Let’s stay focused on simple, and think about our role when it comes to communicating.  I recently read an article and there was a quote from Bruce Lee that struck me.  “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”  This was his secret to mastery.  This is also the secret to communicating things in a simple way.

Last week was about making sure that we put in the time and effort to try to process a concept before we declare it too complicated.  This week is about being a sculptor.  I believe that all people are sculptors.  As you can read in the quote above, even when we are building something we are also sculpting.  We are trying to shape it, focus it, and cut away the non-essentials.  We do all of these things in order to reveal the elegant essence of something, and that’s where the beauty and power exist.

Sculpting and my poetry failure…

As you probably know I write poetry (if you ever want some, just ask 😉 Anyway, I submitted a poem to a college contest and got rejected.  The person reviewing the applications was a friend and talked to me about it.  She pulls out a poem and says, “You had this awesome theme going and this is the best line in the poem.  Up until this point we were all captivated.  Then, you added all of this stuff that is good, but it doesn’t really build off of your central theme.  If anything, this extra material took away from the power in your theme.  My advice to you, once you have identified that powerful theme or that riveting line figure out how to build off of it.  If you can build on it, then you can layer more in.  If you detract when you add stuff, then don’t add stuff.  Why would you add on things and distill your message?”

Now, my ego was bruised, because I thought all of my lines and themes were riveting but she had a great point.  Have you ever experienced anything like that where you added “good” stuff that just detracted?  Now, all of my poems, presentations, and even these emails start long and I cut without mercy until I feel that I have revealed the simple powerful essence of what I am trying to communicate.  Am I perfect? No, but I’m a lot more focused than I used to be.

The question I keep asking myself is, “Am I putting in the time to sculpt what I am trying to communicate or showing them a full block of marble, hoping that they will be able to see the vision?”

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Here is the link to the article http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2014/06/one-key-to-story-design-is-to-hack-away-at-the-unessential.html