Practical Good
Practical Good



Practical Good

Keeping It Real Simple

The best way to get things done is to strip them down to the bare essentials and get all the unnecessary stuff out of the way.


Dennis MartinezDennis Martinez

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a group coaching call that's mostly focused on business and marketing topics. The group consists of individuals in all stages of life - people who have a strong desire to start their own business, people who already have something going on but are struggling to get it off the ground, people who want specific advice, even people who don't have a clue about what they want.

The call's host provides his coaching services by taking calls and talking through any issues the attendees want. One of the calls was from a person in her 50s who is semi-retired. She began to talk about recently helping someone she knew with creating content for their business and enjoyed it so much that she wanted to start becoming a freelance copywriter in that particular area of business.

As the call went on, the caller mentioned that she feels like her writing skills and knowledge of the area of business she was aiming was solid but was worried because her technical skills aren't where she wants them to be. She spent a significant amount of time rattling down a list of things she didn't know - how to properly use different blogging platforms, how to best write content that will be picked up by search engines, how to set up funnels for marketing purposes, and so on.

After a few minutes, the host had to step in and interrupt her long speech. "Wait a minute, why do you need to know all of these things to start your copywriting career?"

This question created a long pause, followed by the caller sheepishly saying "... I don't know."

The caller eventually said that she spent some time doing research online and reading books, and these were all the things she saw others talking about consistently. However, all of this was distracting her from her current goal, which is to start doing copywriting and getting paid for it. While all of the skills she mentioned are great to have for anyone wanting to do copywriting for businesses, they're not essential in the beginning. At the stage she was in the process, it was solely a distraction.

Why do we complicate things endlessly?

These types of distractions are common. There always seems to be the need to do more than what's needed to move forward. By itself, thinking about the road ahead isn't a bad thing. Unfortunately, this type of thinking tends to overcomplicate whatever you're doing. It will cause you to significantly slow your pace because you'll be trying to do too many things. It might even cause you to give up altogether because of the added complexity that wasn't necessary in the first place.

So, why do we make things more complicated than needed? I've seen it pop up due to different reasons:

The cure for complexity is simplicity

By ditching the complications that are often self-imposed and making things simple, you can avoid all the pitfalls defined above:

When it's all said and done, whenever you're working towards a goal, the only thing that matters is the result. Did you accomplish what you were going to do or not? That's what most people care about, and that should be your primary point of focus. Get on with your work, one step at a time. Don't get entangled with unnecessary, convoluted actions that will only bog you down. Keep it real simple, and you'll get the results you deserve effortlessly.

Small steps for your Practical Good

If you like the idea of simplicity, here are some tips to help you achieve your current goals with ease:

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