Why We Overlook Simplicity

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

- Thoreau

Why not have a million accounts?  Why not live a life in worship of complexity?  After all, the master of accounts, Salesforce, has 150,000 accounts, each of those with 20,000 or so accounts themselves.  That’s 3 trillion accounts!  No one is listening to Thoreau.  And yet, there is something about his words that rings true to our soul.  What was he getting at?  Why is half a dozen better than a million?  And what does frittering mean anyway?  

People often say life is short.  I’ve also heard that we don’t lack time, we lack priorities.  In the history of life on this planet, there has never been more competition for our attention.  I reckon people have rarely felt so stretched thin.  Perhaps, it has never been harder to simplify.

Fritter: to spend or waste bit by bit, on trifles, or without commensurate return.

The problem with complexity is that it doesn’t seem to produce a commensurate return.  The often quoted Pareto Principle states that we get 80% of our outcome from 20% of the input.  By focusing our attention on the 20%, we have four times as much brain space and still 80% of the result.  So why don’t we do this?

When was the last time you saw a news article celebrating a person living a simple life?  Breaking News: John is living in a cabin chopping his own wood and is very content.

As a modern society, we hold up a standard that is anything but simple.  We admire those that seem to ‘have it all.’  We get into college not by being simple, but by doing it all.  The reason is simple, a complex life looks better to others from the outside.

It is only when we turn inward and check to see if we are getting an adequate return on our investments that we discover the strain and busyness of our affairs is not producing the abundant inner results that would be required to make it worth it.

Less is more.

How can that possibly be true?  By eliminating the unnecessary, that which does not produce a commensurate return, we don’t end up with less because we are able to take that time and energy and spend in a more fruitful endeavor.  By simplifying, we do not end up with an empty life.  We end up living more fully, because we are only giving our heart and our time to that which we love.

Even if we pursue the modern standard of success, there is a reason Steve Jobs wore only one simple outfit.  Simplify towards your values.  Eliminate your fritters.  Reep juicier fruit.