Keeping Things Simple
You see everyday, how minimal the homepage of google.com is. Just a search bar in the middle surrounded by white space. Bing also have a similar design instead of white space they have a photo. Even there own services are hidden in a small hamburger menu in a corner.
The Fonts used by all the big companies have changed from serif to sans(without) serif.
Our health has an adverse affect on it, if we don’t keep our clothing simple.
Shoes with cushioning in the heel changes our walking pattern. Naturally we were designed to land on the foot rather than the heel. So this change leads to issues in other joints of the body like knee, hip and lower back.
Also we loose lot of sensitivity that we have in our foots by using more supportive shoes.1
For example in an advertisement, one could communicate only the most important point or he could give more information to the prospective buyers at the expense of reducing the chance for the main point to be remembered by the audience.
People complicate their decision making by not choosing the easiest path that was in front of them all the time.
Many businesses have started as a hobby of the owner.
One excels in a venture when he finds it easy.
80/20/500 Rule
80/20 principle states that 80% of the results or outcomes come from only 20% of the effort.2
If a person writes a report of 1000 words in 1 hour, then he can write it in 12 mins (60*0.2), just as good if he focuses on only the most important stuff. And leave out the less important stuff. Maybe even better as less chance for the reader to skip the important points discuss as the report is shorter.
This increases the productivity by 500% as he can do 5 works in the same amount of time as it took him to complete one task in the past.
Some successful businesses, like when Lululemon started, did not run traditional advertising but instead preferred to let the business to be known through the word of mouth of their customers only. Not only this option has no financial burden but it helped the brand to be seen as original and authentic. People, believe that only businesses whose products are sub par have to lean on advertising to sell their products.
Those who excel in their academic studies spend less time studying compared to their peers.
As one's ability to do deep work diminishes if he is bored, tired and not giving himself treats at the end of achieving some goals.
Also diffuse mode is also needed for understanding to occur. Focus mode is when we are actively trying to think and solve a problem. While diffuse mode is when we move our attention away from the problem and are thinking about something else entirely.
Try to work less
Lot of innovations come from the desire to work less.
With more time and energy on our hands we could invest that in other important areas that we previously neglected.
Like rather than doing the work in the business, we could work on the business. Helping it to grow and become more profitable.
So we should search for tools and processes to reduce the time and energy it takes to do our work. Like freelancers services and AI to get the repetitive tasks done.
Tim Ferris in his book 4 hour work week, shares many tips on automating a business.3
Conclusion
Less is more because:
Life becomes easy, products become simpler, tasks becomes doable.
Scarce resources are utilized for the maximum possible potential that they hold.
Businesses starts to grow exponentially, customers start enjoying the products, workers get more productive
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/shoes/