Simplify

When I was in college, I concentrated in American Literature as the focus of my English major.  One of my favorite authors was and is Henry David Thoreau.  I got to thinking about one of his quotes this morning and I think it’s one that is as meaningful as when Walden was written over 150 years ago (1854!).Thoreau wrote:

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

I got to thinking about this because as the economic news continues to be grim in many (OK, most) sectors, I see a number of companies adopting Thoreau’s excellent advice.  They’re reducing operations in non-core businesses and focusing whatever resources they have on what made them successful in the first place.   In an age when the fire hose of information soaks each of us all the time, it’s easy to get confused and off track.  Thoreau’s comment would be that people are too easily fascinated by trivialities:

Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What’s the news?”

Even though the above is under 140 characters, somehow I don’t see Thoreau tweeting it to his friends.

One of the things I work on with my clients is to keep on track and put everything they’re doing into the context that got them there.  If the mantra is to do “A”, let’s make sure that everything we do relates to it.  If not, time to simplify.