’re scared or be honest and maybe get into an argument because the buyer feels betrayed or scammed.
Why not think through those scenarios for a second, come to the realization that they’re suboptimal and that you should just be honest, transparent and straightforward.
As soon as your supplier notifies you about the delay, make sure you contact all customers that are expecting this product and let them know that there has been some kind of problem, but that they will be updated as soon as possible and that they will definitely get the ordered item or be reimbursed.
Sure, some customers will still be disappointed and maybe even request a refund, but most customers will be at least slightly reasonable people and they will understand that things like that can happen. If it’s not some kind of birthday- or Christmas gift, they will probably happily wait a couple of days longer and appreciate your honesty.
I know this article has been a little bit business-related but that’s just because I have those examples in my head right now, since I’m focusing on building my business. This doesn’t mean that the concept of “simplicity” doesn’t apply to all other areas of life as well.
Imagine the same scenario with you, your roommate and a broken mug. Your roommate will very likely respond better to a straightforward, honest apology than if you just try to hide it until he figures it out on his own.
Or let’s say your New Year’s resolution is to go to the gym regularly in 2017 (how fucking cliché, by the way!). If you think about how hard it’s gonna be and how it’s gonna suck, you will probably stop going after January if you even go once.
If you instead think about how healthy you’re gonna get and how fucking awesome you’re gonna look and if you focus on the good feelings (whether mental or physical) during the training, you will maybe even look forward to your next session!
So… What have we learned today?
Don’t overcomplicate things, try to be rational about them and just start doing them! Overthinking and making things harder than they are, almost never lead to anything good, so there’s no reason to do it.
Leave your opinion in the comments, I’m really curious to know what you think about this topic.
Peace out, brothers and sisters!
-The Insightful Stoner, crypdogar
