 July 16th 2008
 Productivity
 11 comments
This post was written for Organize IT by Shanel Yang. You can check out her blog, Easy Steps To Success, where she regularly provides lessons and advice on how to be successful with people, work and money. Check out top posts such as How To Set And Achieve Goals In 5 Simple Steps and 10 Harmful Thoughts.
Is your main focus to be as productive as humanly possible, accomplishing more in one lifetime than you ever imagined possible? Or, are you more interested in slowing down your life and simplifying it, so you can enjoy it at a more leisurely pace? What will bring you the most happiness?
It seems that there is a plethora of self-help advice out there but not enough real wisdom about what works for you as opposed to him or her or somebody else. Your unique personality matters and happiness is not a one-size fits all t-shirt. Rather, it’s a “what’s your natural rhythm and flow?” bespoke suit and it needs to be taken in or out as you personally change over time. Sometimes, it needs to be completely thrown out and a new suit custom-made for you. But that depends entirely on, first and foremost, you.
What this means is before you jump on the bandwagon and join the latest fad in productivity, efficiency, proficiency, frugality, creativity, simplicity, or fill-in-the blank road to happiness, stop and ask yourself this important question: “Will this new method work for me?” If you don’t ask this question before you run out and buy the books, CDs, DVDs, products, services, and/or memberships promising happiness, chances are high that you are throwing away your money – not to mention your time, which is surely even more valuable! Why? I know a lot of people are going to be shocked by what I’m about to say next; but I’ll say it anyway: You are either a productivity-inclined person or a simplicity-inclined person.
Of course, we all want to be both and we are all a little of both. But, each of us is more productivity-inclined or more simplicity-inclined. The quicker you find out which one you are, the better you will be able to sift through all new self-help advice to pass on the ones that obviously don’t fit you and zero in on the ones that might fit, so that you can at least try those on for size.
Productivity-inclined people
What does it mean to be productivity-inclined? It’s not an official term. In fact, I just made it up for this post, but it captures the mindset of people who want to always get more and more done in the same 24 hour period. They are drawn to complex methods for maximizing every minute of their lives, such as Getting Things Done by Dave Allen or The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. People who succeed using these methods are successful at highly-regimented routines. But, not everyone works that way, or wants to.
I personally hate tight schedules and impossible deadlines. But, I endured them for over ten years while I was working in various law firms as an attorney. Yet I saw colleagues who thrived in that type of hyper-charged, always “go-go-go!” environment. Sure, I learned to walk the walk of working like that but that doesn’t mean I liked it. In fact I despised it. And, when I finally left lawyering to start blogging - though I was grateful for all the lessons that working like that taught me - I was even more grateful that I could get off that crazy rollercoaster ride. Can you tell that I’m a simplicity-inclined person?
The few colleagues who loved that breakneck speed are sure to shoot straight to the top in the corporate world and we don’t have to wonder when they’ll ever stop to smell the roses because they won’t. They are thrilled to rush right past everything for some greater ultimate goal. The speed is part of the fun. They have found their eternal bliss. It just happens to be my nightmare. I am still very productive but I prefer to do it in a much less regimented way than suggested by Dave Allen or Tim Ferriss. I’ve found a productivity guru that better suits my personality, Brian Tracy.
Simplicity-inclined people
What does it mean to be simplicity-inclined? In a phrase, less is more. I believe that goals don’t have to be lists of more than say, thirteen steps. Ordinarily, even that number seems too high, but Napoleon Hill made it work with his thirteen steps to riches in the immortal Think And Grow Rich. My favorite productivity guru is Brian Tracy who wrote Eat that Frog! Even though Tracy has 21 tips in his book, those tips are not meant to be taken in any particular order – or even have all of them to be used by everyone, for that matter. Rather, each is a very short, simple, insanely practical tip for us to cherry-pick based on our understanding of ourselves and knowing what does work and what doesn’t work for us. Perfect for someone as simplicity-inclined as I am! I actually like all 21 tips and have used all of them in different circumstances.
Incidentally, I summarized on my blog not only Think And Grow Rich and Eat that Frog! but also my third favorite self help book of all time, Dale Carnegie’s How To Make Friends And Influence People. As with the first two, How To Make Friends offers advice that is almost too simple – inherently commonsensical – yet we forget even the greatest tips unless we review them often. From my simplicity-inclined mindset, these three books are all I need to succeed in life.
I do read more books from time to time just to keep abreast of the latest trends but these three custom-fitted suits still look smashing on me, so I have no intention of casting them off for any newer styles just yet. Anyway, I find that all the newer styles so far aren’t really new but just flashier versions of Think And Grow Rich or How To Make Friends. Even Eat that Frog! is a redo of much of these other two. But, the inimitable clarity and brevity of Eat that Frog! earned it a permanent slot on my very short favorite self-help books list.
Conclusion
Find out which type of self-help personality you are, productivity-inclined or simplicity-inclined. Then, seek out the right style of personal development for your personality type. If you are an introvert you wouldn’t try to find a friend at crowded parties, would you? And if you’re an extrovert you wouldn’t slowly go about looking for partners with similar interests at much smaller, quiet gatherings, right? Well, neither should you try to take the advice of a personal development guru that similarly just doesn’t fit your own personal inclinations. “Different strokes for different folks” is an expression that fits all areas of our lives. Be respectful of your own nature. Follow your instincts. Be awesome, and be your own hero!
Reader discussion
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With all due respect, I fear I fundamentally disagree with you! I would be tempted to argue productivity and simplicity should perhaps not be seen as alternatives but deserve to be combined into what can be termed effectiveness. I always try to keep in mind the two following quotations, which I find extraordinarily pertinent and more or less sums it all:
Leonardo da Vinci: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Peter F. Drucker: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
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When I first read the title, I thought, “Huh? They go together.” Now, I see Pascal thought so as well.
Anyway, there are definitely two mindsets but they can certainly be combined and I really like Pascal’s suggestion that it is effectiveness when this is done. There are a lot of cases where one fits or the other, but they can almost always be joined in some way as well.
I think you may be better to consider the two styles as fast paced or easy going, rather than the categories you picked. I also cannot agree on this one, sorry!
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This is in any case a thought provoking post. I have just changed the name of my blog from Productivity Workflows to Effectiveness Workflows.
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Pascal and Mike, thanks for your comments. No need to apologize for disagreeing with me. However, I’m not sure that you guys actually disagree with me. I am not saying that productivity and simplicity are mutually exclusive. Far from it. Rather, I have coined a couple of new phrases specifically for the purpose of this post, which I clearly defined about when I used the terms productivity-inclined and simplicity-inclined vis-a-vis achieving goals.
I have no problem explaining it again. Productivity-inclined is a preference for hyper-productivity, squeezing in as much as you possibly can within a 24 hour period with an extremely full schedule and tight routine. On the other hand, simplicity-inclined is a preference for achieving goals and happiness by paring your life down to the essentials and actually have less items on your to do list but with more focus.
Now, if you still feel we are in disagreement, that’s fine, too. As they say, it takes different strokes for different folks! What does it mean to be simplicity-inclined? In a phrase, less is more. I believe that goals don’t have to be lists of more than say, thirteen steps.
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This is why I should do more guest posts. It provides a different voice and perspective which in this case has got people discussing it. I think a lot of the problem is down to viewing productivity in the traditional sense of getting more and more done. In that case, yes, there is a conflict between it and simplicity. However, the idea of personal productivity is increasingly focusing on simplifying our lives so we can do the really important stuff effectively and efficiently. In that sense, they certainly do work together though you will struggle to find that definition used in the workplace.
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This was a wonderful post. Very thought provoking. My take came to a similar paradoxical reading to Pascal’s. Are simplicity and productivity really different? I thought of David Allen’s Getting Things Done and his central hypothesis that you want to reach a clear mind state as often as possible. Have systems you can trust to core-dump and review as necessary, so that you can reach simplicity. So, Allen’s main project is to reach simplicity by making your productivity more effective, to borrow from Pascal.
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Glad you liked the post M Rindfleisch, Shanel really delivered. Thanks Shanel! You make a good point about Getting Things Done. While I don’t think it encourages us to work flat out and make things more complicated than necessary, for whatever reason that’s what a lot of people have ended up doing.
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You know, I actually think that Tim Ferris is really in the simplicity camp. He states in his book (Four Hour Work Week) that most of corporate work is unnecessary, and that we should simplify. He also leverages the Pareto principle (also outlined in your summary of Eat That Frog). He advocates taking very long (by American standards) and frequent vacations. That sound like simplicity to me.
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