What do we mean by simple as in simple lifestyle or simple living? In fact there are many ways to define simple that attract different audiences. These are the ones that I can think of:
Frugal- not spending money in an ostentatious fashion or buying unnecessary things.
Minimalist- using only a minimal level or goods and services
Utilitarian -satisfying basic needs with basic utilitarian products
Spare- limiting the things that you use in your life.
Uncomplicated- eliminating those things which make life complex.
Efficient- organizing activities and objects efficiently.
Unattached –limiting human associations.
In all of these definitions, people are attempting to improve the quality of their lives. They select an ideal life model that best matches their goals or ideas. With this model in their mind as a goal, it is easier to make decisions that will make them more like their ideal. They can do this either by addition – adding new activities or resources into their life or by subtraction – eliminating things which conflict with their ideal. They simplify by eliminating (or trying to eliminate) whatever they believe most seriously threatens their ability to live a productive and happy life. In each definition there is an ideal way of living that becomes a lifestyle model and a guide for making daily decisions that move the person closer to the goal.
Some might say that the entire exercise is meaningless. That the search for simplicity has become a cliche. Certainly there is a lot of buzz about simplicity, simplification and the like today and some of it may be trivial. But the act of selecting a model for a better life and then changing yourself to match that model is positive action. Deciding that picking a concept of a better way to live and using it to frame your life decisions is trivial or hopeless is losing control of the process. People who decide that they cannot or will not become better abandon responsibility for their life.
I see the quest for simplicity in life as a positive goal but not an easy one. My first problem is focus. Looking at the several categories above, I can’t just pick one and go all out. I am frugal to a point but I like both quality and aesthetics as well so I won’t buy the cheapest product even if it is adequately functional if it is ugly or badly made. I like things that are uncomplicated and yet it is a difficult task to make the complexities go away. Sometimes I am just not up to the task of organizing or eliminating all the messy issues in my life. I don’t have enough time or energy to make my life efficient and simple and I let it fall in on me. So what I end up doing is constantly course correcting, picking a target here (simplify my email for example), fixing it and then moving in a completely different direction (deciding not to buy extravagances) and do that for a time. I don’t have the discipline to pick one objective and let it dominate. I’m not saying that what I do is right. What I mean is that I have a hard time fixing on very specific goals and models and as a result I may appear inconsistent or unfocused to someone who can focus.
Is this bad? Probably, but it’s the best I can manage and I believe that even small and unfocused efforts to change my behavior and responses makes me better. What it really says to me is that achieving a simple lifestyle is very hard and ,dare I say, complex. It is so hard to change any habit or behavior (Folk legend says that it takes 30 days) and much easier to just drift doing whatever seems right and abandoning any attempt to control how your life is unfolding. Where the pain comes is after relinquishing control for some time you look around and find out that you are in a place that you don’t want to be and have become a person that you don’t even like or respect.
There is a saying that when you make the hard choices, over time life gets easier and when you make the easy choices, it gets harder. Maybe that is the bottom line about making the effort to make your life more simple (whatever it might mean to you). It is hard to do but if you are successful, life gets easier and that is why we want it.
And don’t forget to help me close out this series with your favorite simplification strategies over here.
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I am not funny. Any amusement I provide others is purely by accident. I can’t tell a joke, relate an amusing event or embellish a speech or presentation with any levity. If you can do any of these things, please move on to some other post because you don’t need my assistance. For all others, I share some resources and a tip or two that may help.
Stand up Comedy
It never crossed my mind to become a stand-up comic – until this week. It isn’t that I somehow decided that I want to make a living from stand up comedy. What I did decide is that just because I can’t do stand up comedy now is no reason why I can’t learn to do stand up comedy.
I continue to forget that human beings have this wonderful ability to learn. I tell myself repeatedly that I am just not good at x or y or z. This lets me off the hook. I don’t have to be responsible for that limitation – because it is not my nature. I let myself be limited. I don’t have to accept that limitation. I can learn to do new things. So that is why I was thinking about becoming a stand up comic. Where would I go to learn how to do stand up comedy?
Well, one place is this website providing training and encouragement for stand-up comics and stand-up comic wannabes. It is hard work to become good as a stand-up comic. But the comments show that there are lessons to learn and that by serious effort and discipline you can improve. I may not want to be a stand-up comic but I can clearly learn some good communication tools from comics and maybe even how to make people laugh.
Telling a Joke
You won’t be surprised to learn that until this week, I never lifted a finger to improve my joke-telling ability either. I was happy to tell people that I lack the ability to tell a joke and smile while they suffer through my heavy and dull presentations. Joke-telling is another of those skills that I dismissed as innate and therefore beyond my ability to learn. It also saved me the effort of learning how to tell a joke and practicing to improve my skill. There are a few principles to guide you in learning how to tell a joke and a number of places easily available on the web to provide them. Check them out here and here.
Funny writing
Nobody ever asked me to write something funny, certainly not at work. Maybe I was asked at school but if so, I don’t remember. So if I were going to write a humorous essay or story, it would be for my own pleasure. “Who teaches students to write humor?” I wondered. Then I found Connie Weiss who teaches humorous writing.
My point here is really not about comedy or humor. It’s about our willingness to self-limit our potential rather than accepting the opportunity to learn and grow. I will no longer excuse myself by saying that I can’t tell a joke. I will accept that joke telling is something that has not been important enough for me to learn. And then tell myself that it is about time for me to change.
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Persistence has a down side.
There is no question that persistence is a requirement for success. That is very clear to anyone who studies success and successful people. It is also very clear that persistence alone will not ensure sucess. What is very unclear is how you know when to switch tactics. When is the right time to try some different way to accomplish your goal. I know that I am unqualifed to give any guidance. But still I want to complete this weeks focus on persistence with a full scope of coverage. Searching the web brought me to Steve Pavlina and a post on Persistence from 2005.
Steve begins by defining persistence: Persistence is the ability to maintain action regardless of your feelings. You press on even when you feel like quitting.
But he continues to address when to stop persisting: When should you give up?
In answer he cites his own experience and that of Bill Gates.
There is nothing I can add of value to his experience. I suggest that you read Steve’s post and use it to guide you in judging when to persist and when to move on.
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Take any leadership class or read any leadership book and you will hear that mistakes are how you grow and progress. That’s a hard lesson for a perfectionist like me. It is also a very important one. Much of my life I have avoided action or decisions because I might be wrong. The fear of being wrong, or of making a mistake kept me from making decisions and moving forward.
The error here is thinking that being wrong moves you backward and that not making a decision or taking an action keeps you in the same place. Action of any sort moves you forward and inaction, rather than holding your position , pushes you backwards. With action, something happens. It may be good. It may be bad. Many times it is hard to know at first which it is. Either way you have moved into new territory and you are learning more about yourself and your world. Either way you end up in a different place with more experience and better judgment.
You do want to keep some balance. If all your decisions were bad ones then your life would quickly become a mess. And I am sure that you know people like that. Most people are able to tell the difference between a good outcome and a bad outcome and make appropriate changes in how they make decisions. When they make these changes, they have more experience and knowledge about what happens and more confidence in their decision process.
Not only do they learn better how to deal with decisions in areas they know, they also gain confidence to make decisions in areas where they have little knowledge. And when they move into new areas and make decisions either good or bad, they gain knoweldge there which makes the next decision easier and better.
So, my experience has proved to me that I am better served by making decisions, moving on and in many cases messing up than avoiding decisions so that I will not make a mistake. This, like much else in my life, is a struggle with my ego which remains convinced that it’s all over if anybody sees me make a mistake.
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I have found that one of the most important prerequisites for being a positive person is participating; going where people are and interacting. At least for me, I am most likely to be down when I am alone. And it’s what I naturally choose. I am really comfortable being a loner. No worries about what others may be thinking. I don’t have to put up a facade. I can be myself. I can be negative.
And that’s the problem.
My unvarnished self is pretty marginal. I can be petty, self indulgent, selfish and still feel good about myself because when I am by myself there are no consequences. (Well maybe there are consequences but not immediate ones.) It feels pretty good. I have spent a good part of my life retreating to the safety of isolation at any and every opportunity. When I am in retreat mode, it seems like a good thing. I eliminate challenges and protect myself from conflicts. But it’s not a good thing.
The trouble is that if that is all you know, you don’t know how it is handicapping you and more importantly you don’t know that you don’t have to be handicapped. Somewhere along the line, it because clear to me that I was my biggest problem and that indulging my weaknesses only weakened me further. In fits and starts, I stumbled out of my cave and participated in what was going on around me. The night I met my wife was one of those courageous moves – a story for another time. And each move out was followed by panic and struggle to keep from running back.
Humans are incredible creatures. We have understanding, the potential for wisdom and great emotion. The best we can be never shows without challenge or risking our comfort. My point here is only to recommend an attitude of embracing each day and each opportunity to be part of something. I like to think of it as showing up. It’s what I did the night I met my wife. And like Robert Frost tells us, that decision made all the difference.
But showing up is something that I need to do every day. It means participating when I don’t have to or don’t think there is any benefit. Going somewhere or doing something out of the normal pattern or taking a new responsibility or putting myself in a situation that I can’t control. It isn’t easy and I often find myself back in the cave, licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself. It’s just that now I understand how each hour in the cave moves me back to where I started.
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After long years receiving and giving advice, my suggestion is:
Be neither a giver nor a receiver of advice.
Advice is always easy to give. The world is full of people who are messing up – at least from your perspective. It’s very easy to suggest ways that they can improve what they are doing and it feels very satisfying because you are helping people who need your help.
The problem here is that:
They might not know that they need advice.
They might not care to make any changes.
You might be totally wrong.
They may not value your judgment
They won’t take it anyway.
Think back to the last time someone gave you advice. Did you ask for it? Did your respect it? Did you follow it?
Most of us don’t really want advice and if we do, we are choosy about who we ask to give it. It has to someone whose judgment we respect and who we think will carefully evaluate our specific situation. And it has to be someone who is willing to listen to us before solving our problem Finally, when we ask someone for advice, it must be from someone who has proven that they know something about the decision and with some proven success with this situation. If it’s about a marriage, we don’t ask advice from our twice-divorced Uncle Joe.
It is easy to find advice. The media are full of it – in any sense you choose. So are your friends and family. But mostly, we don’t want advice. We just want a chance to talk through a problem, or a decision we have already made
Sometimes, however, you know that you have to do something different. You know that you are on a wrong path but you don’t know how to get off. Who do you listen to then?
My advice – and remember that I just advised you not to take or give any – is nobody. You probably don’t know anybody with any experience that would be useful. What you need is knowledge And my suggestion is to read a book.
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I think maybe procrastination gets a bad rap. I don’t mean to advocate procrastination as a way of life. I just think that sometimes, procrastination is doing the right thing when we are programmed to go in the wrong direction. The El Nino explores the difference between laziness and procrastination and suggests that procrastination can appear constructive while producing nothing where laziness is apparent and slothful. In general, procrastination is viewed as bad and keeping you from accomplishing your goals. I don’t disagree.
But I have been around long enough to see that there is another side to procrastination. There have been times that I have been saved from doing a lot of unnecessary work when I procrastinated and then found that the work was no longer required. I know that everybody has worked hard on an assignment or requirement only to find out later that it was not needed. The big problem here is how you know. If the task were known to be unnecessary then nobody would do it. You can’t control whether the task is needed or not. But sometimes you just know that nobdy will notice if the task is not done. Sometimes experience will guide you to procrastinate because similar tasks have been eliminated in the past but you are still taking a risk the task will untimely need to be done. Other times the tasks are defined by you and your only risk is not accomplishing your goals. So I ask again, is all procrastination bad?
My hypothesis is that sometimes procrastination is simply the exercise of good judgment. Most of the time when we procrastinate we are lazy slackers, indulging our baser natures. But once in a while, something tells is that a task is truly unnecessary and we procrastinate instead of saying we won’t do it. Maybe we started a degree program with the idea that it would open up new job opportunities but in the middle of the program we discover that those higher paying jobs are a myth. We don’t want to quit the program. Nobody respects a quitter. We don’t want to waste our time and money on an effort with no benefits either. So we procrastinate. Maybe we think that we should do something because society, or our friends and family tell us that it would be good for us but we don’t want to do it and we don’t want the result. We don’t want to spend any money or time doing it. But we also don’t want to confront our fiends. So we procrastinate.
I don’t mean to advocate or encourage procrastination. It’s going to happen anyway. I just think that sometimes there is good judgment behind what we call procrastination. And in those cases, we either need to stop calling procrastination irresponsible or find another word for not doing something that provides no benefit. At least stop beating yourself up from not doing something you really don’t want to do.
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