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- #64: Less is more.
#64: Less is more.
Shem Opolot
March 22, 2024
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Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
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Happy Friday 🎉 I appreciate the little idiosyncracies we think are unique, but are really common once shared.
For example:
When I open a fresh loaf of bread, I eat the end piece first, but in my head, it doesn’t count toward the total number of slices I eat.
After I’ve eaten the bread, I gather the empty part of the polythene bag with one hand and use the other hand to spin the base before creating a fresh knot. I don’t use the ties that come with the bread. I don’t spin and tuck without making a knot—it's too risky.
I avoid paper towels because I’m too wasteful with them:
Before opening the bread bag, I wash my hands and grab a paper towel.
After spreading peanut butter on the bread, I wash my hands and grab a paper towel.
After eating the bread, I wash my hands and grab a paper towel. And if I made avocado toast, we know how messy avocado is, so add about three more hand washes and the commensurate number of power towels. We could be through one roll by dinner time.
For this week only, I merged the work and life sections because a work thing inspired a life thing. Don’t run when you see the figures.
LIFE.
Less is more
This is going to make me sound like a youth pastor, taking the trivial and tinkering until a testimony turns up.
But bear with me.
While worrying about what to focus on for my doctorate thesis, I sat in a presentation with terrible data tables, and it hit me.
Less is more.
Assume your professional career is like the table below. Bright, shiny, and complex, with your best attribute(s) apparent:
But over time, to advance in your career, you must niche down. You must develop expertise in a specific area.
But how do you figure out what niche to pick?
Well…it’s like reverse Jenga, where you’re looking for a specific piece.
You start with a radical self-assessment, breaking down all your attributes and skills before building them back again, one piece at a time, hoping your best attribute can stand out.
I removed the color
Through the self-assessment, you find patterns—skills and attributes that go together and complement each other. Alignment forms.
I removed the gridlines, left-aligned the text, right-aligned the numbers, and ensured the alignment of the headings matched the rest of the columns.
You’re almost done. You remove physical and mental redundancies like that business that wasn’t turning a profit or that interest that was really a fad.
—You clean out your house and give away any clothes and household items you don’t need.
—You forgive your enemies.
Because decluttering is medicine for the mind.
Finally, with a clearer physical and mental space, your niche stands out.
I deleted the repeated school names, made the number of decimal places consistent, used white space to make the categories distinct from each other, and bolded the attribute I wanted to stand out again.
Less is more.
Sometimes the best way to improve something is to remove something.
THINGS.
Reputation
Reputation = Ability + Reliability.
Ability is what you can do; reliability is what you actually do.
Jack Butcher, Visualize Value
A picture
One of my favorite activities is counting fish with Zi.
FUN.
The Friday Fix Playlist
Mad Ade has been asked to judge a dog show. He sees a mix of boys and dogs and counts 22 heads and 68 legs. How many boys and dogs are at the show?
Hint: Remember simultaneous equations?
Answer below
Shem’s picks
✔️ 60 songs that explain the 1990s.
✔️ Do you love reading enough to participate in the Read Around the World Challenge? (I don’t).
✔️ Seek wonder instead of happiness.
Answer: 10 boys and 12 dogs
A dog and a boy have one head, so: B + D = 22
But while a boy has 2 legs, a dog has 4. So: 2B + 4D = 68
We use the first equation to find B: B = 22 - D
We plug the expression for B into the second equation: 2(22 - D) + 4D = 68
Then, we find D. And once we have D, we can find B.
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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