Welcome to The Weekly Simplifier, brought to you by…

Contents:

1. A Note From Shawn
2. Quote of the Week
3. Article: Grow Your Business Like a Tree
4. This Week’s Simplification Tip
5. In the News & On the Web
6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com
7. Keep Smiling

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1. A Note From Shawn

Greetings!

If it seems the newsletter has been wandering through the days of the week a bit, well, it has. We tried Monday and then Tuesday, before settling on Wednesday. And Wednesday it is. “Hump Day!” my 7th grade history teacher used to say (long before I knew that was an old office mantra), as well as “hope for the best and expect the worst” (long before I knew this was an old stock market mantra). He also used to say, “Life is a bowl of cherries: full of pits, sour to make you pucker, brown & bruised, and occasionally sweet.”

I’m not sure where he got his proverbial bowl of fruit, but Lance and I picked out the sweet ones for you. Enjoy!

Shawn Tuttle
Head Simplifier, Project Simplify

2. Quote of the Week

“Experts agree that the notion of a quality ‘trade-off’ is ridiculous; quality improvement, invariably the result of simplification, leads to enormous cost reductions.”

-Tom Peters

3. Article: Grow Your Business Like a Tree

by Shawn Tuttle

Our yoga instructor read author and doctor Christiane Northrup’s quote to us one morning: “Balance: You have your foot on the gas when you need to, but you also know when to put on the brake.” I liked the active feeling of this observation—that balance isn’t a singular, ultimate goal but an ongoing dance.

Soon after, driving down a rural country road, I was struck by the beautiful shapes of the oaks. These trees are massive, unevenly shaped, and beautifully proportioned. They definitely had never been pruned.

I pulled off the road and got out of the car for a better look. Long branches reached out from the main trunk. They were bare, except for knobby bark, until the ends where all the leaves clumped. Each leaf received the amount of sunlight it needed to live—wouldn’t have grown otherwise.

Here was another perspective of balance–a leaf supporting the health of its tree and receiving all the sun and nutrients it needs to flourish. What I particularly like about this concept of balance is the relation of the individual to the whole.

This can be applied to the business, and thus the questions arise: Does my business contribute to the health of the whole? Is my business poised in a place that can easily receive sunlight and nourishment?

I want to grow my business like a tree: seemingly effortlessly, consuming the right amount of time and energy, not an excessive or wasteful amount. I want to be in the place right for me—one look at the apple tree in my front yard shows how important this is. This poor tree has been “pruned” (read: hacked) over the years to maintain an appropriate size for its urban location. It now looks like some weird mutant organism intent on life against all odds. I have to admire its tenacity…

Everyone who passes this stunted apple tree is affected by the shortsighted choice of this tree for this location. I know I’ve spent considerable time contemplating this tree—how to give it a little more organic shape, should it just come out? And in sharp contrast to the magnificent oaks on that rural road that made me sigh in appreciation, my “little” apple tree gives me a small jolt of “something’s not right here.”

There are lessons to be learned from nature—none of which am I going to postulate here. Rather I suggest an exercise. First, the assumptions:

• We humans repeat patterns, good or bad.

• We can change our patterns.

• Changing patterns is a more complicated affair than our conscious minds can comprehend.

Now, the exercise:

Go for a walk in nature. Stop when you see a tree that looks particularly, and naturally, beautiful and balanced to you. Relax your forehead and let your brain take a break. State that you want the balance of this tree to be your balance. Appreciate and enjoy the moment. Over time, your patterns will be affected by your chosen tree. For more lasting impact, recall the memory often (or better yet go back and visit often!)

Nature acts with a kind of knowledge that is uncluttered by the umpteen-million things we have loaded into our minds (and hearts, and spirits). And while a tree may not know how to send an email or attract more clients, it “knows” how to grow—naturally, and with such success as to inspire awe in we humans (or at least this human!) What better source of learning about growth than from the tallest living things on the planet?

—-

Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify

4. This Week’s Simplification Tip

How to Deal with Magazines

I’ve just read through another great issue of the Toastmasters monthly magazine. Is the magazine going to sit on my desk until I write my next speech so that I can use it for reference?

Correct answer: No.

What if I want to reference one of these articles, in say 6 months? Like the one by David Garfinkel, called “Persuasive Speaking How to talk your audience into a whole new point of view”?

Here’s a 3-step way to handle magazines that are worth saving “just in case”:

1. Magazine boxes. To stick with the Toastmasters magazine example, I store all back issues in a box labeled, “Toastmasters”.

2. “Of Interest” tags. As I read a magazine, I have a pad of small Post-its and a pen with me. When I see or read something of interest that I may want to refer to later, I write a few descriptive words on a Post-it and stick it on the page.

3. When the box gets full, I pull out all the issues that don’t have Post-its (i.e. articles of interest) and toss in the recycle bin.
   

Adapted from:
http://projectsimplify.com/tips-tricks-ideas/organization-tips/magazine-mo/

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5. In the News & On the Web

If you know of something in the news or on the web that should be featured here, let us know!

In The News

Freeing your mind from the stresses of the workday (The Arizona Republic)
http://tinyurl.com/nv4c8
This article has a handful of simple exercises “to help people stop working when they’ve stopped working”.

Professional Organizer Says FOCUS, Simplify (The Connecticut Post)
http://tinyurl.com/zegbj
This profile of professional organizer Anita Taylor highlights, among other things, her FOCUS acronym as a means to getting more done. The “F” in FOCUS stands for “Find the best time of day to get things done”—the theme of our own newsletter two weeks ago! Learn the rest of the acronym/method, and find out how one of Anita’s clients (a high school volleyball coach) uses mind mapping to make his team’s practices more efficient.

On The Web

101 Performance Boosters (PROFIT Magazine)
http://tinyurl.com/jxl7v
If this feature was just one big list, we probably wouldn’t have listed it here—we’re trying to help you simplify, not overload you! But the 101 things are broken down into groups of 4 or 5, with each group of suggestions covering a different aspect of performance boosting. Examples: “Banish the time bandits — How to minimize office interruptions” and “Business travel tips — How to be a better road warrior”. The tips themselves seem pretty solid, generally speaking.