Making real progress in one direction is always better than making tiny progress in many. That’s the whole idea behind the book Essentialism, which inspired this post.
QUOTE
“Purity of heart is to will one thing.” – Søren Kierkegaard
We often believe we can do everything, but the truth is, we just can’t. This has much to do with the overwhelming number of options, opportunities, and information we have today, along with the social pressure to embrace them all and avoid missing out (FOMO).
We end up missing the point and spreading ourselves too thin, doing a lot, yet accomplishing nothing meaningful.
Clarity
In order to make real progress and focus on what is important, you must have a clear goal. What is it that you want to achieve? What is the one thing that will make it worth it?
Once you know what it is, you can start filtering things out. You can say “no” to distractions, more often and faster, and “yes” to what matters, more slowly and stronger.
The focus should always be to make progress on what matters to you, and that means doing the right things, the right way, at the right time.
Without a clear goal and the habit of consciously choosing to pursue only what aligns with it, other people will make those choices for you—and you’ll end up living a life that isn’t yours.
If you worry about burning bridges by saying no, you’ll find that people actually respect your time and energy more when you start valuing them yourself.
A timeless idea
I couldn’t help but notice how this idea of pursuing less thourgh clarity is not new. It has been around for centuries. If we think about how the Zen Philosophy seeks for peace and presence by removing physical and mental clutter, I can see a clear connection.
Other practices share this same principle—some rooted in Zen like mindfulness and minimalism, others like Stoicism that arrived at similar conclusions on their own. They all focus on what is essential and let go of the rest. They emphasize living intentionally, with focus and presence. These ideas have gained popularity in recent years, likely as a response to the overwhelming noise of modern life as I mentioned before.
Speaking of modern times, Steve Jobs was deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism, which shaped his design philosophy at Apple. One could argue that much of Apple’s brand value comes from this focus on simplicity and clarity—an old idea resurfacing in a new context in the form of a trillion-dollar company. In other words, there is tangible value in doing less but better.
This last example leads me to my own field and how I see this idea applied in software development, or even tech in general.
The pattern I keep seeing
When reflecting on this topic, the first thing that comes to my mind is one of the core principles of the Unix Philosophy: make each program do one thing, and do it well.
So I realized that you can apply this concept to software as well, keeping things simple and focused on what is essential. This became my personal mantra when approaching any project, whether it’s coding, writing, or whatever else. Is like a meditation exercise to keep asking myself: “What is essential here? What can I remove without losing the core value?”
I tried to do this in this very post, by keeping it short and to the point, focusing on the main idea without adding unnecessary fluff. I hope I succeeded.
Drop all the noise and extra things that don’t add up to the goal you are trying to achieve. This can mean not implementing a feature you wanted to but no one asked for it, or refactoring a complex piece of code into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Bottom line is: it doesn’t matter what we are talking about—so far, for me, it seems that doing less but better and focusing on what is essential is a universal truth.