How to remove complexity from your life and work

Or cultivate the practice of simple thinking

Photo by John Barkiple on Unsplash

A while ago I read a brilliant book called simple thinking by Richard Gerver. It encapsulated a few principles for the reader to chew on. Principles that take the complexity that surrounds and invades our lives, and thoughts, and shines the light of clarity in a way that gives you an ah-ha moment.

Would a child of five understand this?

My friend at work once said to me that I must be a professor and I must be earning a lot of money. He explained that I must be a professor because I seemed to know all the answers not only to his but the salesman and the project managers' questions too. I replied that I had worked in this industry and with this technology for many years, and there wasn’t much that was new here. The connection between being a professor and earning a lot of money was much harder to fathom.

In my mind, there was no connection. But in his, there was. He explained that if I knew so much I must know the way to make a lot of money. Sadly, I didn’t. In fact, I explained to him that he is more likely to succeed because he had a more simplistic knowledge of everything we were doing at the time. I noticed how he understood what he was learning, almost in a child-like way. He…