Awareness
You must think before you do. All actions—and hence all results—follow thinking. Take the time to reflect and give strong thought to your life and the life you want to live. Is it too complex? Too simple? Chances are, when you answer the previous two questions, your awareness will skyrocket.
After a flood in our home, my wife decided not to replace some things and to simplify others. I have to say, it’s very refreshing walking through our home now—I’ve noticed there are fewer things to get dirty, fewer things to fall, and fewer things to keep up with. That’s been an inspiration as we’ve thought and talked about what we want for the condo when we move; we’re now considering buying nicer things rather than more things. That event, an unexpected complexity—really increased our awareness about Strategic Simplicity.
Clarity
Strategic simplicity requires getting clearer on what kind of life you want to live—simple or complex. One great way to do that is to use my concept of MOLO to audit your life.
MOLO is a very powerful—and yet very simple—activity that can literally change your life. It’s basically eliminating activities you shouldn’t be doing. First, you want to determine what you want more of and what you want less of, and then you need to determine what you need to do more of and what you need to do less of in order to get there.
The goal of this tool I invented several years ago is to help you create a better allocation of your time, effort, and resources so you can get greater returns and greater results. (It’s about simplicity.) That’s what a MOLO audit can do. It can show you where you’re wasting your efforts, often in small ways, and complicating your life. And it also can help you get clearer on where you should be investing your time to get more “bang for your buck,” so to speak, so you can significantly move the results needle and simplify your life.
