Simplicity

President Uchtdorf told an awesome story in conference this past weekend, and it goes along beautifully with something that happened to me very soon after watching it. Paraphrasing, this is the story:

When it was discovered that a ball-point pen wouldn't work in space, scientists spent thousands of dollars and millions of hours developing a pen that would write anywhere, in any temperature, and on nearly any surface.

In the meantime, what did the astronauts do? They simply used a pencil.

I'm afraid there are times when I'm spending massive amounts of energy, time, and money in order to do things the sophisticated way, when using something simple would work just as well.

Shortly after hearing this talk, I had a scare where I thought my laptop had crashed and all my work lost. Luckily, that wasn't the case and I was able to quickly back up the stories I was working on. And then make a silent vow to back up more often.

Though I will be using them more than before, I'm not going to switch to writing entire books with pad and pencil. But I am looking for other ways to simplify. For one thing, instead of making elaborate chore charts for my kids that I spend more time designing than using, I'll just tape up a piece of paper and mark off the times the chores are done. Easy peasy.

How are YOU simplifying? I'd love to get more ideas.

3 comments:

  1. I loved that talk. =] I have a friend who's great at simplifying. I'm always copying stuff she does because it just makes sense and it's so much easier!

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  2. I know! Isn't President Uchtdoft amazing? Honestly, I love every talk I've heard him give. And his joke about us wondering what it had to do with flying an airplane was so fun. :o)

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  3. I love his story very much, a nice speaker

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