Are You Downsizing? Simplifying? Or Headed Toward Chaos?
One of the paths to clarity and wisdom is simplification.
Many people in their Golden Years (or approaching them) look to downsize their home and reduce their expenses. I’m not planning on downsizing but I am VERY committed to simplifying what I do and how I do it—both personally and professionally.
If you’ve been around me and SuccessNet very long, you have probably heard of my favorite acrostic—SODA. It stands for Simplify, Organize, Delegate or Automate.
This article focuses on Simplification.
I see it all the time with coaching and consulting clients. Their lives and their enterprises grow in complexity resulting in confusion, chaos and overwhelm.
It’s a natural evolution. The longer we live, the older and bigger our business gets, the more convoluted they become.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple after they had ousted him and after they started losing money, one of the first things he did was cut the number of computer models they built and sold. With so many models, they had diluted their marketing efforts and weakened their brand. This one correction was a large part of their profitable come-back.
Less often is more. With too many products and services, too many marketing messages and too many processes, we dull our benefit to our customers and overwhelm ourselves and our team.
Part of our success strategy for ourselves and our business is to recognize this natural tendency and remain diligent about simplifying everything we can. Decluttering, organizing and simplifying is something we have to do. Disorder, complexity and dilution is the enemy of our productivity and effectiveness.
If you have a clear mission, an empowering vision and specific goals, it will find it much easier to stay on track and not get distracted and overwhelmed by the growth of complexity.
So every week, I try to practice SODA.
How about you? What will you do this week to simplify your life and/or business? I challenge you to come up with some action steps to simplify or eliminate something.
Here’s what I’m doing . . .
I have an account with a credit union that I just don’t use much. I have a savings account, checking account and a credit card attached to it. And as much as I like this credit union, it’s just not as convenient as our bank and this week I’m closing the account all together.
SuccessNet owned over 30 domains. And they were almost all set to renew automatically. This week, I’ve set them to manual and I will let nearly half of them expire.
Most of my bill payments are set up to automatically be paid. This week, I’m setting up at least 3 more on Auto-Pay.
It’s a start. And once your mind-set is focused in this direction, it becomes easier and even fun. NOT doing it is the path to complexity and even chaos. Are you up for the challenge?
I’m also looking at our long list pf products and will discontinue a good bunch of them so we can focus on those things that create the most value for our audience (you).
For some great ideas on simplification, I suggest 101 Great Ideas to Simplify Your Life. This book started with a survey of nearly 100,000 SuccessNet subscribers. We asked them for their ideas for ways to simplify our lives.
From there we researched, tested and compiled the best to bring you 101 Great Ideas to Simplify Your Life.
www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZPDBZJP
Best Life Strategy: KISS-Keep It Super Simple.
This article was originally published on SuccessNet.org in May of 2017.
