Why simple things get repeated
Most useful work is not a single heroic effort. It is a pattern repeated many times: checking the week ahead, answering requests, paying bills, preparing for a meeting. How well you do these depends less on motivation than on how easy they are to begin and finish.
A process with few steps has fewer places to stall. Each additional step is a small chance to postpone, forget or make an error. If a routine has twelve steps, it takes only one irritating step for the whole thing to be skipped on a busy day. A routine with three steps survives more bad days.
That is the practical argument for simple processes. It is not that simple is virtuous, but that simple tends to get done. Many people report that routines they can complete without thinking become part of their week, while elaborate ones fade after a few attempts. The effect varies, and some tasks need complexity, but it is a reasonable principle to test.
What “simple” does and does not mean
Simple does not mean careless or minimal at any cost. A process for something safety-related or financially important may need checks, and removing them would be unwise. Simple means that every step has a reason you can state. If you cannot say why a step is there, it is a candidate for removal.
A useful question for any step is: what happens if I leave this out? Three answers are common. Nothing, so drop it. Something small, so consider a lighter version. Something serious, so keep it.
Example 1: A weekly report
Imagine a hypothetical weekly summary with these steps:
- Open three different documents to find the week’s notes.
- Copy highlights into a new document.
- Reformat the new document to match last week’s layout.
- Add a section with extra details that few people read.
- Send a draft to a colleague for a look.
- Revise, then send the final version.
- File a copy in a folder.
Now remove steps with weak reasons. If notes are kept in one place during the week (removing step 1), and the report uses a saved template (removing step 3), and the detail section is dropped after asking readers whether they use it (removing step 4), the process shrinks to four steps instead of seven: fill the template from the week’s notes, get the colleague’s look, send, and file. If the stakes are low enough to drop the review too, it becomes three. Whether the review stays depends on the stakes.
The saving here comes mostly from changing where information lives during the week, not from working faster at the end.
Example 2: Paying bills
Suppose a person handles bills this way: wait for each paper bill, open it, put it on a pile, remember to pay it before the due date, log in to each provider, pay, and write the date in a notebook.
A simpler path might be to turn on automatic payments or reminders where that is sensible, keep one place for statements, and set a single time each month to glance over everything. The steps drop from a scattered handful of actions at unpredictable times to one regular check. This is a general illustration; automatic payments have tradeoffs, and checking your statements for errors is still a good idea. Choose what suits your finances and your comfort with risk.
Example 3: Preparing for a meeting
A common routine is to re-read old emails, look for relevant files, jot down questions, and open several windows beforehand. A lighter version is to keep one running note per recurring meeting. After each meeting, add the follow-ups to that note. Next time, you read one note and add your questions. The preparation shrinks because the previous meeting already did part of it.
If you find your calendar is full of meetings you do not need to attend, the larger gain may come from deciding which ones to skip or shorten, since meeting load adds up faster than any preparation trick can offset.
A way to find removable steps
Pick one routine and write out its steps as you actually do them. Then go through, marking each step with one of three labels:
- Needed: it changes the result
- Habit: it exists because it always has
- Workaround: it exists because of an old problem or an awkward tool
Habits and workarounds are the best targets. Try dropping one at a time so you can tell what, if anything, you miss. If you are tempted to remove many at once and something breaks, you will not know which change caused it.
Why this feels hard
Removing steps can feel risky, even when the step is pointless. Extra steps give a sense of thoroughness. Some people also feel that a simple process looks less professional. But a process is not better for being longer. Clarity and consistency tend to matter more to the people who receive your work.
There is also the opposite temptation: building an elaborate system to make a task simple. When the system needs its own upkeep, the net result may be more effort, not less. The aim is fewer moving parts overall.
Starting small
Choose one routine you dislike and try to remove one step this week. Keep a short note of what happened. If nothing was missed, remove another. Over time, small subtractions add up, though how much you gain will depend on your work and on how much slack there was to begin with.