Simplicity also requires prioritization

Simplicity also requires prioritization. You have your passions and order of priorities. The most important things are often overshadowed, because your time is often determined by external factors. Focus on prioritizing the tasks you are left with after elimination. You can’t do many jobs efficiently at the same time, so you’re forced to prioritize. For most, even one job is too much. Remember, prioritization is your responsibility because others don’t know you better. Don't follow the herd. You live in a world of choices. Choosing the right things will improve your chances of getting the most out of yourself. Think about priorities. Things to prioritize have common denominators, although they vary by personality. Think carefully about your priorities. Some are self-explanatory and others are surprising.

Think of yourself first. The most important tasks are the ones that take you forward and that you’ve always wanted to do or try. Figure out things that produce results and more joy. They are based on the less is more principle or those with great potential. Also, things that require your creativity or are considered impossible by others will rank high. The only way to do some things is to prioritize tasks with high value. Prioritize them at the expense of your routine. Eliminating vanities is more important than prioritizing because they have a greater impact on quality of life. Start prioritizing step by step. You will probably fail in everything if you try to do too many things at once. Don’t forget that loneliness can be a virtue. Don’t forget it, even if the desire to change all things right now is great.

The most important task

Don’t forget that even the most important tasks have their order. Outline the most important thing for each day and prioritize it. Always put it first. Determine it through maximum benefit. Also assign a purpose to the task, because without good reason, the task is not the most important one. If you can't get the most important task done in one day, divide it into parts. Prioritize smaller parts. Set aside your most efficient hours for the most important task. They vary depending on the personality. Most are most effective 2-4 hours after waking up. They have had time to shed their sleep and their worst fatigue has subsided. You will find your best working hours best by testing, i.e. doing the most important tasks at different times.

In addition to reserving the most efficient working time, minimize potential disruption to the most important tasks. Close email notifications, set the phone to silent, and focus on the most important task. This may be easier said than done. Still, try to minimize interference. This will greatly increase your efficiency. Set a deadline for the most important task. If you book a longer time period for your most important tasks than a day, set aside moments on your calendar for your most important tasks. I do not recommend a vague definition of the most important tasks, such as “I will graduate as an engineer next year”. In this case, the priorities may be unclear and leave too much room for interpretation.

When you define the most important tasks, you must first determine the next physical task and what you want to accomplish. The relevance of the next physical task is to make the most important task easier to do. Example: You have a toothache that interferes with your daily life. In this case, your most important task is to make an appointment and go to the dentist. The first physical task is to look up a dentist's number. In reality, the first physical task is probably to open a browser or computer. Mark the desired result as a hole patch and end of the toothache. Apply this mindset to every major task. Simplify the thing you want to do. Often the most important task is multifaceted. Therefore, clearly define the desired outcome. Determine the desired result before the first physical step.

Simplicity requires elimination

 Simplicity requires elimination. Your amount of stuff, your human contact, and the things you do will increase faster than you reduce them. Elimination of vanities is the most important thing in simplifying life. The figures for individual goods and human contacts are described in more detail in the figures. This chapter tells you more about unnecessary doing. Most of the things you do are useless. They do not add value to you. Your skills are poor on average. The purpose of the book is to reduce the things you do in vain and make you focus on what brings you the most benefit and enjoyment. Just a few things you do every day are really helpful to you. You’ll have a hard time believing this because it means you’re wasting most of your available resources. You don’t have to try to get the few percent productivity gains that the world around you thirsts for. By eliminating vanities, you get an improved quality of life and tens of percent efficiency.

You need to make things unnecessary if you can’t eliminate them. Habits don’t need your focus. More about creating routines, their benefits, and changing them is covered in a chapter that focuses on habits. Unnecessary things depend on the person. Therefore, this chapter focuses more on identifying vanities. You can also eliminate your vanities by delegating them to others. First, try to remove unnecessary things you don’t like. You cannot eliminate all of them. First, remove all possible ones and delegate those vanities to others that you cannot completely avoid. Then focus on the things you are bad at. They produce unpleasant side effects on your life and waste your resources. Failures will produce more failures for you and a rolling snowball will grow. Here are some things to keep in mind that is taken from The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris:

• Things to always suspend. When you are interrupted, you have to re-tune in to do them which takes time out of your brain.

• Answering unnecessary emails and calls.

• Things that have always been done this way. They have not evolved and as a result they have become ineffective.

• Things where your partner is either miserable or unreliable.

• Things that are not completed on schedule and whose completion is not visible.

• Meetings that don’t have a clear purpose, goal, or schedule and where you don’t have a critical role.
  
  

From the list above, you can easily see how much more unnecessary and wasteful things you have to do. You can easily simplify your life by eliminating them. This leads to a better outcome than improving unnecessary things. Elimination can produce unexpected surprises for you. Try it to see the results. Do not bite too large a piece at a time. Focus first on your most harmful habits and actions. Subtract a maximum of two similar things at once. Start with the most harmful and gradually move on to others. In my experience, changing all bad habits at once leads to everyone’s failure and bigger problems than you had before the change.

Simplicity part 1 Simplicity and Complexity

Simple is beautiful and it shows in many things. The modern world is moving towards complex structures. This trend is wrong. Keeping a product simple as it enters the market makes it easier to make more money. Simple products have started to attract more and more recently. Ease of use has risen to a major role in purchasing decisions. The imperceptibility of the role of simplicity is often due to the fact that it is not as intellectually interesting as complexity. The problem with Finnish engineering is that a technically superior solution is not always the best if it is complex. This was one reason why Nokia could not compete with Apple.

Simple is always beautiful. The exception may be someone with an ugly and simple soul. Not hanging on to exceptions. Focus on the beauty of simplicity. The beauty of simplicity is one reason less is more of a principle to work. Simplifying aspects of human life can be helpful. Automatic Monthly Savings in Index Funds can save you large amounts of work exams and bank brokerage fees. Simple, simple and straightforward. Your job is to make complex things simple. This is an ongoing process. It never ends the first time. Don't compromise on it. Always keep in mind that a simple product, thing, message or service is high quality. If you are unable to simplify then strive for elimination. If this does not work, remember the lowest possible minimum dose and make sure that you do not consume more of your resources than necessary.

Life is constantly becoming more complicated. That doesn't have to be the case. Focus only on the things that bring the most benefit and enjoyment to you and your environment. Eliminate every thing unrelated to the above if you can. Unnecessary and important things will always fight for their living space in your headroom. This war is difficult to detect because unnecessary as well as important things fought inside your head. By giving up things that do you little or no harm, you can simplify your life with pleasure and great results. Awesome and excellent things often mean simple results. Reducing complexity leads to a more beautiful end result. If you want to make something big going forward, you need the courage to simplify. Few have the resources to do so. That is why simplicity is so rare and beautiful.

Simplification requires both the elimination and the prioritization of unnecessary issues. These are never fully understood. It is still worth continuing this process at regular intervals. The time interval is up to you. There is no exact rule of thumb. Aim for it at least a couple of times a year. The beauty of simplicity is not easily noticed without experimentation. Take action now and see how your quality of life improves.

Complexity is the scourge of today. Simplification is the best weapon against complexity. This is easier said than done, but it is all the more valuable. Complexity causes greater inefficiency. Remember that simplicity alone is not always effective or interesting. Repeating the same thing from day to day starts to taste like wood before long. Keeping things as simple as possible is the best option. You can also think of it through the MED I mentioned in the second chapter. The purpose of this chapter is to find out how things are simplified and how complexity creates problems.

The world is complex. It is becoming more and more complex. The more complex things become, the more inefficient they go after a certain point. The problems caused by the phenomenon are often not perceived when they are hidden. They are difficult to analyze. Instead of improving things, one should think about whether they work at all, instead of thinking about how they could be improved. This also applies to business in addition to individuals. The increase in complexity can be compared to a snowball descending a slope and growing from protective snow. Costs are accelerating as complexity increases. The growth of the rolling ball accelerates until it stops at an obstacle and disintegrates. The best way to fight is to break up the snowball into smaller pieces and destroy the unnecessary ones before they go downhill. This is not always possible in time and simplification is becoming more difficult.

The more complex the system, the more it needs to be dealt with. A simpler system works better. A simple system works better without supervision. In business, simplification reduces the need for expensive managers and additional costs. Simplicity helps focus on relevant things, such as adding value. Large size does not always mean complexity and cannot be reduced by minimizing size. Rather, it is easier to grow simpler products profitably. Let's even compare Nokia and Apple. Nokia offered many different phone models to its customers. Apple, on the other hand, did not have many different models. Apple also managed to simplify the user experience that facilitated sales. The simpler the product, the easier it was to use. This maximizes the added value experienced by the user, which made it easier to charge a higher price for the product.

Be the loser of your own life

 We only have one life. We are responsible for that ourselves. Adulthood is a milestone, but some individuals need guardianship for longer. More important than this moment is creating rules of the game that you can follow when you decide for yourself. Laws impose their own restrictions on the rules. Despite these, we have the opportunity to create the living conditions we want, especially in Western countries such as Finland. The world is not always a fair place. We can lose even if we create our own rules of the game, as permitted by the restrictions of the law. Today, we cannot blame our society today for our failures, even if it steers individuals in the most favorable direction for the system. The system is often wrong. It does not take into account our individual needs. Then you have a responsibility to take care of your life as well as you can.

Creating your own rules of the game requires critical thinking. Not everyone's rules of the game are the same. The difference is good because the world would be a boring place for everyone to do the same things in life. Today, our most prestigious life paths are the following: elementary school, high school, college studies, and transitioning from an employee to a large and well-known employer. This is followed by a family, a mortgage, working until retirement age paying taxes and a slow movement towards the inevitable goal. This is a slightly exaggerated and deliberately painted negative outlook for the future, as it is intended to evoke the idea that this is not an inevitable outcome. By creating our own rules of the game, we can have a better chance of enjoying our lives more as an individual and not just as part of the overall machinery. The world is full of opportunities and we should exploit them to improve our quality of life.

There can be hundreds of rules of the game and each situation has its own. Instead of detailed rules of the game, we need to create rules of the game that focus on the big picture. In these texts, we’ll go through how we can create rules of the game for important areas of our lives, such as time, relationships, health, and money. We can reduce our burden in every area with clear rules. We can use Less is more concept. It can be exploited in the rules of the game to improve our quality of life. We can play a different game than 95% of people by creating our rules. Most work like others. It is possible to be a pioneer, but it will not work for many. Shortcuts exist and we can use them. This requires us to walk our own paths. It can feel like you are alone and a loser’s path for a long time.

We must define our own success. Being at work 24/7 and making large sums of money can be a loser´s path if it leads to a collapse in personal life, such as divorce and bitter offspring. Even making small sums of money can be a success. This is not the path most choose. Choosing a path for the general public is not a bad thing if it is a path you really want to follow. These texts are not for this path but for creating your own rules of the game and enforcing them. If things go down the drain, you should leave them unchanged. What is not broken should not be repaired. There is no point in making a small improvement because the input-output ratio is not growing enough.

It makes sense to follow different rules when things don’t go the way you want. We all have our strengths and weaknesses in some jobs. We often do not use them enough to our advantage. By utilizing them, we not only improve our own quality of life, but also benefit our environment. There are many solutions to the problems. The most commonly used are not always the best but almost always imitated by mediocrity. Utilizing them, the results are mediocre at best. This may mean more work, but utilizing your own thinking will yield better results than utilizing generally accepted paths.