This is a wonderful time to be alive. The incredible rate of change we are experiencing is creating more opportunities and possibilities for us than ever. You have more options in more areas than you have ever had before, and the number of options available to you is increasing every day and every month.

At the same time, you are overwhelmed with more tasks and more responsibilities than you ever had before. You are swamped with jobs that you need to get done, books and magazines you need to read, people you need to get back to, projects you need to start or complete, and goals you want to accomplish. And like a nonstop production line, the jobs keep coming, one after the other, far too fast for you to ever get on top of them all.

You are caught in a dilemma. You want to fulfill your potential and achieve everything that is possible for you at work. You want to earn the greatest amount of money in the shortest period of time. You want to be a great success in your career. But at the same time, you do not want to sacrifice your family life, your relationships, your health, or the personal activities that are so important to you.
You want to have it all. You want far greater accomplishment on one hand and far more balance and simplicity on the other hand.

The good news is that thousands of successful, happy men and women have discovered methods, techniques, and strategies that make all these things possible. And whatever others have done, within reason, you can do as well.

The starting point of simplification is for you to reduce the number of things you do in your work and in your personal life. You can control your time only to the degree to which you discontinue tasks that are of little value to you. You must stop doing some of the things that you have become accustomed to doing over the years. You may even have to stop doing some things that you do well and you enjoy.

As the result of many years of study and practice, I developed what I call the "law of complexity." When you apply this law of complexity to time management and simplification, you will immediately simplify your life, increase your output, and start getting more enjoyment from everything you do.

The law of complexity says that the level of complexity of any task is equal to the square of the number of different steps in that task. Complexity can be defined as the potential for increased costs, increased time, or increased mistakes.

This law of complexity suggests how you can dramatically simplify your life by continually looking for ways to reduce the number of steps necessary to complete any task.
A major life insurance company had a problem. When the company received an application for life insurance from the field, it took six weeks to issue an approval or disapproval of the policy. By that time, the prospective client had often lost interest or gone somewhere else.

The insurance company brought in a consultant who applied the complexity theory to the approval process of a life insurance application. He found that the application form passed through twenty-two different hands. Each person checked and approved a particular part of the policy before it arrived on the desk of the final decision-maker. The entire process took six weeks. However, the actual amount of time spent on the policy turned out to be less than an hour.

With this information in hand, the insurance company dramatically simplified the process. They assigned the first twenty-one steps to a single person. The second person merely double-checked the work of the first person. As a result, they reduced the turnaround time for approvals from six weeks to twenty-four hours. Their insurance underwriting business increased by more than a billion dollars as a result.

The residential mortgage department of Citibank of New York did much the same thing. Previously, from the time it received a mortgage application, because of the number of steps required for approval, it took five to six weeks to decide whether to fund the mortgage. By that time, the potential home buyer often had gone elsewhere.
By reducing the number of steps in the approval process, Citibank reduced the turnaround time from six weeks to twenty-four hours. As a result of this incredible speed, it became the mortgage lender of choice among financial institutions and increased its mortgage portfolio by hundreds of millions of dollars with no decline in quality.

Use one or more of these steps to simplify and streamline every area of your personal and work life.

1. The first R is rethinking. Whenever you find yourself overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time, stop and think about your work. Stand back and ask yourself, "Could there be a better way?" Especially when you face resistance, stress, or difficulties of any kind, stop pushing and driving. Instead, put yourself in the position of an outside consultant. Imagine that you have been brought in to evaluate your own situation and give yourself objective advice on how to handle it. Remain open and receptive. Be willing to consider the possibility that your current approach is wrong.
   
2. The second R is reevaluating. When you get new information, stop the clock, like calling a time out in a football game, and reevaluate your situation based on the way it is today. Jack Welch, president of General Electric, calls this the "reality principle."
   The reality principle requires that you be absolutely honest with yourself and deal with the situation based on the way it really is today, right now, not the way you wish it were or the way it might have been in the past.
   "What's the reality?" You should do this as well. In The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce wrote, "Fanaticism is redoubling your efforts after your aim has been forgotten." Don't let this happen to you.
   
3. The third R is reorganizing. The purpose of reorganizing your life or work is to ensure a greater level of outputs from the same quantity and quality of inputs. In times of rapid change and turbulence, you must reorganize continually. As one high-tech executive said recently, "In this business, you have to throw out all your assumptions every three weeks."
   Be prepared to reorganize your workspace. Be prepared to reorganize your schedule throughout the day. Be prepared to reorganize your order and priority of activities. Be open to the possibility that there is always a better way to do the job than the way you are currently working. Keep searching for that better way.
   
4. The fourth R is restructuring. In restructuring you channel more of your time, energy, money, and resources into the top 20 percent of activities that generate the most revenues and the greatest profits. Companies restructure by focusing more of their resources on the products, services, and activities that customers value the most highly. Simultaneously, they delegate, outsource, and eliminate non-revenue-generating activities that customers don't care about.
   When you restructure your own activities, you continually focus and refocus your time and energy on the few things you do that account for most of your results. You concentrate single-mindedly on your most valuable tasks.
   
5. Reengineering is the fifth key to simplification. This is one of the most powerful practices for simplifying your work and your personal life. In reengineering, your entire focus is on process improvement. You constantly look for newer, better, faster, cheaper, and easier ways to accomplish the task and achieve the desired result.
   You begin reengineering your work by making a list of all the steps in a particular work process, from start to finish. You then set a goal to reduce the number of steps on the list by 30 percent the first time through. You will be amazed at how easy it is to accomplish this task the first time you do it.
6. The sixth R in simplification is reinventing. Here, you re-create yourself completely. In times of rapid change, you should be reinventing yourself and your job every six to twelve months. Practice zero-based thinking continually. Keep asking yourself, "If I were not doing it this way, knowing what I now know, would I start it up again this way?"Imagine that you are starting your job or your career over again. Is there anything you would do more of? Is there anything you would do less of? Is there anything you would start doing that you are not doing today? Is there anything you would stop doing altogether?
   You are going to have a variety of different jobs and positions throughout your life. Keep looking ahead and thinking about what you might like to do. Ask yourself, "What is my next job going to be?" What would you like it to be? Then ask yourself, "What is my next career going to be?" What would you like it to be? If you do not ask and answer these questions for yourself, someone else may come along and answer them for you.
   
7. The seventh R in simplification is regaining control. In this step, you set new goals and create new plans. You make new decisions and commit yourself to new actions. You accept complete responsibility and take charge of your life. You don't wait for good things to happen to you. You go out and make them happen. You take charge of your time and your life.

Six Ways to Reengineer Your Life and Work

1. Consolidate several tasks into one single task.
2. Assign several tasks to a single person rather than having them spread out among several people. This is called job compression by responsibility expansion.
3. Outsource particular tasks and have them done by other companies or individuals who specialize in that area.
4. Delegate tasks to other people or other departments.
5. Eliminate certain tasks altogether by determining that they are no longer necessary or essential to the finished product.
6. Change the order in which tasks are done to reduce bottlenecks and increase efficiency.

Continually review any complex task consisting of several steps and look for ways to reengineer it, simplifying it so that you can get it done faster and more efficiently than before.