Simplicity

I had a great breakfast with a great man on Monday. His name is Paul Smith, founder of Envisioning and Storytelling.

We were talking about technology, branding, and what I’m working on in my company – trying to find the best way to communicate what we do in a way people can understand. Something I’ve been struggling with for a few years now.

I’ve been talking about saving time and adding efficiency, and trying to make peoples’ lives better in that way. It’s not really working that well.

Some people get it right away, but most people say “no thanks.”

Perhaps because everyone is selling efficiency, or because these concepts are tough to apply to the daily grind. We can’t really imagine being more efficient when we already feel like we’re pushing all our limits staying on top of everything, and when we don’t even know that a different way is possible. Efficiency feels like a foreign and faraway concept when we’re lost in the grind. It feels like something other people pay for and “I don’t need because everything is fine.”

He said (and I paraphrase): “I don’t like efficiency. I want simplicity.”

It felt like a new part of my brain was unlocked in that moment. I had never looked at it that way before, had never considered the depth of the word “simplicity” or how it might apply in life and business.

Simplicity? What the heck is simplicity?!

To me, thinking about it now, simplicity is clarity, focus and being free from clutter. The essence of a thing, without bells and whistles. A concentrated version, but fully functional and without limits (in what it’s meant to do).

It’s less chaos. The refinement of refinement. (And simplicity includes efficiency, of course.)

In our day to day, simplicity is using the 3 quick text fields in the Verrus app on your iPhone to pay for parking, instead of having to buy something to get change from Starbucks. It’s adding a calendar event to your iPhone and having your coworker see it on their Mac instantly. Simplicity is pushing the “close door” button in the elevator, and having the door respond without hesitation.

It’s a logical order of operations, where each thing follows the next, and just makes sense – without that question of “and why on earth would it do that?” lingering in the air.

Simplicity is worrying less, being more present, and doing what we enjoy. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be simple. It would be annoying and stressful.

It’s a unique concept to each of us… It will be very different for me, than it is for you. Simplicity is relative, and subjective. Simplicity is a feeling! Being in the zone and on the ball, where you’re in the eye of the storm with everyone around you scrambling to keep up with their personal chaos.

In a world of technology, consumerism, controversy and fear, simplicity is knowing what matters, doing what’s important, and using the best tools for the job. Then, going for a slow walk in a green park with a killer track playing through your iPhone’s headset.  😉