Hey Reader! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻

As this email is going out, I am likely laying on a beach in Punta Cana. My wife’s cousin is getting married, and we decided to join them to celebrate, as well as to enjoy some sun, sand, and quality time together. 🌴☀️

I hope you’re doing well, taking care of yourself and living your best life.

I suspect you’re guilty of something: over-complication. Most of us are, and it costs us dearly.

Let’s explore a powerful question that has the power to completely change your world, if you keep asking it to yourself and then acting on your response.

Let’s go!

Tim

A Powerful Question That Just Might Change Everything

You’re capable of more in your life than you’re currently doing. You know it too, but you’re likely hiding from it. Because hiding from it feels safer.

And where exactly are you likely hiding? In complexity.

The smartest people in the world aren’t the ones that speak with 12-letter long words that no one’s heard of; they’re the geniuses that can communicate an idea in a very simple form.

This is true in all domains of life. Simplicity matters.

I’m sure you’ve found yourself knee-deep in a problem, feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of it all. And I’m not even mentioning the other 5 problems you’ll need to deal with next. In today’s age, with constant distraction and a deluge of information, it is easy to get lost in the complexity of it all. Everything feels hard.

When you feel things are getting complicated, it’s time to take a step back. Time to simplify.

The popular author and podcaster Tim Ferriss is a huge believer in the power of questions, and I have to agree with him on that front. He proposes asking yourself the following question:

“What would this look like if it were easy?”

That’s a brilliant question to ask yourself when you feel yourself getting bogged down by work.

I was reminded of this recently. It seemed our hot tub had sprung a leak somewhere. I had topped it up with fresh water as I noticed it was low, and only a couple of days later, the water level was substantially down again. Something was obviously wrong, although I couldn’t see water leaking anywhere. I turned the hot tub off for a couple of days until I had a chance to look into it. Later that week, I pulled the side covers off and fired the hot tub back up. It was easy to spot the leak; there was a lot of water coming out where the pump and the heater joined.

Now that I knew what the problem was, I had to figure out how to fix it. Or decide if I should just call in the hot tub repair guy.

In looking at where it was leaking, I could see that I would need to shut down some valves before trying to fix it. Of course, one valve was seized. So I’d need to figure that out. On top of that, I was looking at the tangled mess of plumbing and hoses underneath the hot tub, and trying to determine how many of them I was going to need to unhook to properly get to the spot where the leak was occurring. It was quickly getting complicated.

I decided to just try getting a big pipe wrench on the leaky connection and twist it, not expecting it to do anything at all. It looked like it would be seized too, and there wasn’t really much room for me to get the wrench on it anyway. To my surprise, I could easily turn it with the wrench. Only a bit at a time (as there was so little room), but I could turn it nonetheless. So I spent a few minutes fighting with the wrench and tightened the coupling up nice and tight. I then turned the tub back on – and no more leak!

The fix was simple. I’d immediately gone to “worse-case scenario” in my mind and was ready to rip half the hot tub apart. Instead, I put everything back in order in under ten minutes.

I hear you wondering right now, “why the hell should I care about your experience with your hot tub Tim?”. Fair enough.

But the reason I shared the story is that this is something we all do, all too often. We assume the worst case and make things hard, when it might just be simple. Often, the simplest approach is the best approach.

We think that just because the world is complicated, the work that we do needs to be complicated. The reverse is true; it is doing the simple things well and consistently that produce the best results.

Sahil Bloom recently shared a Zen parable in his newsletter that applies to this thinking:

A martial arts student approaches his teacher and asks, “How long will it take me to master this craft?”.

The teacher replies, “10 years.”

The student, looking impatient, responds, “I want to master it faster than that. I will work harder than anyone else. I will push myself to practice for many hours every single day. I won’t rest until I become a master. How long will it take then?”.

The teacher considers this new information, smiles, and answers, “20 years.”

Sometimes you make things worse by putting too much energy in, by making it harder than it needs to be.

Where in your life are you doing over-complicating things?

You can improve the quality of your life by asking higher quality questions of yourself. A great one to start with is the one that Tim Ferriss shared, and the theme of this week’s article; “What would this look like if it were easy?”.

That’s my challenge for you for this week; take one of your tasks and make it easy.

Let me know how you make out!

Quotation that I’ve been pondering

The quote I’ve had on my mind recently comes from the creative genius Pablo Picasso:

“There is only one way to look at things until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes.”

I love that idea. That we can learn how to look at things differently. Once you understand that to be true, you’re free to choose to interpret things as you see fit. That is such an incredible source of power.

Journal prompt

We all experience failure, that’s just part of the game of life. The important thing with any failure is what you learn from it. Which leads to this week’s prompt:

“What’s a lesson I’ve learned from a difficult experience?”

Reflecting on what you’ve learned can provide a sense of meaning to the experience. Rather than looking at it through a negative lens, you can choose to look at it as a useful learning experience. The important thing is to learn from these challenges, and then to apply the lessons you’ve learnt.