Today is the day we celebrate cupids, arrows and St Valentine. So why picture of a chair? It’s the personification of simple, effective design.

While I am as big a fan as anyone of a good solid smooch, I am not going to talk about kissing in this way today. I am going to talk about one of those amazing little acronyms called KISS. Many of you will know it as Keep It Simple Stupid. I personally love telling myself this all, the, time! We all like to overcomplicate things. It’s because that is our benchmark in the media, in Desperate Housewives, Lost, all hospital/doctor TV shows and every bit of advertising we are sold.

Maybe that is why I like The Mentalist so much. Its simplification of whats given to you. The answer is already there, just look at it from another angle.

This year, more than others, I am finding the pace of distraction immense. So I have set a few rules going forward which I am going to try to adhere to. Overload leads to distraction and as my always dry and awesome housemate says… “Less haste, more speed”. Here are some of the new ways to find some space for my mind to keep it simple:

1. Email + Twitter off when I get home. If it’s important, a phone call will do at that time.
2. No checking email + twitter until I get into the office in the morning.
3. Time to revisit my room with a few black bags and give away some clothing, shoes, bags and athletic gear.
4. List all my old books onto Kalahari.net marketplace and buy a whole load of new e-books for my Kindle.
5. I want to cut almost all TV out of my life.
6. I cut my RSS reader by 40% this morning from areas where I was not getting regular quality information.
7. I am in the process of moving all my various email addresses into 2 addresses in total in 1 location.

Since we, as humans, only remember 7 things at a time, I am ticking off this list first and will then move onto another set of things to simplify.

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Such a simple thing. Could be a pause to ponder or an eternity of waiting in those 3 little dots.

From Wikipedia: “An ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought, or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence.”

If that description doesn’t inspire thoughts of beauty in you, you might not be a minimalist at heart or even at attempt. For me, ellipsis is the core of a lot of what I write. I use it more than I use a lot of more pertinent marks. I find it beautiful and insightful and the pause, for me, is the simplest way to evoke.

A pause in speech is silence. Silence is one of the most profound ways to connect with your inner voice, with nature. Silence is the best part of speech. It’s the best part of me, silence. I can ride my bicycle in the forests for 5 or 6 hours without saying a word. My closest friends will attest that I can drive for hours in the car with them without saying a word. Simple comfort in silence is the highest respect I can pay you as a person.

An unfinished thought is any thought, really — if a thought is “finished” it’s dead. We are all of us in transition, all the time, and our thoughts can be no exception. Constant transition. How beautiful.

Trailing off into silence implies that there is much left unsaid … that what is said is only the start. Once we realise we are in constant transition, every end is merely the start and every start is the end. The simple realisation that we never stop evolving is uber powerful.

Intentional omission is the foundation of minimalism: we leave things out because they are unnecessary, and retain only what we need or use or love. Omitting the unnecessary is a thing of pure beauty. Constant reassurance from things which are unnecessary is deemed “consumer” in my mind. Move from being consumer to being provider. Try it out sometime…

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Say less, and hear more.
Do less, and have a greater impact.
Make less noise, and appreciate the silence.
Send out fewer emails, and make each one count.
Tweet less, and each one becomes more meaningful.
Have fewer possessions, and enjoy the space.
Have fewer “friends”, but make each relationship stronger.
Appreciate the spaces between everything.

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Ed’s note: I have quoted the last 8 lines directly from another post, they are quite profound.

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I came across something amazing today, its called the 5S system. yes, there are five words that start with an S in there. I don’t know about you, but within a week of being back, my desk is pretty cluttered already. I find that I have a number of systems in my working day, but the systems always lead to them lying on top of each other at some point, i.e. little piles of stuff to do. What we need is not a quiver full of systems but a culture. A culture of organizing and staying organized. 5S is a Japanese culture marketed as a system. I am told that by introducing it to any environment is a success, and I am going to give it a go this year. Read on, and let me know if you are in, so that I have an accountability partner or two. .

Most of us get bogged down by numerous co-worker derived systems of email and file management. You find yourself facing a clutter at your office desk that may have looked organized to the untrained eye. That till I did a 5S sweep at my desk.

The five steps of 5S are:

* Seiri (Sorting)
* Seiton (Set in Order)
* Seiso (Sweeping/cleaning)
* Seiketsu (Standardizing)
* Shitsuke (Sustaining)

The five steps are accomplished consecutively. It starts with removing clutter and unwanted ’stuff’ (minimalism), keeping necessary ’stuff’ close at hand, standardizing processes of doing all activities (email processing, project management, note taking etc.) and finally sustaining those standards.

I find I can do the first 3 pretty good, but steps 4 and 5 are where my skills are lacking.

So here goes.

Who’s with me?

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