Saturday, August 19, 2006

Simplicity can Make It Great!

My name is Phil Gerbyshak, and as you may know, Trevor is on vacation, so you're reading the 3rd of his friends sharing their ideas on Simplicity. Thanks to Steve and Troy for setting the bar high with their previous posts. I'm aiming for greatness, and I hope I hit it with this post.

First, to define simplicity. Simplicity is the opposite of complexity; that is, anything that's unnecessary is extracted, and you're left with only what is absolutely important. An attitude of simplicity is one that you say only what's really important, you don't mince words, and you just say what's in your heart.

Now to define Make It Great! Make it Great is to create something, anything, that's better than others settle for. If you "Make It Great!" you don't settle for "good enough."

Make sense? Now just reading those definitions, you may be wondering how simplicity can help you Make It Great! or wondering if I am just trying to tie 2 completely unrelated concepts together, for the sake of argument.

Here's how simplicity can help you Make It Great! in just 15 short minutes, using only a pad of paper and a pen.

Take the time to define your greatness. Right here and now, write down everything that's important to you. Write for 10 minutes, and put everything down. Put your pen and notepad down, and take the next 3 minutes to circle everything on the list that you can't live without. For the next 2 minutes, write everything on the list that you said you can't live without, thinking quickly about whether or not you really REALLY need it and can't live without it.

Time's up.

Look at your list of items. This is your Make It Great! Simplicity list. This is what you should be working on for the rest of your life. Find new ways to work these things into your life. Right here, right now. And enjoy the simplicity of it all.

Phil Gerbyshak

Phil Gerbyshak thanks Trevor Gay for the opportunity to share his message with the readers of Simplicity! For more of Phil's message, stop over to Make It Great! anytime. Phil challenges you to stop having a nice day...and Make it Great!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't say that it's the power of simplicity that makes it great in this context. It's the power of FOCUS.

The most important thing is to have ONE major thing in life that you focus on and a couple of secondary things. Lots of stuff makes you mediocre in a lot of areas and who wants that?

Another thing you could add to that list is PRIORITY. This is very important when it comes to making crucial decisions...

Family vs career, employee vs business owner...Only if you know the priority of your needs can you make these decision wothout fearing regret later...

Anyway, nice post...