We assume that hard things are better.
We want to feel like we are doing important things, and important things must be difficult.
But it isn’t always so.
We try so hard to see the answer in complicated things, that we overlook the brilliance and beauty in simple things.
I’ve sat through thousands of classes on self help and personal goals and education and self improvement. I’ve read hundreds of books on the same subjects.
Teachers and experts have very specific, sometimes difficult steps they are trying to sell to us.
I believe in learning about and strengthening the simple good that already exists within us. Most of the rest is an illusion.
Years ago I started a new job. The technology was new, the pressures enormous. There were banks of telephones and computer screens. It all seemed so important and serious.
The phones would ring, numbers were reported, calculations were made, graphs were read, and it all had to be done in a short window of time each hour. There were written procedures for every action that had to be taken. I memorized it all. I almost sat at attention in my chair.
Then I started developing my own little routines for each task. The routines focused on getting the best and most detailed information out of each call and report. I felt very important.
Then one day the calls came faster and the information being reported included emergencies. Suddenly I was scrambling and confused.
A supervisor stepped in to check on me and said something to me I’ll never forget:
“Darrell, choose easy.”
“What ?!?!” I asked over my shoulder frantically.
“Yes, choose easy. At the end of the day, no one will care about your sophisticated procedures; they will only want to know that the information is correct. You’re making the job harder than it needs to be. No one cares. Choose easy.”
I took that story to the boss, and he chuckled. My boss loved racquetball. He always had his gym bag waiting behind his office door.
“You know, I think that’s right. Choose easy. Whenever someone asks me to tell them the best way to learn racquetball, I tell them to go to the gym and find someone who’s very enthusiastic about the sport, very accomplished, and fat. A heavy guy has learned to play well with an extreme economy of movement. He’s not going to be running all over the place for his shots. He’s learned to make the fewest moves possible for the best results.”
Pretty deep. And it’s good advice.
So many of us just make a lot of noise in our efforts to do something important.
If you put a car in neutral and really give it the throttle, it will make an impressive noise. But the car won’t go anywhere.
Focus on going somewhere, and not making noise.
Choose easy.
We want to feel like we are doing important things, and important things must be difficult.
But it isn’t always so.
We try so hard to see the answer in complicated things, that we overlook the brilliance and beauty in simple things.
I’ve sat through thousands of classes on self help and personal goals and education and self improvement. I’ve read hundreds of books on the same subjects.
Teachers and experts have very specific, sometimes difficult steps they are trying to sell to us.
I believe in learning about and strengthening the simple good that already exists within us. Most of the rest is an illusion.
Years ago I started a new job. The technology was new, the pressures enormous. There were banks of telephones and computer screens. It all seemed so important and serious.
The phones would ring, numbers were reported, calculations were made, graphs were read, and it all had to be done in a short window of time each hour. There were written procedures for every action that had to be taken. I memorized it all. I almost sat at attention in my chair.
Then I started developing my own little routines for each task. The routines focused on getting the best and most detailed information out of each call and report. I felt very important.
Then one day the calls came faster and the information being reported included emergencies. Suddenly I was scrambling and confused.
A supervisor stepped in to check on me and said something to me I’ll never forget:
“Darrell, choose easy.”
“What ?!?!” I asked over my shoulder frantically.
“Yes, choose easy. At the end of the day, no one will care about your sophisticated procedures; they will only want to know that the information is correct. You’re making the job harder than it needs to be. No one cares. Choose easy.”
I took that story to the boss, and he chuckled. My boss loved racquetball. He always had his gym bag waiting behind his office door.
“You know, I think that’s right. Choose easy. Whenever someone asks me to tell them the best way to learn racquetball, I tell them to go to the gym and find someone who’s very enthusiastic about the sport, very accomplished, and fat. A heavy guy has learned to play well with an extreme economy of movement. He’s not going to be running all over the place for his shots. He’s learned to make the fewest moves possible for the best results.”
Pretty deep. And it’s good advice.
So many of us just make a lot of noise in our efforts to do something important.
If you put a car in neutral and really give it the throttle, it will make an impressive noise. But the car won’t go anywhere.
Focus on going somewhere, and not making noise.
Choose easy.
