The 1-1-1 Method to Simplify Absolutely Anything

Learn how to cut straight to the core of a business, project or idea you're working on to give you the best chance of success.

I adore simplicity.

It is way harder to cut and refine and crystallise something down into its core than it is to pile complexity on top of confusion.

I’ll happily close up any book I’m reading that starts to feel like an author has tried really hard to insert overly-complicated phrasing, because I know that the real genius is in simplification.

One of the books that’s a masterclass in using clear language well is Lord of the Flies, and there’s a quote in it that I loved from the first time I read it as a pimply adolescent.

It comes directly from the omniscient narrator when one of the boys, Piggy, suggest they build a fire on the rocks or sand, instead of on the mountain. All of the other boys are very relieved with the suggestion and William Golding, as the narrator, writes in plain English:

“The greatest ideas are the simplest.”

Simplicity is often underrated, but how easy something is to communicate has a direct correlation to how far it spreads. If it takes you a few tortured minutes to describe how something works, how can you ever expect it to pass on to another person?

I began my career as a music journalist for Rolling Stone being forced by my editor to write 50-word album reviews, and quickly realised that it was way easier to write 500 words than it was to cut and edit until there was not one wasted word. But it was an important lesson.

In his book Simplicity, philosopher Edward de Bono writes that in order to be creative we must break the complex down into manageable and recognisable parts (he also argues with a straight face that the word ‘simplifying’ is way too complicated and should be replaced with the much easier ‘simping’).

They simplify a lot in Hollywood, where every movie you’ve ever seen is assigned a ‘logline’, a sentence that sums it up. It’s called this as a throwback to old Hollywood when large studios who bought lots of scripts would keep a ‘log book’ that contained a concise summary of every movie they owned.

Loglines are now serious business, and are sometimes the difference between content being commissioned or not. If you can’t sum it up in a simple sentence, then how is a viewer going to explain the show to their partner as they’re sitting on the couch trying to think what show to watch next?

Some of the most iconic and successful TV shows in history are instantly recognisable just by their loglines. Take these:

A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated RMS Titanic.

A pragmatic palaeontologist visiting an almost complete theme park is tasked with protecting a couple of kids after a power failure causes the park’s cloned dinosaurs to run loose.

A mockumentary on a group of typical office workers, where the workday consists of ego clashes, inappropriate behaviour and tedium.

If you correctly guessed those shows were Titanic, Jurassic Park and The Office then you can already see the power in making something super easy to understand in one succinct sentence.

There is a real artform to simplifying anything that you’re working on - a business, a project, or an idea - to its brutal core. To do this you can use a technique I like to call the 1-1-1 method, and now there’s an added twist of using modern tools to make it even easier.

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One Useful Thing for October 2024: The 1-1-1 Method

With every big project you’re working on, you should break it down until you can describe it in 1 page, then 1 paragraph, then 1 sentence. That is what the 1-1-1 method is in its simplest form, and here’s exactly how to do it:

Step 1: Write what your project is on 1 page.

The first thing to do is write out what your project is all about. Sometimes even summarising an idea onto a single page can be difficult. What should you leave out and what to include? You ideally want your one-page summary to be an explainer that clearly describes what your project is as though you’re telling someone who has never heard of it before.

Occasionally you might have to write reams of information before editing it down to one page, but a good place to start is the Five Ws: who, what, where, when and why. If you’re having trouble knowing where to start begin with each of these as a guide to writing your idea down on one single page.

Who: Who is the target market for your project?

What: What is your project all about?

Where: In what location will your project take place?

When: What is the timeline for it?

Why: What are the main reasons you are doing this project?

If you need to, you can also add ‘How’ as the final prompt to get you writing about your idea, ie. How will this project actually work?

Start writing your answer each question and you’ll soon have a page full of your own words. Once you’ve written each of the Five Ws, move the text around the page so you begin with the most important information. Edit the words until you have a simple one-page document, or around 500 - 700 words, on exactly what your project is.

Step 2: Simplify it into 1 paragraph.

Now that you’ve got a full page of writing about what your project is, edit it down into just one paragraph of information. If you’ve already ordered your full page with the most important info at the start, begin with that as a base and add in only the parts of other paragraphs that are absolutely essential. Cut down any unnecessary words (this is hard! I know!), and keep editing and throwing out anything that’s not needed.

At the end, you should be left with just a single paragraph that sums up your project, business or idea.

Step 3: Simplify it into 1 sentence.

Think of this as your elevator pitch: if you had just a few seconds in an elevator to explain your project to someone, what would you say? Really observe how you communicate your idea to someone for the first time. Is there a clear way of saying it? What sentences or phrasing do people react to the most?

To cut your pargraph down, take out any words or concepts that are repetitive, clarify anything an eight-year-old wouldn’t understand and edit out unnecessary words with confidence.

The 1-1-1 method, or describing a project in 1 page, 1 paragraph and 1 sentence can be a very enlightening exercise that you should carve time out to do.

However - and here it comes - there’s actually a new way of doing this that can also be enlightening in other ways, and we need to talk about the elephant that’s waddled into every room of our lives right now: AI.

Sometimes a new technology comes along that hits you in the guts with how powerful it’s going to be over the next few years. After ChatGPT took the world by surprise two years ago, a few months ago Google quietly released a new tool that’s one of the most stunningly good AI tools available today.

It’s called NotebookLM and it’s an extremely powerful new tool that is like having a virtual research assistant trained in information that’s only important to you. The way it works is that you feed it information related to something you’re working on - that might be research papers, PDFs, websites, documents - and it synthesises all the information for you to poke, prod and question it however you want.

Let me give you an example. I uploaded, as a test, a PDF of my new book Work Backwards. It was published in Australia 6 months ago, and will be published in the UK and USA next month. (As a side note, to celebrate that, for a limited time you can download and read the entire first chapter of Work Backwards for free right here!)

But back to NotebookLM, you can add up to 50 different sources, then ask it any question you want. I’ve asked it questions like “what are the main themes from this book?” to “what are some great opinion article headlines I could write about this”. But one of the most useful? I asked it to do the 1-1-1 method, and the summary of the book in 1 page was actually so on point. Not quite as good as my own summary, but an excellent place to start.

To give you a sense, this is how it summarised the book in 1 paragraph:

This book, Work Backwards, challenges the traditional work-money-life order and proposes a reversed approach: life-money-work. The author, Tim Duggan, argues that modern society's emphasis on work as the primary focus has led to an overworked, disengaged, and apprehensive workforce. Drawing inspiration from his personal experiences and research, Duggan advocates for a paradigm shift that prioritises individual well-being and fulfilment. Through the concept of "enough," he explores the idea of determining the amount of money, success, and possessions necessary for happiness. The book provides practical tools and strategies, such as remote working, flexible schedules, career breaks, and the mindful integration of artificial intelligence, to help individuals design a more meaningful and balanced life. By creating a MAP (Meaning, Anchors, Priorities) and knowing their "enough," readers are empowered to take control of their lives and work backwards to design a fulfilling and joyful existence.

I mean, it pushes the definition of a paragraph, but it’s a pretty good start, huh? Next I asked NotebookLM to summarise the book in 1 sentence:

"Work Backwards" encourages readers to reject the conventional prioritisation of work and instead determine their personal "enough" in terms of money and meaning in order to design a fulfilling life on their own terms.

I mean, I rate that.

As a last, final test (and this is expert-level 1-1-1 method right here), I asked it to summarise the entire book, all 70,000 words, into a single word. And this is what is said:

Prioritisation.

This single word was not what I would have immediately used, but it’s actually what the book is about if I really hard to condense it down. Consider me impressed.

After you finish reading this edition of OUTLET, you should go and play around with NotebookLM and think about how you can use it today. I can already see exactly how it’s going to be help me scour through research papers to find nuggets and summaries when I’m writing my next book, and you can use it right to help you complete the 1-1-1 method. You just need to create, or gather, the original material to begin with.

Of course, there are a myriad of copyright, legal and moral issues with some of how AI is operating, and they still need to be addressed, but I’m going to leave you with something even more wild.

One of NotebookLM’s experimental features is the ability to turn whatever reference material you give it into a ‘podcast’ episode where two AI ‘hosts’ discuss whatever you’ve uploaded. To give you an example, below you can listen to what happened when I uploaded a PDF of Work Backwards into NotebookLM, then waited a few minutes.

In that time it read the entire book, pulled out the key insights and then played it back as an, admittedly, entertaining discussion between two very human-sounding robots. And it’s totally wild, albeit a tad creepy.

Listen to it here:

Robots Discuss 'Work Backwards'

AI can help us do some tasks, like provide a different perspective on the 1-1-1 method, but we shouldn’t rely on it completely. The future is one where robots and humans work together to create some pretty cool things. And the future is already here, are you ready for it?

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I’m writing this from Palma de Mallorca, with the soft Autumn light streaming through the window. This season is just the best on the island, which is way I’m so excited to be staying still here for the last few months leading up to Christmas. And by staying still, I mean of course there’s space for weekend trips to Sardinia, Ibiza and mainland Spain. Oh, and London. Ok, ok, so maybe I won’t be as still as I thought…

This is the final reminder that pre-orders for the international edition of Work Backwards are open right now until it’s published on November 7 (um, exciting much!). You can pre-order it in the UK and Europe here, and pre-order it in the US here. It’s also available to buy, read and listen to right now in Australia and New Zealand here.

If you’ve enjoyed this edition of OUTLET, please forward this email or share this newsletter with just one friend who you think would also enjoy receiving One Useful Thing each month.

Until next month,

- Tim