Quotes About Simplicity

John Gall wrote, "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over beginning with a working simple system.

he laughed and wept as a child does (and indeed as people in earlier centuries seem to have done) quite without self-consciousness.'25

Life can be complicated; the truth is not.

The secret to renewal and true confidence is simple: Get back to the basics.

You think beauty's in some classroom or some textbook, and it's not. That's not what it's about. This right here. This is beautiful. All of this. That's all you need.

Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity.

Hazel missed trees. She wanted just one sturdy elm with a branch strong enough to hold a swing. And she didn't want to live in a hole in the ground, with the snakes and tarantulas, and sleeping so near to the stink of burning cow manure.

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity. —BRUCE LEE

Simple works, complex fails.

If you can't define it or act upon it, forget it.

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials." —Lin Yutang

1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson's Law).

Don't confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple—many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.

But not having cable or the Internet turns out to be cheaper than having them. And nature is still technically free, even if human beings have tried to make access to it expensive. Time and quiet should not be luxury items.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things." –Steve Jobs

Sometimes, you think you have to figure out your life's purpose, but you really just need some macadamia nuts and a cold fucking shower.

Out of clutter, find simplicity. —Albert Einstein

What would this look like if it were easy?

What would this look like if it were easy? "This" could be anything. That morning, it was answering a laundry list of big questions. What would this look like if it were easy? is such a lovely and deceptively leveraged question. It's easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you're not redlining, you're not trying hard enough. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, often creating unnecessary hardship in the process.

There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do. —BILL WATTERSON,

Before spending time on a stress-inducing question or problem, consider this: If you can't define it or act upon it, forget it.

This is very similar to Derek Sivers's (page 184) "Don't be a donkey" rule. In a world of distraction, single-tasking is a superpower.

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why? I would not have a billboard, and I would take down every billboard that everybody else has put up.

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?" —SENECA