“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes
This week’s posts are on simplicity, something which doesn’t come easily to me, unfortunately. It’s a challenge to readily bridge the gap between thinking with complexity and expressing ideas simply. While doing that is easy for some, I’ve personally met very few individuals where that’s the case. So like many, I work very hard to make things simple and have adopted some approaches to help, including:
- Focusing on what matters from my personal core purpose and minimizing everything else.
- Forcing myself to pick between options in a situation and not trying to pursue them all.
- Not saying everything about a topic and focusing on what’s most relevant for the audience.
- Going through a “finished” post or presentation to eliminate 10-20% of the words or slides.
- Applying the rule of three and limiting lists to three major themes or categories whenever possible.
2 comments:
These are great bullets. I also find it hard to keep things simple in this overly complex world we live in. Another trick I try to use is that sometimes a simple "picture" or "illustration" can be used to describe something complex in a way that is easier to understand than verbose words or copy. For me, when someone paints a proverbial picture of a concept - I get it much better than listening or reading to a lot of words. Just a thought. I suppose not everyone's mind works that way, but for me it helps.
Scott - You make a great point about the importance of images. People process information in many different ways, and it's important to offer an option for learners of each type, especially when you're addressing a broad audience.
You raise an intriguing idea about doing an entire week of posts that are drawings and pictures, with very few (if any) words. It would be interesting to see how people react. That idea's definitely going in the future posts file!
Thanks, Mike
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