The Laws of Simplicity

Simplicity and Time Managemant/Time Savings are connected.

I recently read, "The Laws of Simplicity Design Technology Business Life" by John Maeda. The book is not what I expected. I thought the book would have a lot of ideas on how to make your life simpler; however, it was largely in praise of simplicity in technology products - also a laudable goal.

He did have ten laws of simplicity and three keys.

The first law was to reduce. This one is an obvious one for me, clearly reducing does create simplicity. Much of what he talked about was reducing it in design around devices in computer products; however the same thing clearly applies to life and time management.

The second law was organize, again this is obvious. His point was organization makes a system of many appear fewer. I have long been an advocate that organizational systems are what it is mostly about and the gist of my time leadership book is an organization system that works.

The third law was time, savings and time feel like simplicity. I have spent a lot of time of course on this one.

The fourth law was to learn, knowledge makes everything simpler. I had not thought that this was the reason to learn but there is sense to it. I am a life long learner so appreciate this law.

So far I am completely in sync with the author and the laws continue through differences (simplicity and complexity need each other).

Contexts: what lies of the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.

Emotion: more emotions are better than less.

Trust: in simplicity we trust.

Failure: some things can never be made simple.

And finally - subtract the obvious and add the meaningful.

This is a short and simple book with an abvious message for technology designers. "Just because you can add a funtion does not mean you should" or "keep it simple - it increases usefulness".