3 Ways KISing Is Productive
National Simplicity Day is July 12, and most successful (and productive) business owners would agree that Keeping It Simple … is simply smart.
We all have complex lives - the modern world has made sure of that - and the last thing most American adults need is more complexity. Yet simplicity isn’t really a sexy word, or a sexy concept either.
People think of simple as boring. Or unintelligent, or lame, or unexciting, or whatever.
When it comes to your brain and the modern world though, keeping it pared down can make you more productive. Simplicity is just avoiding any unnecessary complexity.
Keeping it simple (KIS) promotes prioritizing … and productivity
Having a lot of things going on is distracting, and prevents you from concentrating on any one thing. Imagine you’re juggling a number of plates. The fewer you have, the more you can concentrate on each one - and the less likely you are to drop one. But when you’ve already got a lot, adding even just a few more plates means less focus on each.
If you’re an entrepreneur, wouldn’t you agree that businesses require a lot of attention? There are a lot of different aspects that you need to look at: marketing, financials, operations, etc. The more complex any one area is, the more you need to pay attention to it.
The human brain has a limited amount of focus time on any given day, which means that you can’t do everything. That means there are tradeoffs to be made. You’ve got to pick the business aspects that give you the most advantage, which leads to setting priorities.
If you have a ton of so-called priorities, not only can you not get to them all, but you end up spending less time on any one of them. (Can you even call them priorities when everything “must” get done?)
You might even decide to work on a relatively unnecessary task just because you’re desperate to cross an item off your to-do list. Even if it wastes time that would have been better spent on something that moves your business forward.
Keeping it simple means fewer priorities to accomplish because you’re trying to maximize the bang for your buck - the 80% of success that’s caused by 20% of the effort.
Energy “hits different” when it comes to productivity
I know no one really likes to think about it, but we each have finite time on this earth. (Take all the time you need with this one.) There are other things that are important besides work (yes, even if you’re curing cancer at your job): playtime, recharging, hobbies and movement (exercise), time with friends and fam.
By now you know that multitasking a) isn’t even a real thing and b) is bad for your brain. The human brain doesn't like to bounce back and forth between different tasks; it’s tiring. If you spend all day boomeranging between different tasks and being busy instead of productive, you’re squandering energy you could have been using on tasks that need focus.
And all that boomeranging is exhausting, so you’re too tired at the end of the workday to do fun things. Complexity (especially in jobs and technology) is tiring too because of the demands it makes on the brain.
But when you KIS, you give yourself more energy to do the important things. You don’t have so many (unnecessary) tasks that drain your brain but don’t move you forward.
Gives you more time for the good stuff
When you save time at work by maximizing your energy and working only on your priorities, you don’t have to spend a 14-hour day at the office.
You can go home at a reasonable hour and do all the things that your brain needs you to do but the modern world fights you on. Time to spend with the people (and pets) you love. Time to enjoy your hobbies, or exercise in a way that feels good to you, or any of the other things that refresh your brain.
Even though you’re not cramming through another hour at work, this time off work actually makes you more productive when you’re back in the office - home or otherwise. You drain your brain’s productivity tank when you try to power through without rest, or skip brain-recharging activities like games and hobbies, or spend so long writing emails late at night that no sane person will read until the morning.
Complexity sounds sexy, but it interferes with your ability to have a life that you enjoy.
Recap:
Keeping it simple allows you to focus only on your priorities, maximize the time you have energetically, and gives you more time to enjoy the life part of the work-life balance. The end result? Making you more productive too.