Simplifying Our Lives: Is It A Lost Cause?
In this modern age of technology and big business, where we have thousands of TV channels, hundreds of RSS feeds and unprecedented demands and stresses on our work and home lives, there is a lot of focus on simplifying our lives. The benefits are obvious, whether it be reduced stress, to increased spare time.
However, one thing that has always niggled away at the back of my mind when focusing on a simplified life is that all the practices seem to run contrary to the way society is evolving. If you think we have demands on our time or are overwhelmed with information and choice now, it will only get worse in the future. Rather than trying to fight (an arguably losing war) with this inevitability by simplifying everything, should we not be learning to deal with? Surely those who embrace it will be better equipped for the future?
Let’s take a look at RSS feeds as an example. A lot of people trim down their lists to the bare essentials. Rather than scanning through hundreds of feeds they only have to look at and concentrate on a handful. However, imagine that your job requires you to be knowledgeable on a subject, are we not potentially skipping useful information and therefore losing out to those who are able to take in dozens of feeds? Though technology has given us more choice and information to process, it will no doubt also evolve to allow us to take more of it in too. It’s plausible to assume that our minds will evolve to be able to deal with the stresses, complexities and demands of our lives too. With all this in mind should the focus not be on simplification, but in learning to become hyper-efficient? Rather than simplifying our lives to reduce stress and stay focused, should we instead be learning stress management techniques over simplifying the causes of it? Over to you…
5 Comments
What is our ultimate goal here, productivity or happiness? I have often fallen into the same trap of assuming that I should become more and more efficient, only to realize that I am missing out on the joys of being human. Our time is fixed, every time we say yes to something, we are saying no to something else. There’s more to life than information.
Hyper-efficient is an excellent way of putting it. You’re absolutely right that we cannot win the fight to make everything simple.
However, if we take the initial time out to organize ourselves properly, we can still simplify regular tasks greatly. A bit of extra work at the outset can ease and speed up the execution of many tasks.
With ever-growing choice and information, I’ve personally stopped worrying that I’ve missed something vitally important, because it’s less relevant. So long as we generally know where we need to look and have the right methods to digest that information effectively, it’s unlikely to cause a problem, even for specialists.
And the changes in the world still don’t necessarily mean a need for increased stress-management in my opinion. With the right mindset, focus, and simplifications through initial organization, we should all be able to achieve hyper-efficiency, getting more done in less time. I’m going to be positive and say that I don’t think it’s so far-fetched.
Thanks for the comments guys. Martin, you make a good point about how even though there are so many more demands and choices in our life, most of it is watered down so that we wouldn’t really be missing out after all.
And Abe, I completely forgot about happiness in all this. I think the reason much of this is relevant nowadays is because we define ourselves by our careers, our reputations, etc. Though everyone wants to be happy, I wonder how many people actually have it defined as their ultimate goal.
You make a good point. Technology surely changed the way we view things. Instead of practicing the basics, it has allowed us to advance beyond that point more easily, but we forget about the basics in the process.
So true. Because we are surrounded by more and more input, we have taken for granted those basic, useful lessons which could help us in our daily lives. It’s like a business focusing on gimmicks rather than on good customer service.