Self-Help Myths: The Power Of Less
It seems that simplifying your life is the big personal-growth trend right now, pushed by sites like Zen Habits. Personal productivity has had it’s day in the spotlight, now it’s the turn of simplifying, streamlining, identifying the essential, or whatever you want to call it. Goodbye David Allen and say hello Leo Babauta (or maybe not). We’ve gone from focusing on being super-efficient to being super-effective, almost like a bunch of fashionistas going from black to grey… and back again. However, simplifying your life isn’t, ironically, as simple as you might think. Consider the following problems with it:
The first problem with simplifying in general is that people automatically assume it’s about cutting out activities and getting rid of the low value interests in your life. Far from it, in fact. As I discussed last week, you have to consider the cumulative effect of stopping doing a particular activity for the sake of simplifying your life. What seems trivial now, may prove to be of high value in the future. All that time I spend on Twitter and Friendfeed might seem wasted considering the handful of visitors I get from it every week, but those people over time become the ones who comment the most and share ideas with me. Over a year, that’s invaluable
The second problem with simplifying your life is how far to take it. Let’s take the 80/20 rule as an example here because it really sums up the whole principle of simplifying, even if people don’t always refer directly to it. When you first start to 80/20 your life the results are pretty obvious. You identify the 20% of clothes you wear 80% of the time and suitably store or throw out the rest. You pinpoint the 20% of hobbies that give you the most satisfaction and opt to stop pursuing any others. Sounds simple enough, right?
But then what? Do you 80/20 to infinity (and beyond)? Do you simplify and simplify till all you’re left with is the one most important project, the one set of clothes you wear the most, the one customer that gives you the most profit and the one best friend you spend your time with? I’ll let you guys answer that one…
14 Comments
There is a Fast Company interview with David Allen dating back to 2000 where he states you can do anything, but not everything – a recognition that we do need to identify the essential, so nothing new there. What is new as you say is the idea to keep stripping things away to the bare minimum, something I just don’t get. I lead a busy, vibrant, interesting life, as I think most people do. Why would I want to start reducing that? No, what I want to achieve is SIMPLICITY not simple.
Simple is having one sole activity. Complex is having lots of activities, desperately juggling them and dashing back and forth. Simplicity is having lots of activities which support each other, moving from one to another with ample time for each. The trick is to work through complexity to simplicity, not dropping down to the lowest common denominator of simple.
Great Post, thanks.
The problem with having a counter-argument to the idea of simplifying your life is clearly exhibited by your examples – it complicates things. In other words, I never thought of simplifying your life as an argument until now. The only danger I see in such an adage is when it is stripped of its means as a catalyst for experience and twisted into a philosophical argument. As it is here.
While I’ve no doubt David Allen is aware of the idea of identifying the essential, he doesn’t focus on it nearly enough in my opinion. His prime market is the business sector, which is still all about busyness and squeezing as much as possible out of your time. Managers and CEO’s would frown on a system that encouraged its employees to do less.
Jonathan, I’m not doubting the power of simplifying, it’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years to much personal benefit. But like I’ve said before a degree of balance is required. Much like being overly-productive burns you out through an excessive workload, simplifying too much takes out the heart and soul of a lot of what you do. The value of many activities is apparent except in the long term.
It seems strange to me that you identify this as a myth but you only identify some of the problems that come with simplifying. Just because something has problems doesn’t mean it’s a myth. Complicating your life definitely has problems, but that doesn’t mean it’s a productivity myth.
Both are means to an end. Simplifying is a route to a goal. And it works. Leo and others have accomplished their goals by simplifying.
From your comments on Leo’s methods, it seems you haven’t actually read his book. Your examples are addressed by The Power of Less. Your examples don’t actually refute simplicity but are actually supporting his methods.
Thanks for the comment, Adeline. A few things I just want to clarify.
Self-Help Myths is an ongoing series at my blog, intended as an alternative look at common self-help, personal growth and productivity ideas. This is not to say I disagree with these ideas, say they suck or anything like that. The series is merely there to provide a much needed alternative, and occasionally critical, perspective.
With that in mind I could provide a critique of productivity as I could simplicity. Granted, each approach works for different sorts of people, but does that mean they shouldn’t be thinking and questioning what they do?
If you happen to come back to this blog, Adeline, I should point out I’ve read The Power Of Less and I’ve even reviewed it here at this blog. This post isn’t an attack on that book or Leo’s ideas, though now that you mention it I would be interested in reading which areas of his book address the particular examples I’ve covered. The very fact his subtitle mentions eliminating all but the essential, pretty much backs up my first argument.
Thanks for the clarification, James. Regarding your response to Adeline, “Does that mean they shouldn’t be thinking and questioning what they do?” The simple answer to that question is no. However, shouldn’t we allow the experience of a philosophy that has personal appeal to lead us to the question of whether it works or not? I’m all in support of making something like simplicity less trendy, but as a large group of people practice a philosophy that appeals to their current needs, the natural progression is that some people break away from it at one point or another and others embrace it to one degree or another. The trend breaks after the group experiences the philosophy for a period of time. What I’m contesting is your premise that self-help adages are in need of intellectual debunking instead of an intuitive one.
The only thing I find odd about the self-help culture is how much judgment surrounds it. I’ve often thought that maybe booksellers would profit by including an alternative cover to a book called “How to Find Happiness by Simplifying Your Life” with something like “Italian Cooking for Dummies”. On the surface, your idea to challenge self-help seems to only perpetuate the taboo of self-help in our culture. It seems to me that people only go to self-help when they are in need of another direction. To challenge this other direction before the person experiences it for him or her self is, I think, ultimately counter-productive.
Hi James, I think you hit on an important point. It is easy to get rid of things you think of as junk, but it is more difficult to get rid of things that have value. Recently I got rid of some of my books that I will probably never read ever again, but held onto them for a while because of their supposed value. I could have kept them, but it was adding to clutter in my room. It was a tough decision, but I decided it was better to get rid of them.
I understand your argument, but I believe you do not understand the premise of simplifying your life. It is not about getting rid of everything in your life. It’s about streamlining and removing those things which only add stress and clutter without an end benefit to your life. Networking sites can become a wasted social activity to some but is an essential part of a business plan to others. Can you simplify your networking task by using only one a day? Or spending time on only one at a time? Or are you scattered and disorganized jumping from one to the next without finishing your thought?
James, the term “myth” usually refers to things that are widely believed, but not actually true. So when you call simplifying your life a myth, it seems to imply that it is a false method. If you don’t mean to imply that, but actually just want to question things, you should use a different title or you’re not being clear.
Regarding how the book addresses the problems you mentioned, the book addresses how to decide what to cut out of your life – and says that the first thing you should do is figure out what gives you the most value – cumulatively. It doesn’t just say to cut out low-value things from your life. In the example you gave, if you identified communicating with readers and friends via Twitter and Friendfeed as one of your most valuable activities, you should make this one of the cornerstones of your life. So your example doesn’t contradict The Power of Less, it is a good example of how he suggests doing it.
In your second problem, regarding the 80/20 rule, note that The Power of Less doesn’t actually call for using the 80/20 rule or anything similar to it. It just says that you should set a limit for everything – goals, daily tasks, projects, time spent on Twitter and email – and use that limit to force you to choose the most important things. So that limit wouldn’t be continually decreased, as you say the 80/20 rule would result in smaller and smaller choices (20% of 20% of 20%). The Power of Less doesn’t call for a percentage – it calls for a fixed number, determined by you through experimentation.
The irony of the self-help movement, specifically regarding the popularity of blogs and social media, is that they become exactly what they try to be against. If reducing clutter or noise is simplicity, then the information age produces the antithesis of simplicity.
There are millions of people who consume a Zen Habits blog post in the same way they consume chocolate cake, which is a metaphor for happiness – they crave the short-term euphoria of being inspired and do it several times per day as their attention becomes increasingly distracted and fragmented.
Herbert Simon: “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else, a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious, it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
I read a lot of these blogs on a regular basis, I have read several of Leo’s books (including the Power of less) but I feel that the main problem is that everybody reads a different message in most of these books. Although I feel that Leo is one of the best, most of the stuff on self-help in productivity reads as a horoscope, you will always find something you like and the text is vague enough to not hurt your feelings. The discussion lead by Adeline is a perfect example of this!
I think you’ve over-simplified simplification! To me, it’s about getting to the point of balance where the things I am doing, owning and using are bringing true value. Not more, not less.
Simplification is going to mean different things to different people. For example, I value home-baked bread. My mother prefers Wonder Bread (which is a nasty tasteless squishy bread whose only nutritional value comes from added chemicals). So her simplification of giving me her bread machine falls into my simplification of making home-baked bread.
Some people would be perfectly happy in simplifying their lives by getting rid of their cars. In my case, it would complicate things, since my area has no public transportation at all.
So it’s an individual thing, striking a level that speaks to each individual. Just like no one productivity system is going to work for every person, no simplification level will either.
Thanks again for all the comments. This post has proven to be one of my more popular ones! Jack, you make a good point about how everyone can get something out of self-help, certainly if it’s commercial. For better or for worse, you need to water down your product to get the biggest market.
As LJ points out, simplification is like productivity in the way people interpret it. As I’ve recently discussed, I think we’re seeing it evolve to a different level. Simplification isn’t just about living with less anymore.
I think it’s important not to overlook the wood for the trees in this discussion. To me the key point from this post is that simplicity is sometimes not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s not necessarily a desirable end in itself.
Life is messy and complicated. Aiming to simplify things enough to make them manageable is a good thing, but there is still value in being able to juggle more than three balls, because often life throws things at you and you find yourself juggling chainsaws, cats and half a set of crockery.
I concur with the value of dabbling at times – my HTML website dabbling contributed to my obtaining the fantastic work I now have with About.com. But World Of Warcraft is probably a complication that has no useful outcome (it’s not even all that relaxing).