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.

Key concepts part 3 Sticky messages

Infectious messages are universal and have stood the test of time. We can call them sticky. They have similarities. In the following paragraphs, I will explain how we can take our messages better. An infectious message needs to be understood, remembered, and effectively changed in opinions and behavior. Infectious messages have more than one of the following characteristics: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotional, and are usually told as stories. (You can read more about these characteristics from Dan and Chip Heath´s book Made to Stick.) 

Simplicity


A simple message contains an easy-to-understand royal idea around which the message is based. We find the core for stripping our message to its core. We do the stripping by removing many ideas from the message and letting the main thing shine. It is about our limitations to receive information. The more we are able to compress the information into a concise message, the better our message will stick. Our message must also be relevant. One way to make a message concise is to use the information that the recipient can already find. It’s easy to succeed in creating a short and concise message, but it’s hard to create a profound purpose in the same package.

Unexpectmess

We must ask ourselves whether the audience will be surprised after they receive our message. We have to deliver something the audience do not expect. We must focus on the unique characteristics of our message. We must tell the audience something they have no idea about. If we tell a story, we must make sure its end is completely different than most stories about the same thing or have a completely different conclusion.

Concreteness


If we can sense things with our senses, they are concrete. Concrete language helps us to understand concepts. The language used by many experts is full of ambiguous concepts that we do not understand. Specific things are easier to remember and that is why we should use concrete terms. One of the best concrete tools is photography. Images and sounds connected to the message makes it more concrete.


Credibility


We get to fight for the credibility of our messages with the beliefs, prejudices and social pressures of the recipients. There are several ways we can improve the credibility of our messages. Good and bad examples are some of them. Precise details also work to increase our credibility. The details are intended to support the core of our idea. We may also use statistics to support the post. When using them, they must be presented in a way that is comprehensible to the recipients.


Emotionality


Relying on our feelings is a good solution because it encourages us to act. We need to appeal to the feelings that the recipients of our message already have and connect them to our message that they don’t care about yet. After all, the most important thing for us is our personality. If we are able to combine the creation of emotions with our own interests, we will achieve the best result. Everyone usually asks themselves first, “How do I benefit from this?” Admittedly, this may not be a conscious choice. A message combined with our personality also brings results.


Story form


The stories work in two ways. They mimic reality and motivate us to act. These things create action. Mental simulation works because we were not created to imagine events without the action of the brain blocks that function in the actual doing. Mental simulations help in emotion management, problem solving, and visualization of the future. Stories realize abstract things. They inspire us to implement our ideas. They often help us get over old habits and presuppositions. They are concrete and for the most part they have both unexpected and credible elements.

The stickiness of our ideas has many enemies, such as losing too much information at the core, focusing more on presenting our ideas than on content, paralyzing decision-making, and too much the curse of knowledge, the power of presuppositions. When we have a good idea in mind, we can use a checklist for stickiness:

• Is it all about the core message? (Simplicity)

• Does it attract attention? (Surprise)

• Does the audience understand and remember it? (Concreteness)

• Is the audience able to identify or believe the idea? (Credibility)

• Do people care about the message? (Emotionality)

• Can people act on it? (Story form)

Messages do not need all characteristics to be sticky. Some of them are necessary.