A large part of my per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity mantra is the phrase: sim­ple and to the point. It is in com­plex­ity that I begin to break down, slow­ing my over­all pro­duc­tiv­ity and bring­ing sys­tems to a crawl. When I choose soft­ware I try to find soft­ware that does what I need it to do, with­out all the bloat.

Sim­ple and to the point for me is all about doing one thing, and doing it well. This mantra is easy to apply to soft­ware, but I also try to apply it through out my life.

With that in mind here are some ways you can make your life sim­ple and to the point:

Soft­warereally well. I know this seems obvi­ous, but many peo­ple find soft­ware that does a ton of dif­fer­ent things, includ­ing the thing that they need to do, with­out think­ing about how well it does that one thing that they want.

The best exam­ple of this is Write­Room

Com­mu­ni­ca­tiontwo sen­tence email prac­tice before. You can expand that beyond just email. In order to sim­plify com­mu­ni­ca­tion remem­ber these points:

• Small talk is not always needed
• Mes­sages longer than 45 sec­onds are unnecessary
• Face to face coor­di­na­tion / sched­ul­ing / brain­storm­ing is faster
• Meet­ing with­out an agenda is a waste of time for everyone

Use those as a basic guide­line to help you stream­line your com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and save a lot of time.

Tools

What are some of the meth­ods you are using to make things sim­ple and to the point?

Related posts:

• Pro­duc­tiv­ity: As Sim­ple as a Gro­cery List
• Be Sim­ple
• 5 Sim­ple Ways to Find More Time
• The Sim­ple Power of Two Sim­ple Questions