You Think This Is So Simple?

Attending a recent seminar, the speaker, Darren Hardy related a story where he went to meet a successful man that had just turned 100.  He asked him in advance to write out a bunch of points and paragraphs to explain how he was able to reach this great point in his life in preparation for their discussion.  When they sat down to speak, expecting a volume of pages to greet him, Darren received a single sheet of paper.  Dumbfounded, he asked why so little? The man explained that not being well educated as a lad; he always had to take the simplest route to achieve his goals.  The point of the story was that when presented with something simple, we tend to nod our head then go and find the most difficult way to achieve the same ends. 

If you have worked with programmers, there are those that tend to write direct code that achieves the applications goals in the simplest manner.  There are other programmers, that will achieve the same outcomes, but tend to write code with, shall I say, more finesse leading to more lines of code and the process more complex.  For whatever reason, this seems to be part of our human nature.  I remember reading the comic strip Family Circus growing up, which demonstrated this attribute every so often as follows:

Variations of this cartoon were repeated every so often, where the quick, easy and direct path was forgone for the more adventurous one. 

For a time, I was involved with one of the top 20 network marketing companies.  When you join, you pay a fee that provides you an ID, authorization to sell products and the methodology.  Basically, you have purchased a license to be part of a company’s distribution network.  The methodology that you buy is simple, but not easy.  Simple, because the business model has few steps - talk to people, invite them to a meeting (pick up the phone), have someone present the opportunity, sign them up, teach them, repeat the process.  The steps outlined do not take a rocket scientist to follow.  However, we tend to get in the way of ourselves.  I made lists, I spent time thinking about the products…like the cartoon above, instead of walking out to the curb, I followed Billy’s path – I over complicated the process, got frustrated and, in the end, failed.

Jim Rohn stated it best when he said, “That which is easy to do, is also easy not to do.”  It must be part of being human, and having this wonderful organ called a brain.  It helps to set us above all of the other living entities on this planet.  Given the ability for free will and thought, we feel that we must constantly analyze everything.  Even when presented by a path successfully taken by others, laid out in simple steps, we tend to think we can improve on it.  Here’s to moving towards finding the simple ways to accomplish our goals.  

Meeting Darren Hardy