This has been burning for months.
Communicating the essence of Value of Simple (VoS) has been and may always be one of my biggest challenges. Even some folks who have been around for a while still don't fully understand why Value of Simple exists and what we're trying to achieve.
It's time to fix this major issue.
But how?
That's what I've been thinking about…and I finally have an answer.
We're going to create a “manifesto-like” picture that boils down the raw spirit of VoS into a single image. The kind that someone can absorb in seconds and think, “Yeah. I get it…and I want that!”
I'm not a fan of the word manifesto and it doesn't seem right for this, so it's time to create the Value of Simple Declaration!
And I need your help turning this into reality.
Whether you subscribed to VoS last week, check in periodically, or have been with us since the beginning, I need your input on what we stand for.
Will you help us shape the future of this community and be a part of creating the Value of Simple Declaration?
The Inspiration
I'm constantly inspired by other people's ability to sum up their mission in a single picture. What I have in mind for the VoS Declaration is something in between the:
I like different aspects of each image and it's going to be really hard to get a graphic designer to pull off our Declaration. I know I certainly can't do this myself.
Before I turn this over to someone to get creative, I'm looking for your insight in the comments on other inspiring images that you think would be a good framework. They just need to incorporate:
- Multiple colors (but not a ton of them)
- A clean and simple design
- Different font sizes and positioning
A big goal is to evoke emotions like confidence, focus, and empowerment (among others). But the biggest goal is to communicate the essence here in the shortest time possible.
The Text
This is the hardest part and where I need your help the most (because you know I can get wordy).
Having a lot to say and an endless passion behind it doesn't help when I'm naturally, um, not so concise.
Out of our founding principles, I've chosen a shorter version of some that are the most meaningful for a picture of our mission.
They are:
- One Small Change Can Lead to Big Changes
- Life is Easier, Cheaper, and Happier with Less
- Always Know Why You Want to Change
- The Truly Important Doesn't Wait Until Tomorrow
- Change Is Faster and More Rewarding When Connected To a Larger Belief
However, this is not enough. To create a bigger impact – to generate a deep emotional connection – we're going to have to expand on the principles.
So I looked through everything written on VoS, my all-time favorite quotes, and other all-star content to come up with 27 additional statements that could be included.
I need you to tell us which of these statements:
- Speak to you the most
- Aren't relevant to our core mission
- Are worded awkwardly along with suggestions to improve them
I'm also looking for you to add to this list. I could be so deep inside my own head that I'm missing some critical components of our collective essence.
Here's what I have so far:
- Simplify, organize, and be money wise
- Self-awareness is taken, not given
- Knowledge and desire are nothing without action
- Be intentional
- Life's a giant experiment. Be your own mad scientist.
- Celebrate and share what makes you tick
- Many questions have the same answer: Simplify
- Freedom is needing little and wanting less
- Rocking life's basics is not sexy…but is incredibly rewarding
- Quest for your personal renaissance
- Find strength in vulnerability, generosity, and your true identity
- Curate your experiences and experience curating
- Invest in something other than yourself
- Life's not complicated. Be simple.
- Give up the “good life” to pursue a great life
- Personal revolutions aren't always civil wars
- Chaos fears the simple and organized
- Internal mastery beats external awards
- Silence is golden. Break it only when you have something more valuable.
- Life's classroom has no test subjects. Every moment counts.
- Learn so you can teach others
- Simplicity often is not easy
- Radiate peace but burn inside with passion
- Everyone plays by different rules. Respect them.
- Choose uncertainty over unhappiness
- Tell your story
- Internal motivation is self-reinforcing. External motivation is an endless search.
Whew! That's a lot to incorporate into a single image. It can be done, but should all that go into our Declaration?
I was also considering closing the Declaration or prominently featuring the text, “Join a community that gets you.” Because that's what we really need. We need to be part of communities where we don't have to constantly justify why we do everything, what happened in our past, and where we want our future to lead us.
So what am I missing? What do you see that you love or desperately want to change?
This is Your Chance
We're going to hang our hats on the Value of Simple Declaration for a looooong time. That means I want your fingerprints all over this and would love to be staggered by your insight.
This is our time to define.
This is your time to shine!
Let's create something that we can share with pride to the rest of the world!
Inspire us all with answers to these questions in your comments below!
- What are other stirring images that could be a blueprint for this Declaration?
- Which of the 27 statements do you like the most, which aren't relevant, and which ones could you wordsmith to have more power?
- What statements should be added to the current list of 27 (if any)?
General feedback is awesome too if you'd rather provide that.
Please use this moment to make an impact. I need you to be able to confidently state when I unveil the Declaration, “This is why I'm a member of the Value of Simple community!”
Get your fingerprints all over this and help create this Declaration!
—
This is a tough exercise – congrats for deciding to tackle it.
Be intentional
Freedom is needing little and wanting less
Give up the “good life” to pursue a great life
Personal revolutions aren’t always civil wars
These are my favorite. That last one especially. It was hard to pick though – lots of great statements to pick from.
I like giving myself tough exercises and challenging others to try them out too. Thanks for indulging me on this one Amit.
I love the idea of a “Declaration”
you have a LOT of good thoughts
the ones that are jumping out for me are:
Life’s a giant experiment. Be your own mad scientist.
Quest for your personal renaissance.
Radiate peace but burn inside with passion
Can’t wait to see what you come up with!
I don’t know what it is about the word “manifesto” Lori, but it just doesn’t fit for me. “Declaration” seemed like the perfect word because that’s what I’m trying to do for everyone: declare what our essence is so everyone can understand what steps they need to take to live it and achieve it.
I LOVE:
Internal Mastery beats external rewards
Choose uncertainty over unhappiness
Knowledge and desire are nothing without action
Personal Revolutions aren’t always civil wars.
I feel like 6,9,12,17, 20 and 22 are sort of clunky and lack punch. I don’t know whether to drop them or rewrite them, though.
I don’t have any ideas for images, but I can’t wait to see what the more creative people come up with.
Yeah, some of these statements are still clunky Shanna. If a number of people agree on which ones don’t really work and we can’t come up with a better way to state it, I’ll probably just cut them. A lack of clarity is something I can’t afford this time.
Hi Joel:
I like your use of declaration as well. I am sort of tired of hearing the words manifesto, epic, renegade, etc. in blogging.
Two other manifestos/declarations to get inspiration from:
http://shop.holstee.com/pages/about
(the one that started them all)
From your list above, I really like 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 15, 17, 18, 19, 25 and 26.
I would also consider on 1 or 2 fonts. You can bold them or change font size, but when you have lot of different fonts, it looks messy and not very simple 🙂
– Wendy
Hi Wendy,
Thanks for the links to the other images. As for fonts, it will be mostly ASAP which is the primary font I use for all my non-paragraph fonts on Value of Simple and Start Investing with $100. I just love ASAP!
Here are the ones really resonating with me…
5. Life’s a giant experiment. Be your own mad scientist.
8. Freedom is needing little and wanting less.
25. Choose uncertainty over unhappiness.
There are a lot of good ones in the list there, as well — in fact, none I would take out — but these struck me most.
There’s a lot of hype over the dream of freedom in the entrepreneur / blogger space, and your definition turns the discussion on its head. I love it.
Thanks for being the first to answer whether any of the statements need to get chopped. The comments seem all over the place right now, but that’s what I get for encourage a diverse set of voices to speak up here. 🙂
When you want to conduct some giant mad scientist experiments that increase freedom and uncertainty, let me know Michael!
The biggest thing I notice about these declarations is that really strong action statements feel the most inspiring. So “Tell your story” feels a lot better than “Internal Motivation is self-reinforcing.” I think with some of these, you’d be best served by asking “why” a few times to find the core of the issue. For example, “Internal motivation is self-reinforcing….” – could that actually be a relative of “Know why you want to change.”? They’re certainly related – is there a way to combine them into one really strong statement?
I love where you’re going here though, overall. I think it’s great to offer people such a clear and succinct way to understand what VoS is all about.
I’m see themes in the feedback Sarah. Some of these statements are related and are borderline duplicates. I’ve already consolidated a couple and made another couple action-oriented. The primary goal with this Declaration isn’t to inspire, but rather to get people to take action. It sounds backwards (how can I get people to take action without inspiring them?), yet I want folks who aren’t inspired by what Value of Simple stands for to still feel like taking action on the things we believe.
I still have a ways to do, but it’s now a little less thanks to you.
The ones that seem to resonate most with me are:
Quest for your personal renaissance
Find strength in vulnerability, generosity, and your true identity
Choose uncertainty over unhappiness
The other statement are all good … I don’t think I’d strike any of them. Maybe some of them can be merged together to create an even higher principle.
Hey Patti,
Merging statements is a theme I’m picking up on in other comments. 27 of them does seem like a lot and I didn’t intend to end up with all 27 in their original state. Thanks for weighing in and giving me more confidence in the ultimate direction this takes.
I’d suggest having a carefully selected list of statements that are very pertinent to simplicity. Ideally the layout would be simple and uncluttered, rather than chaotic to visually convey the value of simple. If there are too many general statements the simplicity message will be diluted and the declaration will lack punch and focus.
For these reasons I like things like:
Simplify, organize, and be money wise
Be intentional
Many questions have the same answer: Simplify
Freedom is needing little and wanting less
Life’s not complicated. Be simple.
Give up the “good life” to pursue a great life
Chaos fears the simple and organized
Choose uncertainty over unhappiness
Hi Linda,
I do realize the need to consolidate as I read through these great comments. Although I’m a minimalist and love simple things, I was hoping the Declaration would have some visually appealing aspects to it. Layout of the text (and over what kind of background/image) is a struggle for me and that’s why I need someone else to do it. I’m glad a number of the statements resonated with you! Thanks for offering your insight. I have a feeling you’ll see your input in the final version.
Wow, Joel. So many great ones, I had trouble getting it down to a few. These are my favorites because I feel you have worded them in a unique way that doesn’t sound “just like everyone else” – my FAVE FAVE is #9.
2.Self-awareness is taken, not given
7.Many questions have the same answer: Simplify
9.Rocking life’s basics is not sexy…but is incredibly rewarding
14.Life’s not complicated. Be simple.
15.Give up the “good life” to pursue a great life
17.Chaos fears the simple and organized
I’m glad you had trouble picking which ones were your favorite. I guess that means I did something right in my original vision for this. 🙂
Some of these statements aren’t original though and will intentionally feel familiar. For example, the “Life’s not complicated. Be simple.” statement is a variation on a Confucius quote. But most of these are just “Joelisms” and I want them to come off as different at the very least.
Good Luck with the declaration,
I think this sums up what I think VOS is all about. “Simplify, organize, and be money wise”
I think your big challenge Joel is to simplify so I would try and keep it as simple as possible
Hi Ciara,
It’s nice to feel your presence here!
I’d say you’re spot on about simplifying. That’s always a big challenge and I’m always fighting against complicating influences for what I create. I’m glad you think “simplify, organize, and be money wise” sums up what we’re doing nicely. It makes for a great alternate tagline to “liberate your time, money, and talent” and sometimes feels more like the essence of Value of Simple than anything else.
I hope you like the final result when I unveil it. You’re someone who knows a thing or three about what I’m talking about and your opinion is valuable.
You have plenty of feedback about favorites and improvements and the like, plus you’ve already heard some of my thoughts on the raw materials for this declaration. I think you’re making huge strides and that the work you’re putting into distilling VoS into this declaration is so important.
Something I noticed, which you may or may not want to take into consideration when working on sequencing/layout: some of your points are calls to action (Tell your story), whereas others are more like principles (Self-awareness is taken, not given). It might be interesting to split them up along those lines, or to alternate the two.
Can’t wait to see where this goes!
I hadn’t thought about sequencing yet and I’m glad you brought this up. I don’t know if grouping “like” elements would be better than alternating between different types. It’s another thing to run past my graphic designer (once I actually get one confirmed to do the work). Good thinking Erin!
I agree with Erin – sequencing + reordering makes sense.
If you are hoping to streamline and reduce (simplify) the list, numbers 16, 23 and 26 could be deleted in my opinion.
Numbers 1, 9 and 10 are my favorites; they are the reason I keep coming back and reading your blog, your tweets your FB posts.
Hi Geralin,
I’m happy to report I’ve cut down the number of statements to 21 by eliminating some and combining others. I think I can cut them down even further and make the remaining ones have more “oomph!” You’re offering some great insight lately (here and other places I find you online) and I appreciate it!