The Power of Simplicity

My father taught us, “If you want to be happy, simplify, simplify, simplify.” He loved the quote from the movie, Amadeus, in which the Austrian emperor told Mozart that his music had “too many notes.” My father did not agree with the criticism of Mozart’s music, but felt the quote was great for describing anything from cluttered architecture and art to overly complex solutions to problems. His house that he built from steel is pictured with this article. It is an expression of his design and artistic philosophy: clean, smooth, uncluttered, simple lines.

Albert Einstein said, “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.” Steve Jobs surely met this definition as he brought us the power and complexity of computing through as simple a user interface as possible. He took the complex and made it simple.

We often find that we cannot complete all of the tasks that are already on our “to do” lists let alone other tasks and goals we should be adding. We can choose what is most important to us and drop some good things from our list that are standing in the way of our accomplishing better. Advice I received from the book, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland and JJ Sutherland, helped a lot. Give yourself a short deadline. I needed to write an application to the Texas Medical Board to start a hospitalist fellowship. It seemed to me like this should take several weeks to complete which I did not have so I kept pushing it down on my to do list. I gave one of my hospitalists and me two hours to complete the application. We were done, and the application was accepted. My inner OCD wanted to overly complicate the task. I needed to simplify. Read Full Article.

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