Always Striving For Simplicity

Philosophical ramblings from Stanford University on finding the true balance between intention and emergence plus three essential recommendations.

The meeting place of the old and new world is a fantastic space for focused and creative thoughts, new ideas, and deep work. Photo: Ashim D’Silva.

Simplicity is an intentional and rational decision in a world of abundance of things and distractions; scarce of time, attention, and creative energy. Imagine reacting to every single ping from your smartphone and you would get nothing real done (for every interruption it takes 23 minutes to restart where you left off).

Technology, with its implicit quest to democratize access for everyone to everything at anytime, has also opened up the flood gates for ad-supported media to fill our lives with unlimited distractions and information we cannot or do not act upon, or even really need.

Self-conditioned laissez faire

In our valiant attempts to live in the precious moment we also are conditioning ourselves to respond to emergence over rationality, over what appears in front of our eyes over what we rationally research, plan, and work on to achieve with clear intention and purpose.