Calendar Books by Allen James - Daily Reading - "A Teacher's Daily Guide to Success"

Calendar Books by Allen James - Daily Reading - "A Teacher's Daily Guide to Success"

December 18th, from "A Teacher's Daily Guide to Success" we read,

"Keep it simple" (Allen James).

Over 50 years ago the acronym KISS, short for "Keep it simple, stupid", was coined by United States Navy engineer Kelly Johnson while working for the Lockheed Skunk Works, Lockheed Martin's advanced aircraft development program.

Johnson coined the KISS principle during a long engineering career of designing systems with simple repair capabilities, using tools and skills used by average mechanics. Today, this term is frequently used in software design, where function creep and instruction creep can make programs unmanageable over time.

Yet the KISS principle is similar to older concepts as well.  Albert Einstein stated years prior, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." This means one should simplify the design of a product and success is achieved when a design is at its maximum simplicity.  As well, Occam’s (or Ockham's) Razor, a 14th century theory stating in a series of hypotheses, the simplest one is most likely to be correct unless the burden of proof rests on a more complicated theory (technopedia.com).

In our daily lives incorporating this concept make only good sense too.  Things become difficult for us due to our perceived need things BE difficult to be worthy.  How untrue, and unrealistic.  

Lawyer turned writer Cristina Hartmann confirms what you probably already noticed, noting "simplicity isn't easy," before offering her own home-baked three-step solution. Her method boils down to:

• Develop a life philosophy. Before you make any major (or even minor) changes, you need to know why you're changing your life. You need a purpose. You need a prioritization system. You need a life philosophy, a distilled set of principles that reflect your values.
• Divide up your tasks into must-dos and want-dos, and eliminate everything else. You have to do some things even if it doesn't fit into your life philosophy, like pay taxes, eat and sleep. These are necessary things that you can't avoid (without suffering horrible consequences, at least). On the other hand, you have your want-dos, the things that you love doing when you're not paying your taxes, calling your mom, and fixing the garbage disposal. This is the fun stuff that advance your life philosophy. Everything else? Junk them.
• Reduce clutter, both physical and mental. Clutter is more than untidiness. It's superfluity. It's excess. With unnecessary things piling up in our homes, offices and minds, simplicity becomes impossible.

If you’re less of the life philosophy type and more likely to face nagging worry about day-to-day things, Will Newton has a suggestion. "When overwhelmed, quickly write a point form list entitled ‘Things Bothering Me’ and then process each item in the list,” he writes, adding, “this will reduce your feelings of being overwhelmed and give you a clearer sense of what you need to do."

Include "things to do, things people said, things you don't like," he instructs, offering examples from nasty comments that rubbed you wrong to the stain on the rug or that thing you keep meaning to schedule. Once you’ve made this quick inventory of stressors, "go through the list and make decisions about what you have to do about each thing. Focus on just one of the items at a time and ask yourself, 'what is the very next thing I should do about this item?'" It’s a super effective five-minute way to bust that feeling of being overwhelmed, he claims (Inc.com).

When it comes down to it, WE are the one responsible for our own stress most generally.  WE create our own drama.  WE cause daily tasks to be difficult.  

Keep it simple...and always keep looking up.  :)  AJ