Why Simpletom?
Simpletom is my peripatetic journey, looking for wealth and meaning in simplicity.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. I like fast cars, exotic holidays and steak. At least I think I thought I did.
With a post as often as I can manage, my aim is to give my readers a humorous, honest and mostly random coverage of my attempts to simplify and build new businesses.
I promise to try my best. I often fail. I often contradict myself. Sometimes I sound disgustingly earnest. Some days simplicity annoys the hell out of me.
Mostly, blogging is one of the greatest and most rewarding things I’ve done and it helps me better understand what I actually think, so I’m going to keep going, if you don’t mind.
My TEDx is a fairly good summary of where I’ve got to with it all. I’ll likely change my mind a few more times, if I’m lucky.
About Me
At 30, after two business degrees and a decade working as an ‘award-winning’ entrepreneur, I found myself questioning the very roots of a momentum that had propelled me from lazy student to business ‘success’. I felt a failure, in spite of my achievements. Despite being recognised as the ‘Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ and the pleasure associated with annoying my sisters, who’d renamed me ‘golden balls’ – I wasn’t happy. So I unwound and took to the road.
This blog follows my return journey – coming to remember what is most important in life.
[Update aged 40: this is all still true, except now my sisters call me diamond-encrusted balls and my nieces call me ‘Uncool Tom’. I’m not sure why my sisters are still convinced of my trajectory, given I made mostly all the same mistakes all over again in my 30s.]
Simpletom elsewhere
- Brilliant Ethiopia and Brilliant Uganda
- The not very simple Kenyan home that I built
- Blue Ventures – the first company I started… I’m no longer involved, but I’m still a proud Dad.
Simpletom 
I am with you Tom on the simple outlook; nothing is easier to sell, buy, consume or share than a simple, effective and useful idea, concept or product.
However I am struck not so much by the difficulty of achieving the simple rather by the tendency for complexity. Complexity has become a byword for intelligence, superiority, value, hierarchy. Developed societies seem to have generated a culture of complexity through which to exert status, project power and hide deceits. This is true in civil service and private commerce and in both spheres it acts like a caste system to numb progress.
If this strikes you too, how about a joyride through complexity?
Nick
Hello Tom,
I have been an advocate of simple living all my life, 51 now and the habit is deeply ingrained, simplicity brings joy and complication is a weight which usually becomes a misery.
I haven’t read all of your posts but I wonder what you think of the accusation that choosing a simple existence in the manner that you and I have is a privilege of the wealthy?
I travelled for decades before having children, roaming about apparently aimlessly but with great joy mostly. Now my family have grown I find myself in this interesting position of slipping back into my former life to continue being myself again. Now I see it as a sort of pilgrimage.
Good luck with it all!
Drew.