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The great Green Bay Packer’s football coach Vince Lombardi was once asked why his world championship team, which had so many multitalented players, ran such a simple set of plays. “It’s hard to be aggressive when you’re confused,” he said.
One of the benefits of creatively planning your life is that it allows you to simplify. You can weed out, delegate, and eliminate all activities that don’t contribute to your projected goals. Another effective way to simplify your life is to combine your tasks. Combining allows you to achieve two or more objectives at once.
Creatively Planning Your Day
As I plan my day, I might notice that I need to shop for my family after work. That’s a task I can’t avoid because we’re running out of everything. I also note that one of my goals is to finish reading my daughter Stephanie’s book reports. I realize, too, that I’ve made a decision to spend more time doing things with all my kids, as I’ve tended lately to just come home and crash at the end of a long day.
An aggressive orientation to the day—making each day simpler and stronger than the day before—allows you to look at all of these tasks and small goals and ask yourself, “What can I combine?” (Creativity is really little more than making unexpected combinations, in music, architecture— anything, including your day.)
After some thought, I realize that I can combine shopping with doing something with my children. (That looks obvious and easy, but I can’t count the times I mindlessly go shopping, or do things on my own just to get them done, and then run out of time to play with the kids.)
I also think a little further and remember that the grocery store where we shop has a little deli with tables in it. My kids love to make lists and go up and down the aisles themselves to fill the grocery cart, so I decide to read my daughter’s book reports at the deli while they travel the aisles for food. They see where I’m sitting, and keep coming over to update me on what they are choosing. After an hour or so, three things have happened at once: 1) I’ve done something with the kids; 2) I’ve read through the book reports; and 3) the shopping has been completed.
Handle Everything Immediately
In her book Brain Building in Just 12 Weeks, Marilyn Vos Savant recommends something similar to simplify life. She advises that we make a list of absolutely every small task that has to be done, say, over the weekend, and then do them all at once, in one exciting, focused action. A manic blitz. In other words, fuse all small tasks together and make the doing of them one task so that the rest of the weekend is absolutely free to create as we wish.
Bob Koether, who was the president of Infincom, had the most simplified time management system I’ve ever seen in my life. His method was: do everything right on the spot—don’t put anything unnecessarily into your future. Do it now, so that the future is always wide open. Watching him in action was always an experience.
I was sitting in his office and I mentioned the name of a person whose company I wanted to take my training to in the future.
"Will you make a note to get in touch with him and let him know I’ll be calling?” I asked.
“Make a note?” he asked in horror.
The next thing I knew, before I could say anything, Bob was wheeling in his chair, and dialing the person on the phone. Within two minutes, he’d scheduled a meeting between the person and me, and after he put down the phone he said, “Okay, done! What’s next?”
I told him I had prepared the report he wanted on training for his service teams and I handed it to him.
“You can read it later and get back to me,” I offered.
“Hold on a second,” he said, already deeply absorbed in reading the report’s content. After ten minutes or so, during which time he read aloud much of what interested him, the report had been digested, discussed, and filed.
It was a time management system like no other. What would you call it? Perhaps, Handle Everything Immediately. It kept Bob’s life simple. He was an aggressive and successful CEO, and, as Vince Lombardi said, “It’s hard to be aggressive when you’re confused.”
Creativity is Simplicity
Most people are reluctant to see themselves as being creative because they associate creativity with complexity. But creativity is simplicity. Michelangelo said that he could actually see his masterpiece, The David, in the huge, rough rock he discovered in a marble quarry. His only job, he said, was to carve away what wasn’t necessary and he would have his statue. Achieving simplicity in our cluttered and hectic lives is also an ongoing process of carving away what’s unnecessary.
My most dramatic experience of the power of simplicity occurred when I was hired to help write the television and radio advertisements for Jim Kolbe, a candidate for United States Congress at the time running in Arizona’s Fifth District. In that campaign, I saw firsthand how focus, purpose, and simplicity can work together to create a great result.
Based on prior political history, Kolbe had about a 3 percent chance of winning the election. His opponent was a popular incumbent congressman, during a time when incumbents were almost never defeated by challengers. In addition, Kolbe was a Republican in a largely Democratic district. And the final strike against him was that he had tried once before to defeat this same man, Jim McNulty, and had lost. The voters had already spoken on the issue.
Kolbe himself supplied the campaign with its sense of purpose. A tireless campaigner with unwavering principles, he emanated his sense of mission and we all drew energy from him. Political consultant Joe Shumate, one of the shrewdest people I’ve ever worked with, kept us all focused with consistent campaign strategy. It was the job of the advertising and media work to keep it strong and simple.
Although our opponent ran nearly fifteen different TV ads, each one about a different issue, we determined from the outset that we would stick to the same message throughout, from the first ad to the last. We basically ran the same ad over and over.
We knew that although the district was largely Democratic, our polling showed that philosophically it was more conservative. Kolbe himself was conservative, so his views coincided with the voters’ better than our opponent’s did, although the voters weren’t yet aware of it. Each of our ads focused on our simple theme: who better represents you? This allowed us to gain rapidly in the polls as election night neared.
Simpler is Stronger
The night-long celebration of Jim Kolbe’s upset victory brought a huge message home to me: the simpler you keep it, the stronger it gets. Kolbe won a close victory that night, but he served eleven terms and then became an Obama appointee. He has never complicated his message, and he has kept his politics strong and simple, even when it looked unpopular to do so.
It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re confused. When you simplify your life, it gathers focus. The more you can focus your life, the more motivated it gets.
Copyright ©2023. All Rights Reserved.
Adapted, and reprinted with permission from Career Press.
Article Source:
This Book Will Motivate You: 100 Ways to Kick-Start Your Life Goals
by Steve Chandler
This Book Will Motivate You will help you break through the negative barriers and banish the pessimistic thoughts that are preventing you from fulfilling your lifelong goals and dreams. This edition also contains mental and spiritual techniques that give readers more immediate access to action and results in their lives.
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About the Author
Steve Chandler has trained more than thirty Fortune 500 companies in communication, personal motivation, and leadership. He has been a guest faculty member at the University of Santa Monica, teaching their Soul-Centered Professional Coaching program.
Steve has authored more than two dozen books that have been translated into more than twenty-five foreign language editions, including the bestselling 100 Ways to Motivate Others, The Prosperous Coach, and Reinventing Yourself. He is also the founder of the Coaching Prosperity School, which for more than a decade has taught and trained life and business coaches from around the world.
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