You think adding more will fix you. You’re wrong. Peace is not accumulation — it’s subtraction, and subtraction is brutal.
We worship complexity like it’s virtue. More apps, more friends, more hobbies, more “growth.”
We confuse busyness for meaning and noise for status. Here’s the ugly truth: simplicity is not cute. It’s a scalpel. It asks you to cut away what you love most.
That’s why most people run the other way.
Think like a philosopher: peace isn’t a thing you get; it’s a decision you make.
Think like a disruptive thinker: the market rewards clever subtraction more than frantic addition.
Think like a lawyer: clarity beats eloquence in a courtroom every time.
Think like a soldier: survival is making your kit lighter and your focus deadlier.
Simplicity is a war. And most of us aren’t ready to fight.
The lie we tell ourselves:
We tell ourselves that if we only had one more tool, one more relationship, one more credential, life would calm down. That lie is cowardice wearing ambition’s clothes.
It’s easier to buy a course than to fire a friend. It’s easier to subscribe than to unsubscribe. Complexity is an anesthetic. It keeps the pain of choosing from surfacing.
But choices must be made. Freedom is heavy. Simplicity demands you choose what you will not do, who you will not become, and which comforts you will willingly lose.
Examples they’ll never teach at motivational school
A startup founder I know launched with ten features because “users might want options.” The product flopped.
He then stripped it to a single, unapologetic function — one button that solved one problem. Customers loved it. Revenue doubled. Complexity had been masking cowardice: the fear of committing to one truth.
A decorated sergeant once told me: “You can carry everything, or you can run fast. Choose.” He left nine items behind on a night march to save a man who would have died if they hadn’t moved quicker. Simplicity saves lives.
A lawyer friend rewrote a 40-page contract into four simple clauses. The client stopped committing minor frauds and actually started paying on time. Clarity removed excuses. Complexity had been allowing loopholes for people to be dishonest.
These aren’t metaphors — they’re templates. Simplicity doesn't mean being bare or lazy. It means brutal selection and ruthless enforcement.
The terror of subtraction
Here’s why you fight it: subtraction reveals emptiness. When you remove the noise, you face the hollow spaces inside.
The first week you simplify, you’ll panic. You’ll want to fill it. That’s normal.
The second week you won’t fill it — you’ll find resentment.
The third week you will start to taste something like relief.
After three months, you will forget how loud your life used to be.
But there’s another cost: social fallout.
When you stop replying to dozens of messages, people call you rude. When you quit that club, they call you proud. When you reduce your commitments, someone will say you gave up.
Simplifying is often unpopular because it exposes others’ comforts. You will lose admirers who loved you as a busy martyr. You will make enemies who profited from your complexity.
That’s the terrifying part: peace requires small, lonely executions.
It demands that you disappoint people who expected you to be less effective and more available. It asks you to accept that your value will be measured differently — less by quantity of presence, more by the weight of what you deliver.
The mechanics: how to be simple, not sloppy
-
Inventory everything. List your obligations, subscriptions, promises, and rituals. Be exhaustive. This is the philosopher’s audit.
-
Apply the one-question test: Does this bring me closer to one clear outcome I choose? If not, cut it. No nostalgia exceptions. No hypothetical future-you exceptions.
-
Create enforceable boundaries. Put your email on a schedule. Close accounts. Delegate until delegation hurts. (Lawyer trick: write the boundary as a rule and read it out loud weekly.)
-
Design ruthless constraints. Limit choices. Offer one product. Run one weekly ritual. Soldiers don’t prepare for every battle — they prepare for one mission and master it.
-
Accept the social cost. Tell people what you’re doing. Honesty reduces drama. If they leave, fine. If they stay, they’ll be survivors.
-
Measure the right thing. Not hours. Not followers. One metric: the single outcome you care about. Everything else is noise.
Why simplicity is peace
Because peace isn’t the absence of problems — it’s the absence of bullshit. When your life is lean, decisions are fast, energy is deep, and results compound.
Complexity dilutes attention; attention is the currency of mastery. Simplicity concentrates your currency into meaningful deposits.
Peace arrives not as an event but as a ruthless economy. You spend less on distractions. You invest more in the few things that matter. Your inner critic quiets because you no longer have dozens of unresolved promises screaming at you.
That is peace.
Final, brutal truth
If you want peace, you must be willing to become unpopular. You must be willing to lose things — people, status, illusions.
You must be willing to stare into emptiness until it fills with purpose. The quiet you crave is on the other side of subtraction.
Simplicity is not comfort. It is courage.
Call to Action — The One Cut
Right now, pick one complexity to remove. Not tomorrow — now. Unsubscribe from one service, cancel one meeting series, or delete one app.
Then write one sentence:
“I will stop [X] by [date] to focus on [one measurable outcome].”
Paste that sentence where you can see it daily. If you chicken out, tell one honest person and let them punish you for failure.
Do the cut.
Feel the panic.
Wait.
Then watch how peace, strange and sharp, finds you on the other side.
No comments:
Post a Comment