“You Can Do Anything, But Not Everything.” David Allen
The Danish Landscape Architect Helle Nebelong is a designer of natural play areas. She makes spaces with willow, logs, rocks, water, plants and sand in the belief that traditional play spaces with brightly coloured rubber, plastic and metal can over-stimulate children. Having bright colours everywhere in children’s lives is the visual equivalent of turning the radio on in a kindergarten very loud, all the time.
Bright colours in nature are found in flowers, berries, fruits and vegetables. They take up little space, and she argues that this is how the colour ratio should be in other environments, both in outdoor spaces and indoor spaces. As human beings, we are designed to live in and respond to nature, but are instead designing environments that are incredibly un-natural.
As we grow into adults we remain over-stimulated by bright colours, images, adverts, lights and videos, but also overflowing to do lists, emails, tweets, requests, whatsapp messages and other notifications. It only takes 20 minutes of these interruptions for us to feel significantly more stress, pressure, and frustration¹, and the ability for us to focus and concentrate on deep and meaningful work has become increasingly difficult.
And yet the key to achieving more in such a distracting environment is beautifully simple — it is to do less. To say yes to less things. To throw things away. To delete items from your to-do lists. In saying no and reducing your list of actions, you will automatically increase your focus on what really matters.
Saying no to 1,000 things
One of the reasons Steve Jobs gives for Apple’s success as a company was its ability to have laser sharp focus and concentrate on producing a select few products incredibly well. As he put it:
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” Steve Jobs ²
Warren Buffett and his pilot
Mike Flint was Warren Buffett’s personal airplane pilot for 10 years. Flint had flown for 4 different U.S. Presidents before, yet he still felt as though he hadn’t achieved all of the career and life goals that he wanted to. One day Buffett jokingly says to Flint: “The fact that you’re still working for me tells me I’m not doing my job. You should be out going after more of your goals and dreams.”
Buffett then reportedly told Flint to go through this 3-step exercise:
STEP 1: List 25 goals and things you want to accomplish in the next five years or in your lifetime. Who do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you want to have?
STEP 2: Review the 25 items you just listed and circle the top five that matter the most to you.
STEP 3: Focus on the top five, and eliminate the remaining 20. The remaining 20 become your ‘avoid at all costs’ list, as if you spend any time on them they will draw valuable energy away from achieving your top five priorities³.
Decluttering your mind and home
Once you develop the habit of saying no, reducing your to do list and increasing your focus, you may want to extend your decluttering to the home. There is no better guide to doing this than Marie Kondo’s ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying’. In this, Kondo advocates getting rid of anything you own that fails to bring you joy. Having a clear, clean and tidy environment can help inspire more focus in your work. As you then say no to more things and focus on what’s important, you may even discover more spare time for play…
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all”. Peter Drucker
