If you operate in a business context, you’re probably familiar with the acronym “VUCA,” which stands for “volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.” This acronym describes the current collective corporate culture in which we find ourselves, one in which change is the only constant and nothing is certain.
But VUCA doesn’t only describe business. It describes life in America, doesn’t it? I know you’ve heard and read many articles that describe how increased efficiencies from technology and other innovations were supposed to make life easier. Years ago, there was talk of a four-hour workweek. Most of us work six days now, and if we’re not careful and disciplined, it can be seven. We never stop; our schedules are packed with meetings and events. We scroll, text, and email in lines, at stoplights, and even in drive-throughs, and our inboxes are disasters. In the name of efficiency, we create digital forms and checkboxes that require even more time and information than simply picking up the phone or stopping by to talk with someone. Even when we’re at home, the constant noise of a TV or digital device keeps us occupied.
I was reflecting on the complexity of life this week while attending the CESA symposium in Charlotte. CESA is a Christian school consortium that Grace helped found, and this year, one of the keynote speakers was Huggy Rao. Dr. Rao is a professor at the business school at Stanford and co-author of The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder. Dr. Rao says our default problem-solving mode is to add complexity, rather than subtract it, which he calls “addition bias.” Think about it: when a project at work slows down, our natural tendency is to throw more people at it. However, the time and energy required to actually onboard those people and organize them further slow down the project even more.
It’s a well-known fact, known as Parkinson’s Law, that for any committee or team tasked with a problem and exceeding eight members, the committee becomes less efficient with each new member added and becomes essentially useless when it reaches a membership of twenty. Could some of the meetings at work be streamlined or deemed unnecessary? Could some of the forms or documents you complete be streamlined or possibly eliminated?
We’re guilty of it at school. When our fixed costs and the need to pay our teachers and personnel increase, we must raise tuition to cover them. No one likes to pay more tuition, and so we feel obligated to add services and programs to justify the increase. We actually call that “value add.” But are we always truly adding value? Sometimes, maybe. At other times, we might be detracting from the value that already exists, such as the way our teachers and staff love our kids, by giving teachers more work to do and thereby thinning out their bandwidth.
We need to rethink this practice, and you may, too, because we all do it with our business AND in our homes. We think more is better: if one activity makes my kid’s college resume look better, shouldn’t eight make it look even better? And the reality is that most colleges don’t see “well-rounded” in that case; they see “overcommitted” and “unfocused.” We actually make things worse, not better.
What if life’s not meant to be lived this way? What if Corrie ten Boom was right, and if the devil can’t make you sin, he really will just find ways to make you busy? What if we think we’re hacking life, but life is actually hacking our spirits and our souls into fragmented versions of the wholly integrated selves God created, formed, and intended us to be?
One solution is to practice the spiritual discipline of simplicity. Essentially, the practice of simplicity involves releasing our attachments to material possessions, distractions, and complexity, both inwardly and outwardly, to make more room for awareness of the Lord’s presence in our lives. It involves intentionally choosing to live with less, creating margin in our lives, and seeking God’s Kingdom first.
Richard Foster, a Christian author and counselor, says that simplicity is measured by whether we can receive what we have as a gift from God, whether we know that what we have is to be cared for by God, and whether what we have can be made available to others when it is clearly right and good. Conversely, if we feel that we alone have acquired what we have, if we believe that what we have is up to us to hold on to, and if we cannot make what we have available to others when it is clearly right and good, then we are living in duplicity. And James 1 tells us that a double-minded person is unstable in all his (or her) ways. This is why our VUCA lives often leave us feeling frenzied and out of whack.
Simplicity is both a discipline and a grace. It’s a grace because, thanks to Jesus’ death on the cross and his blood atonement for our sins, we’re freed from having to earn any right standing, approval, or sense of self-worth. We can’t earn it, no matter how busy we are, how complex our lives, or how cluttered. It’s a gift. And yet, we must choose to practice simplicity, to live out the freedom we’ve been given. God gives us the grace to do it when we ask in Jesus’ name.
The convicting thing is that you’re responsible for making a simpler life for more than just you. Suppose you’re a boss, a supervisor, a manager, a teacher, a parent, or a spouse. In that case, you’re not only responsible for valuing and restoring humanity to yourself by using the gift of time wisely. You’re accountable to the Lord for them for how you use their time, as well. It should be sobering. It’s about both restoring their dignity and humanity and helping them and you maximize their ability to do what really matters by removing what doesn’t or what matters less.
Simplicity begins with cultivating an inward state of mind and heart that prioritizes seeking God’s Kingdom and his righteousness, recognizing that what is most important to him includes ensuring that people—whether students, employees, parents, children, customers, or others—are valued more than efficiency (or our misconceptions of efficiency), and that we should lead with love.
Next, simplicity involves finding a less complex way of living. It may be decluttering one’s home, desk, or life, clearing unnecessary events, meetings, and gatherings from one’s schedule, and saying “no” to excessive commitments. It might look like purchasing or acquiring things based on whether we really need them rather than whether they convey status, and enjoying things without needing them.
In The Friction Project, Dr. Rao refers to this as eliminating negative friction and creating positive friction. Eliminating negative friction means doing away with those things that make people’s real jobs harder, such as unnecessary meetings, overly complicated paperwork or reporting, and redundant technologies that hinder productivity instead of delivering true efficiencies for all. Creating positive friction means adding those things that make bad decision-making more difficult, like requiring understanding and considering the perspectives of all critical stakeholders before making really important decisions, or, in our school’s perspective, our decision several years ago to actually make it harder to gain access to information by eliminating cellphone use at school, which has made it more possible for kids to engage socially and converse with each other.
Life doesn’t have to be this chaotic and unpredictable. As Eugene Peterson and others noted, Jesus and his disciples moved around the countryside at 3½ mph, stopping to talk, engage in conversation and teaching, withdraw for prayer, and be fully present in others’ lives. These people changed the world forever and made everything different. This isn’t some story that’s possible for them and impossible for you. The same Holy Spirit that indwelled them lives in you. A significant difference is that they discerned what was essential and shed the rest. That difference was simplicity.
Leave a Reply