Thursday, January 08, 2009

The Power of Less

It may just be me but I detect a shift by some, me included, towards simplicity or leaning towards a minimalist approach to life and work. Along this line, check out Leo Babauta’s blog called Zen Habits and his new book The Power of Less.

Over at Tim Ferriss’s Blog, author of the popular “The 4-Hour Workweek”, Tim posts some interesting comments about the Power of Less and developing new habits. There are a few strong ties to 5S, standard work, etc in these lean-like thoughts.

It also sounds pretty close to Ben Franklin’s method in his quest to master thirteen virtues. Instead of trying to master each virtue all at the same time, he focused on only one virtue each week.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

With the focused learning aspect, I've noticed when I try to learn too much at once I spend all of my time going over information, but nothing actually sticks. When I focus on one aspect until I get it - the information sticks, and is USED while learning the next aspect.

As far as living less - when you start to shed all the things and must - do's you find all the things truely worth living for. I guess it's like having too much inventory hiding other forms of waste.

Anonymous said...

I agree many of us have too much stuff. There are many reasons to eliminate unnecessary complexity. it may be hard to change your focus but I think in the long run, focusing on the most important things and eliminating less important things will lead to better results.

cad said...

Moving stuff around for more stuff is my bane at work and at home. But often that just crashes into reality. When I questioned my wife why we have over 90 cups and glasses for a family of 4 I was in the dog house for a week.

Evan J Miller said...

Amazing to see simplicity entering the mainstream, but I agree that it is happening. Great post.

This post and others like it are why I've listed your blog in my "Best of the Lean Blogosphere" at http://www.hertzler.com/blog/dataheads/index.php/2009/02/best-of-the-kaizen-blogosphere/