By decomposing the exact operator into three approximate operators I have broken the wavefield separation problem into three steps. At each step I must estimate at most two parameters to find those that best separate the different wavetypes. At no point do I attempt to find the full set of elastic constants for the near surface, I only estimate separation parameters. The approximation of the operator is valid over a wide enough range of slowness to be a useful wavefield decomposition process. The great virtue of this method is its simplicity. It is only slightly more complicated than the simple source and receiver rotation but it successfully addresses the problem of separating P-waves and S-waves in anisotropic media.