The Power of Simplicity | Find Focus in a Complex World

In a world where distractions are only one click away, it seems like we will never be able to fully commit and focus on an objective. It is so easy now to become distracted and to stay in the consuming wheel. I have experienced this many times before. That is why we need the power of simplicity the most right now.

With simplicity I mean cutting off the unimportant parts of your life, like scrolling on social media, binge watching and checking emails, to focus on the things that are the most important in your life. It means that to you create more alignment in your life and are able to enjoy your life more. But it is a slow and hard process, because distractions are everywhere. It is so easy to consume content on social media, to watch television or to consume so much information that you experience information overload.

The thing is, you might feel that you are learning something new, or that you are progressing, but you are actually postponing your work. Sometimes it is good to learn something new, but when you keep scrolling for four or five hours a day, you are just filling your head with unnecessary information. You need way less information than you are consuming right now, and you just need to start building yourself. You need to start creating yourself.

The Power of Simplicity | The key is not doing more, it is creating alignment

The most common pitfall in life is to think that you need to be more productive and do more things, when in reality, you just need to do the things that bring you closer to alignment. This means that you need to find out where you are naturally good at, and what you enjoy doing the most. When you know what you love doing the most, you need to cut off the other parts of your life that are distracting you. For example, if you are a creative type, you need to make time for creating things and cut off all of the distractions that keep you from the creation process.

You need to find a way to prioritize creating and a way to do it for a living to create alignment. You need to incorporate more deep focus routines, where you focus on one thing at a time, and ignore all of the distractions. This also means, that you should eliminate distractions. This could be;

• Deleting social media apps and reducing screen time to one hour a day

• Decluttering your room for more focus on your projects

• Use a physical agenda to plan your week and daily to-do list

You need to realize that you learn by doing. You are not learning by consuming content or reading books. While those things can be a great starting point, it is very easy to get lost in consuming without taking any action. Whenever you are consuming something, let it be something to relax, like a fantasy book or a great story. You need to realize that real progress comes from doing and creating. Every time you are creating something, you are giving a new direction to your life and you are building your new identity.

The Present Moment is your Biggest Friend

Everything happens in the present moment. When you realize that you only have this moment, you know that you should take action immediately. You can not wait until next year to work on your goals. You need a way to remove all of the excess distractions from your life and to be at ease with the present moment. It can be found in many things, like meditation, walking, painting or making music. When you live more in the present moment, you have more clarity and are better able to direct your life.

Everyday you sit in silence, you have a moment to reflect on your actions, and to see your life from a helicopter view. It will automatically push you in the right direction. But you still need to take action. Action and the present moment go hand in hand. The reason that the present moment is so important, is because simplicity can always be found in it. In the present moment, you don’t think about things that happened in the past, or could happen in the future. Your mind is free.

Prioritize your Peace and Purpose

Now it is more important than ever to respect your peace and your purpose. Because there is so much information available, it is so easy to feel lost. More information isn’t always the answer. You need more peace of mind and a clear purpose to strive for. Nobody can tell you what you need to do, because you have to create your own path. Your own path is unique, so it is useless to consume more information. You need to be selective on what you consume. The information you consume should complement your path and your purpose. If it is not helping you on your journey, you should stop consuming it. To prioritize your peace and purpose, you need to:

• Leave your phone in another room as much as possible

• Implement a deep focus routine in your day, focus on one thing for an hour or more

• Whenever you feel overwhelmed, sit in silence or write down your thoughts in a journal

You need to think of your mind as a garden. It is very easy to let the garden be overgrown by information. That is why you need to take care of your mind, just as much as you do with your body. For your body, you need to have a healthy diet and exercise regularly. For your mind, you need to meditate and fill it with useful information without overloading it.

Narrow your Focus down

You can not do everything at once. Success comes when you stick to building one thing and do it long enough to see results. That does not mean that you can not change what you are doing, it means that you have to build more patience and focus on one thing for a longer time. Success does not come overnight. It is a very long game, and the ones that quit early will never experience the success that comes with endurance. In order to bring more simplicity to your life, you need to stop chasing shiny objects and build something that is sustainable.

You need to have a vision of where you are going, and do everything you can to make that vision come true. But you can obviously combine multiple interests into that thing you are building. Life becomes simpler when you know what you desire and when you act by intention. For many years, I have felt lost and did not know what to do, because I consumed all of this content from people telling me which business model to start and how to become successful. But in reality, I could only find out what works for me by taking action and working on a project. I became stuck in analysis paralysis, and it was not bringing me anywhere.

The Science behind Simplicity

Like a computer with finite RAM memory, the mind and its working memory has limited capacity. When we overwhelm this system, performance degrades dramatically. That is why it is so important to focus and to eliminate distractions as much as possible. When your environment, goals or daily routine are very complex, you are using valuable cognitive resources and overwhelming your system. This could be things like notifications from your phone, deciding what to wear from 50 options or working on 20 different goals all at once. Practical implications of simplicity are:

• Steve Jobs wore the same outfit daily to reduce decision fatigue

• Successful people often have highly simplified morning routines

• Clear, uncluttered workspaces improve cognitive performance by 12-15%

When your environment is complex, your brain’s DMN – responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thinking – becomes hyperactive. Simplified environments allow the DMN to settle, enabling what neuroscientists call “focused attention networks”. You may have noticed that when you are working on something in a simplified environment, you are far better to focus without getting distracted. If you can create a room in your house with minimal distractions, you have build a place of deep focus and simplicity. This is called the Attention Restoration Theory:

• Natural, simple environments restore directed attention capacity

• Urban complexity causes “directed attention fatigue”

• Even looking at simple nature scenes for 40 seconds improves subsequent focus by 20%

This is why walking in nature is also very powerful. You are in a peaceful environment without distractions and you feel connected to the world around you.

Deeper Philosophical Elements

Too many options can paralyze rather than liberate. This is called the paradox of choice. If you want to learn something new, showing ten different ways to learn that thing will only make you confused. Increased options lead to:

• Decision Paralysis; people facing too many choices often choose nothing at all

• Decreased Satisfaction; the fear that a better option exists elsewhere creates perpetual dissatisfaction

• Escalation of Expectations; More choices raise our expectations about outcomes

On social media platforms, you have so many options to consume, and so many options to learn from, that it becomes very easy to do nothing at all. By consciously limiting your options in non-essential areas (clothing, entertainment, career paths), you free cognitive resources for decisions that truly matter.

That is why you need to only focus on things that you can control (thoughts, actions, responses), deliberately choosing simpler options to build resilience and regularly imagine losing what you have to appreciate simplicity. Every day we are facing more and more distractions and options to choose from, as our society develops further. But that means that you have to take action and avoid as many unimportant decisions and choices as possible, to live a simpler life, and to free more cognitive space.

Simplicity is a practice rather than a destination. It requires ongoing conscious choice to resist complexity’s gravitational pull while building systems that make the simple path sustainable. wherever you can, create as much space and room for yourself to live a simpler life. This could be simplifying your living room or workspace, building a more streamlined business, or sticking to some core principles that drive you like your health, wealth, relationships and creative expression.

I hope you found this article inspirational. If you would like to receive more content like this, subscribe to my newsletter, to receive thoughtful content every week.

Also check out this article, if you want to build a life where you can start doing things you love and create alignment.

I hope you have a simple, peaceful day,

Mart Bergsma

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