Friday Insights: Easy vs. Complicated

This is Bye, Social Media!, your favorite newsletter about marketing that doesn’t suck. I help solopreneurs free their businesses from the algorithms.

Every Friday, I share something I’ve learnt this week as an entrepreneur, creator, and human. Today, it’s about the wisdom of choosing the easiest path.

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Taking the easy way out vs. simplicity

What’s your relationship like with making things easy for yourself? For me, it’s always been a conflicted one.

In theory, I liked ease and simplicity. In practice, I’ve been good at making things a lot harder than they needed to be.

It’s complex to unpack. In part, I think this has to do with schooling, where you get grades for effort, yet finding ways to solve your homework faster is not rewarded. Effort matters. And so does knowing how to simplify things.

Simplicity is an art form. Knowing how to do things simply and clearly is SO valuable in all areas of life. It saves so much time and energy. Unfortunately, it’s not often a consideration we have in mind as most grind to get things done without rhyme or reason.

Achieving things with less separates those treading water from those creating impact.

Why I’m thinking about simplicity and making things easier this week

I’ve been working on something that’s a bit more complex than what I’ve done previously. It requires me to bring in people with specialized knowledge for a collaboration across different areas of expertise. It’s doable - and I felt a little intimidated by it all.

I thought that in order to get there I had to jump through all those hoops: Research the appropriate people for a day, do a ton of cold outreach, and then spend hours on the phone interviewing people.

It seemed like what I wanted to do was months away.

That was until I casually mentioned my idea to someone who I thought could help me with one part of the puzzle. To my surprise, they said they could help me with it all. And that we could start now.

Er…what?!

Problem solved, we’re good to go!

How do you think I reacted?

Did I frolic on alpine meadows? Pour myself a celebratory cup of coffee?

Nope! I was confused. It couldn’t be that easy, could it?!? When the thing I thought was going to be super challenging and at least required 35 steps was reduced to an “I can do this for you”, I was…deflated.

What was my purpose, then, if I didn’t have to struggle to make things happen? What would I fill my time with, when I didn’t have to take 34 other steps?

How to make things more smooth for yourself

It’s an interesting problem to consider: If you’re making things hard for yourself by default, how could it be the other way around?

Your mind gets locked into thinking that things have to be complicated.

On the other extreme of that is the expectation that everything will run smoothly without any hiccups, at all. Shooting straight arrows all the time.

When that happens, it’s like magic. I want more of that.

Reality tends to not meet that expectation 😉 - and that’s where we can become hung up. Why me? Why this thing now? Why is everything so hard?

Neither extremes help.

A better way to approach it, is to look for ways to ease the complexity and make things as simple as possible. The less dips and valleys the process goes through, the better. My job, then, is to smooth the curve on the graphic in the far right as much as possible.

How I’m making things more simple for myself

I didn’t love the realization that I was making things unnecessarily hard for myself. Like I said, I like ease and simplicity. However, in practice, my mind was up to different, more complex shenanigans.

The framework I shared above about aiming not for perfection but an attitude of smoothing valleys and peaks feels more achievable. It focuses on simplicity, while acknowledging that life isn’t always perfect.

To get there, I’m practicing to ask myself these questions more:

• Is there an easier way to do this?

• Can I do this in less steps?

• If it were easy, how would I do this?

Instead of writing miles (or kms) of copy for a sales page, what’s an easier way to help people decide if they want what I have?

Instead of writing a long-winded email to someone, can I say the same with less? Can I be more concise for my sake writing this and for the other person’s sake reading this?

It’s not about becoming a robot.

It’s about completing your homework faster. I’ve always liked that. 😏

And that’s it from me.

Have a great weekend and, as always,

Happy Marketing 📣,

Johanna

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