The simplicity of no

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple — months away from an impending bankruptcy — the company had over 300 products or product variations. Within two years he had slashed that down to ten.

If a tech behemoth can radically simplify — and transcend into a greater mission — so can we.

Carmine Gallow in a December 2011 Success magazine interview said this:

To this day you can actually take all of Apple’s products and put them on a small coffee table, which is pretty extraordinary for a $50-billion-a-year business.

To focus on what really matters, Gallow goes on to quote Steve Jobs:

Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

The same is true for us when we want to focus on what really matters.

A lifelong uber-friend of my sister’s (Deb!) is on a quest, with her husband, to say yes to all social invitations. They’ve moved to a new state, the state of Blissifornia, and are eager to embrace — and be embraced by — the natives. (We’re hoping she’ll report back on this experiment.)

We’ve all enjoyed similar phases of our lives — I used to date like that — but then you get to the point where you’ve experienced maximal returns on yes, and only no can give you more of what you want.

So when it’s time to laser in, no — a thousand times no. There’s no easier way to simplify into profound meaning than no.

Whether’s it’s no to guard family time, or no to hone your focus, or no to deepen your mission in life, or simply no to extra stuff that only burdens you with additional maintenance of that stuff, no could be the tool you seek to liberate you into greater meaning.