Doing More With Less
26 Jan 2010Did you know Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham was written on a bet? Neither did I, until I came across a collection of bronze statues of his characters at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, California. I snapped this picture of a plaque next to the statue for Green Eggs and Ham.
A full tour of all of the statues can be found at http://www.drseussart.com/hotelgallery.html, sadly most of the plaques are not included in the picture tour.
If you can’t read the plaque in the picture, Wikipedia has you covered…
Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss’s publisher, wagered $50 that Seuss could not write a book using only fifty different words.[2][3] The bet came after Seuss completed The Cat in the Hat, which used 225 words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_eggs_and_ham
Dr. Seuss created an American children’s classic on a bet where he was resource limited. Dr. Seuss, in this instance, embodied the mantra of “doing more with less.”
This concept of “doing more with less” isn’t new in the field of computers, and is one of the mantras of 37signals. A quick Google of 37signals more with less kicks up two great articles:
- Less as a competitive advantage: My 10 minutes at Web 2.0 - http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/less_as_a_competitive_advantage_my_10_minutes_at_web_20.php
- “Less is More” is Bullshit - http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/less_is_more_is_bullshit.php.
I’ll save you the trouble of a click through: “Less is More” implies that more is better. It’s not. Less is less. Less is just right. Less is better.
I’ve tried this technique of “doing more with less” in how I manage my time and the tasks I would like to accomplish at home. For example, before I would come home from work and have all the time in the world and a long list of things I would like to accomplish. I would keep thinking to myself, “I’ll get to writing that blog post, or playing that new Xbox game, I have hours before I need to be in bed.”
The rub was since I thought I had hours upon hours of time on my hands I would wind up not focusing on any one particular task, get sucked into something on TV, and never accomplish anything.
Every morning I would wake up and ask myself, “Where did all of the time go?”
Thus, in an attempt to live the “less is more” mantra I have restricted the amount of time I allow myself to spend on any one given task at night. I have restricted the amount of time I have to write, program, and play Xbox. By restrict the amount of time I give myself to complete a task I actually spend my time more wisely, accomplishing more than if I just gave myself all of the time in the world.
::Well, I’ve been productive writing and programming, I’m not sure you can call my Xbox time “productive”. However, now I actually finding myself playing my Xbox instead of it collecting dust under my TV. Productive? Microsoft might think so, my wife and dog are not so sure.::
The only thing keeping me from creating the next Green Eggs and Ham is to make a crazy bet with my publisher, which will happen, once I get a publisher.