I limit misbehavior by limiting options. Notice that I have no shelves. This discourages accumulating papers and encourages both elimination and immediate digital note-taking. When in doubt, I take a digital photograph of documents (I prefer this to a scanner, which consumes real estate)...

Constraints — a precursor to simplicity — aren’t always a bad thing. In fact, they’re often better than increasing options.

It troubled me that the question kept returning. I have come to believe this happened because, like a lot of other people of my generation, I had got it wrong. Yes, it takes a lifetime, or longer, to achieve simplicity. But I was not making much progress at all. The problem did not lie in my objectives. My objectives were lofty--never stooping to dishonesty, not compromising my principles, standing forward to defend the right and make corrections when things didn't go as they should. The problem was that pursuing these objectives was a project too much in behalf of myself. I could not see it then, but in a very subtle way my quest continued the very preoccupation with myself I was trying to overcome. And it twisted my goal of being true into the goal of being true to me, and being true to me, for my sake, often came before the interests and needs of others. Perhaps my way of pursuing my quest was like that of the prodigal son's elder brother, outwardly ever faithful in his duty but inwardly resentful when his brother received the public honor he thought should be his. My way showed itself as I responded in a hurried manner to a student's question in the hall--because, after all, I had important things to do; and in a conversation with a colleague, thinking of what I would say next instead of listening appreciatively; and in becoming inwardly indignant about a brother's false doctrine in priesthood meeting. No matter how rigorous, a quest to be true when undertaken on one's own behalf can never put to silence the disquieting voice that says, "You're not honest, simple, solid, and true. You're still in it for yourself. It's your own agenda that you care most about." Stubbornly setting out to be true cannot be glorious if I do not lift my focus higher than myself.

Competitors in conquest have overlooked the vital soul of Africa herself, from which emanates the true resistance to conquest. The soul is not dead, but silent, the wisdom not lacking, but of such simplicity as to be counted non-existent in the tinker's mind of modern civilization. Africa is of an ancient age and the blood of many of her peoples is as vernerable and as chaste as truth. What upstart race, sprung from some recent, callow century to arm itself with steel and boastfulness, can match in purity the blood of a single Masai Murani whos heritage may have stemmed not far from Eden? Its is not the weed that is corrupt; roots of the weed sucked first life from the genesis of earth and hold the essence of it still. Always the weed returns; the cultured plant retreats before it. Racial purity, true aristocracy, devolve not from edict, nor from rote, but from the preservation of kinship with the elemental forces and purposes of life whose understanding is not farther beyond the mind of a Native shepherd than beyond the cultured fumblings of a mortar-board intelligence.

Our life is frittered away by detail...simplify, simplify.

I apologize that this letter is so long. I did not have the time to make it short.

I don't believe in a simple life. I believe in simple motivations, but I believe in a complex life filled with projects that can help other people.

[B]e innovative. As we work to magnify our callings, we should seek the inspiration of the Spirit to solve problems in ways that will best help the people we serve. We have handbooks of instruction, and their guidelines should be followed. But within that framework are substantial opportunities to think, to be creative, and to make use of individual talents. The instruction to magnify our callings is not a command to embellish and complicate them. To innovate does not necessarily mean to expand; very often it means to simplify.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

You don't really understand something unless you can communicate it in a simple way.