“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Leonardo Da Vinci

Do you ever find that you seem to be making things harder than they need to be? I know I do.

It’s easy to get caught up in details and complexity. You can’t see the forrest for the trees. It could be in work or life. The challenge is to keep things simple.

All this striving for success is making us stressed and anxious. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the demands of modern life. Surely there must be a better way?

Tim Ferriss describes a great way of reframing the problem of making things harder than they need to be… He steps back and asks himself “What would it look like if it were easy?“

This simple question has a powerful effect as it forces us to stop and rethink. This ultimately leads to more questions…

• Am I doing things the best way?
• Could this process be simpler?
• Have I committed to too many projects?
• What can I eliminate?

“Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential. Eliminate the rest.”

Leo Babauta

This line of thinking reminds me of a great blog post by Derek Sivers titled Relax For The Same Result (you should also check out his awesome little book Anything You Want). The story goes something like this:

Derek used to ride his bike regularly on a 15 mile loop around Los Angeles and he would push himself to the absolute limit. He made the journey in 43 minutes, but he was absolutely exhausted. The constant struggle was causing him to lose interest in his riding habit as it wasn’t enjoyable.

Then one day he decided to do the same ride, but take it super easy. Just relax and chill. And so he went off enjoying the ride, taking in the sights, and not puffing himself out. He explains:

“I’m usually so damn driven, always doing everything as intensely as I can. It was so nice to take it easy for once. I felt I could do this forever, without any exhaustion.”

Anyway he finished the ride and what do you know… The ride took 45 minutes. That’s only 2 minutes longer than his previous struggles! Derek sums it up nicely:

“So apparently all of that exhausting, red-faced, full-on push-push-push I had been doing had given me only a 4 percent boost. I could just take it easy and get 96 percent of the results.”

He went the same distance in a similar time but one way was burning him out, and the other was filling his cup. I know which method I would prefer!

This got me thinking about applying this theory to areas of my life. Those projects where I seem to be expending a lot of energy but struggling to succeed.

It’s a worthwhile exercise to journal on these questions. See where it leads. You may find new ways of doing things that were previously a struggle. You might even come to enjoy the process and feel rejuvenated at the end.

• Where can you dial back your effort significantly but still achieve the same result?
• What would it look like if it were easy?

Remember the hard way isn’t the only way.