I love P. She is simplicity personified. She would occassionally come to our house to spend time with my daughter. She would get a tooth-brush and nothing else. She will manage to stay happily for two to three days. No challenges.
My uncle. He would travel from one place to the other seamlessly. He will not carry any wallet or cash. The host needs to provide him with the cash for travel. On arrival at the destination, he will hand over the change to the new host. He does not carry anything except a towel on his left shoulder.
Ramesh. He would travel to Sabarimala with no additional set of clothes to change. Of course, he will carry cash for travel. He would wash the clothes in Pamba and wear the wet clothes and proceed for darshan and return in the same attire. He celebrated his daughter’s marriage recently. He just carried two suit cases while the bridegroom ‘s team had a container load of stuff !
We hear many icons of simplicity. These include Steve Jobs, Dr. Abdul Kalam and President Obama to name a few.
We see clutter everywhere. We have grown up with trash. There is clutter in our cupboards, our handbags, kitchens, living rooms etc. (Even Microsoft uses the word clutter these days.)
Some wise men also talk of mental clutter. There is also clutter in our In boxes, databases, social media accounts such as FB, Twitter etc. I like Twitter as it puts restriction on the usage of number of words.
I had a German manager who would always question the requirement of additional physical space in our plant. He was of the firm view that you provide space, you add more clutter. The word ‘stores’ does not exist in his vocabulary.
Some of the large Japanese production houses such as Toyota focus on the clutter. Wastage is identified pro-actively and attacked vigorously. There are also tools such as 5S, SMED, 7 QC tools etc to remove the wastage. One could google and learn more about this alphabet soup and the elegant strategies.
Coming to home front, I saw an interesting article in Time magazine: How to Live with Just 100 things.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1812048,00.html
A young man by the name Dave Bruno started the 100 thing challenge. His core principle is that one should manage with 100 things. Count should include the house, car, cup, spoon etc. He has a website and there is a huge following of netizens who have demonstrated that it is possible to do.
You can also listen to Dave on the TED.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7VUpYpTwI8
“ Less baggage More comfort – Make your travel a pleasure”- This was the slogan of Indian Railways in 1970s. This slogan applied to many areas – size of the family, thinking, supply chains etc. We do not see the slogan any more these days in the trains.
Simplicity also means brevity. Brevity in communication has been around for some time. It seems Hemingway wrote a story in six words. There is also a shortest story book with the longest story which has only 23 words. New concept is emerging called Micro-fiction similar to micro-blogging.
Thanks to the young folks, we also have new lingo in current mobile communication.
Do you know these words ?
2Nite
1CE
A3
Check out the answers in the following dictionary:
http://smsdictionary.co.uk/abbreviations
Even human emotions are converted into symbols called emoticons or emojis while legendary poets like Wordsworth and Keats needed several paragraphs to describe.
There is emojipedia if you want to take a look.
As the world is becoming smaller, our ability to communicate briefly is also picking up pace. I am sure you would have heard the word – elevator speech, a process to convey messages to your manager who has no time for listening enough. One is expected to convey enough in the shortest possible time before the elevator reaches the designated floor. This is the current day mantra.
You could also read the piece:
http://thewritepractice.com/writing-succintly/
We are back to square one. There was a period with little or no communication. We witnessed a period of over communication. Now we are forcing ourselves to choose a few words and symbols to communicate.
Have you heard of Haiku – traditional Japanese poetry ? Haiku poems consist of 3 lines. The first and last lines of a Haiku have 5 syllables and the middle line has 7 syllables. The lines rarely rhyme.
I shall leave you with a quote from Chines Philosopher Lao Tzu:
I have just three things to teach: Simplicity, Patience and Compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
Back in Time Unintentionally 