I have been heavily influenced by the work of Steven Covey author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I first attended the course myself in 1987 and began teaching the material in 1989. Covey talks about being principle centered. When you violate a principle, there are natural law consequences. A principle could be your personal self selected philosophy that guides your life and behavior.

Covey was interviewed in this blog and gave the following description of a principle:

“To expand, a principle is a natural law like gravity. It’s different than a value. Values are subjective; principles are objective. Gravity… if you drop something, gravity controls. If I don’t tell you the truth, you won’t trust me-that’s a natural law. If I tell you the truth consistently and try to live it and apologize when I don’t and try to get back on track, then I’m living a natural law-repentance, making improvements, showing change.”

Today, I identified a new life principle called Eliminate Waste, Add More Good Stuff or affectionately called EWAMGS. In Japanese, the term Muda refers to waste. Let me define Stuff. As George Carlin once said, houses are just stuff with lids on it man.

I believe that much of life follows the principle of Eliminate Waste, and Add More Good Stuff. Let me explain.

In gardening, you pull weeds (Eliminate Waste from now on referred to as EW) and fertilize (Add More Good Stuff from now on referred to as AMGS).

In Twitter, you unfollow the people who haven’t followed you back (EW) and add more targeted followers (AMGS). By the way, I use Just Unfollow.

In new product development, you pull the plug on unsuccessful products (EW) and add more new promising products (AMGS) By the way, we need to fail faster and pull the plug faster than we do. Consequently, our priorities are polluted by distractions.

In meetings, you keep participants on track (EW) and discuss high priority challenges (AMGS). For a great iPad app that helps run simple, effective, targeted meetings, check out MyMeetingPro.

I guess you got the point. So how are you eliminating waste? What good stuff are you adding to your work life?