Simplicity Rules

A few months ago, this video about RSS (the technology behind my automatic updates) made the rounds. It describes the process “in plain english” using a very barebones technique they call “Paperworks.”

Watch it here:

The video’s creator describes why their method works

“The essence of the Paperworks format is simplicity - bringing down the bar of technology and presentation to it’s most basic level. By doing away with fancy graphic and soundtrack options, we can make room to think more deeply about the idea and concept that will convey the message in the simplest way we can.”

See also: Constraints and the four day work week.

My dad is a technician. With a degree in mechanical engineering, he knows his nuts and bolts. So, he devised a puzzle that fooled fellow technicians, but was solvable by those blissfully ignorant of his mechanical ways. The solution required someone to not think like a technician.

Dad put a split washer on a bolt, and topped it off with a nut. Then, he welded the bolt to the nut. It doesn’t take much of a weld to keep the bolt stationary. The object of the puzzle is to remove the washer, which appears impossible, and it would be if not for the next step.

Dad cut the nut and the part of the bolt it is connected to from the rest of the bolt. Using a threading tool, he created a new connection point, so that his nut/bolt piece was together the new end cap. Removing the washer from this puzzle is as easy as turning the bolt, just as when there is no immovable weld.

Here’s Dad’s story of one particular technician who tried to solve his puzzle:

“Mom took one to school and just tossed it onto the principal’s desk, saying that the object was to get the washer off. She came back much later and he disgustedly gave it back to her unsolved. She handed it to a woman collegue, perhaps his secretary, with the same directions. She just barely looked at it, gave it a twist and off it came.

The moral of the story, as we used to tell it, was that the man’s experience with how unmovable anything that has been welded is, welded his mind shut too. He was so sure that the weld could not be broken that he didn’t even try. Whereas the woman, who had no such welding experience, her mind still open to the fact that anything with a nut on it must turn, simply turned it and it opened.”

When I first started my WiFi site, it was going to have an accompanying publication. In fact, it had one issue, which ended up being a lot of work.

The vision, however, was to connect the real world, where Portlanders were surfing in coffee shops, to the online world these people were simultaneously inside. I wanted to shrink the web to this subset of laptoperati–participants in the Portland WiFi culture.

A recent NYT article all but declared online purchasing to be dead, because it isn’t growing at the rates it once was. But, as Greg Sterling says, there’s a huge growth opportunity in retailers using their websites to encourage purchases offline.

It’s another way of making the Offline-online connection. Newspapers need it. Local retailers need it. And websites with any local focus could benefit. Look at dating sites now (or, BBSes back in the day) for some examples of connecting people to each other. Chipotle does a good job of getting me from a site visitor to a burrito eater.

For now, an offline-online connection is a nice extra. Soon, it will be an important differentiator between successful local sites and those that continue to struggle.

One of the best things I’ve done in the past year, is get a good to-do list that I can really count on. That is different than alleviating stress by sitting down and making yet another list. A good list helps me let go of the to-do and know that I’ll see it later.

I have been using Hiveminder, which lets me tag to-dos with keywords so I can group all my like tasks. That way, I can let go of everything else, just for awhile, so I can focus only on what is important. And no matter where I am, if I think of something new, I can add it from any phone and then move on, let go.

The idea of letting go is a major topic in Mark Hurst’s Bit Literacy:

“When bits are infinite, the only way to thrive is to pick up the eraser. This is letting the bits go: always looking for reasons to delete, defer, or filter bits that come our way. Anything else allows the bits to pile up. Success comes when we get the square empty. Thus another way to describing bit literacy is the constant attempt, in a world of infinite bits, to achieve emptiness.”

If you’re ready to achieve emptiness, start with your inbox. Email is the nerve center of my life and probably yours, too. The key to email, as well as everything (to-dos, photos, news, blogs, and more) covered in Bit Literacy, is letting go. It’s the only productivity tip you need.

Think like a user. That’s the basis of any good approach to usability.

The trouble is that it has become meaningless. It is easy to say I am considering user experience, but how do I hold myself to the standard?

I actively try not to think like a technician. I try to remove from my brain the knowledge of how web sites and applications are made. When I jump too quickly from problem to technical solution, I am grasping at what is easiest to implement, not what would be best for the user. Sometimes I have to ask, simpler for whom?

Technical knowledge can be a burden. It can cause one to see a problem from the wrong direction. Having a non-technician plan user experience is sometimes a perfect fix. If he doesn’t know the guts of how hard a perfect solution is, he isn’t tempted to tweak the user experience in the name of easy coding.

On the other hand, the non-technician might hand a web developer something unnecessarily difficult or impossible. It’s not his fault, because he doesn’t know a database or Javascript or whatever works that way. I think that is a pretty good trade-off.

Like the incrementalist and completionist, the non-technician and technician can work together to make something great. And if you’re patient and focused, you can even play both roles.

Independence Day seems like an appropriate time to make an announcement about the future of our country. I’ve been surprised at how early my fellow candidates have started their ‘08 campaigns. Today, I am leaping to the forefront.

I have formed an exploratory committee and I plan to run for President of the United States in 2016, my first election of eligibility.

Be sure to check out my campaign site and add me as a friend/contact on every single social network that exists.

If you’re into patriotism, be sure to see why Bowlers Unite for America.

I’ll start out by saying I’m an incrementalist. It’s at the heart of my simple-loving nature. Michael Lopp writes about the two personalities for problem solving.

“Incrementalists

…are realists. They have a pretty good idea of what is achievable given a problem to solve, a product to ship.”

If you have a problem today, find the easiest (but hopefully still elegant) fix. Avoid over-engineering the solution. Step by step, you’ll get to something good without making yourself crazy aiming for perfection.

Or, so says the incrementalist.

“Completionists

…are dreamers. They have a very good idea of how to solve a given problem and that answer is SOLVE IT RIGHT.”

Take that same problem today, and realize that if you don’t solve every aspect of it, you’ll be fixing it over and over again. The Completionist wants to fix it once.

As an Incrementalist, I probably will be frustrated with the time-wasting Completionists most of the time. But as Lopp identifies, we need both personalities, and the two aren’t that far off in their intentions.

“The co-worker identified (correctly) the original problem. Why in the world don’t they see the value of my solution? The reason is, this is a Incrementalist doing battle with a Completionist. This isn’t the battle of wrong versus right, it’s the battle of right versus right. Bizarre.”

Read the whole essay to find out more. Which type are you?

via Joel Spolsky