How to subtract when things aren't adding up

"To attain knowledge, add things every day; to attain wisdom, subtract things every day." Lao Tzu

It is ironic that all our life we focus on addition - adding more figures to our salary, adding more stuff to our homes, adding more of everything that we can. But most of our happiest moments happen when we 'have things' that money cannot buy for example being with people we love, exploring natural beauty and enjoying clean air and fresh water. 

There are significant examples in our own life, in the lives of many others, in business, and in design about the power of simplicity - the value of less. So, this post is about subtraction - it is about my own attempts to edit my life and hopefully inspire the same thinking in my readers.

Here's a story about my tryst with subtraction. It is a simple story but it is my story. I have always been a heavy luggage variety when I travel. Recently, I had to travel for a week and my immediate tendency was to add everything to my luggage. However, this time around we (my spouse and I) added a constraint to the travel - no checked baggage. That constraint immediately forced me to think small and pack less. When packing, I focused on the essentials, packed for multi-use, and during the trip did some laundry. The luggage was much lesser but I didn't miss anything on my trip. Result was that there were no delays associated with waiting to pick up the luggage on both the legs of our journey and we were out of the airport, stress-free, in less than 30 minutes! Unexpected and so fulfilling. However, this first-time editing of luggage wasn't easy. My first instinct when I started to pack was still to add stuff. But then I stepped back and consciously removed and re-planned. They say all big changes have humble beginnings; it is true. This was a small step towards packing less for travel but it led to big leaps in my head about trying to get more with less. My efforts to do more with less continue.

Here are some articles and talks that helped me get started. 

• A wonderful talk by Graham Hill on why 'less is more' and how having less makes us more happy. Graham says we must edit ruthlessly, think small and make multifunctional. 
• The article titled "Six Simple Rules For Doing Better With Less" talks about Matt May’s stimulating new book, The Laws of Subtraction, which offers six rules, and scores of examples, of doing better with less. 

1.    Law #1: What Isn’t There Can Often Trump What Is  -“When you reduce the number of doors that someone can walk through, more people walk through the one that you want them to walk through.” — SCOTT BELSKY, founder and CEO of Behance and author ofMaking Ideas Happen

2.    Law #2: The Simplest Rules Create the Most Effective Experience -“Keeping it simple isn’t easy. By exploiting subtraction in innovation, we’ve been able to create an environment of freedom and creativity that allows us to thrive.” — BRAD SMITH, CEO, Intuit

3.    Law #3: Limiting Information Engages the Imagination -“Subtraction can mean the difference between a highly persuasive presentation and a long, convoluted, and confusing one. Why say more when you can say less?” — CARMINE GALLO, author of The Apple Experience

4.    Law #4: Creativity Thrives Under Intelligent Constraints -“Here’s the key to the conundrum for managers who want to stoke the innovation fire: That close cousin of scarcity, constraint, can indeed foster creativity.” —TERESA AMABILE, author of The Progress Principle

5.    Law #5: Break Is the Important Part of Breakthrough -“If you kill the butterflies in your stomach, you’ll kill the dream. Embrace the feeling. Save the butterflies.” — JONATHAN FIELDS, author of Uncertainty

6.    Law #6: Doing Something Isn’t Always Better Than Doing Nothing -“When we’re faced with the greatest odds against us, often we need to edit rather than add.” — CHIP CONLEY, cofounder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and author of Emotional Equations

• A post on The Power of Subtraction that lists five laws of subtraction for business leaders. But the concepts apply to everything.  

I read this somewhere, “When things aren’t adding up in your life, start subtracting.” It cannot be said more simply than that. All one needs is some conscious focus and the willingness to let go. There are so many things we can subtract from our lives on a daily basis - chaos and clutter, useless activities and meetings, unproductive conversations, negative thoughts and negative people, bad habits, etc. The list is endless. 

We have the power to subtract to make life more meaningful. I have realized that I may not be able to let go of everything in my life but I am not longer afraid of making small changes because these do have big impacts.

The Design Thinking Mindset

'Design Thinking' is a mindset. It is an attitude towards design and the process of thinking about it. As per wikipedia, "Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analyzing knowledge, and positing solutions in the design and planning fields. As a style of thinking, it is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context."

To me, the key words for design thinking are empathy, creativity and rationality. It is the balance of these three aspects that helps solve design problems. 

The design thinking process is based on a deep understanding of the audience needs and current challenges (empathy), ideation, thinking out-of-the-box and collaboration (creativity) and finally, experimentation & analytical thinking (rationality). 

Design Thinking is different from other approaches of thinking because it focuses on the process instead of the product. Put another way, it focuses on solving problems but doesn't start with any particular solution in mind. It is also a balancing act between the logical and the creative aspects of solving a problem. While a logical thinking process works well when we have existing knowledge to build on, a creative thinking process is required to create new knowledge and to construct problems differently than we have done before. Design thinking helps us walk that tightrope and in the process enables us to balance logical and creative thinking. Tim Brown of IDEO has written that design thinking is “a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.”

The design thinking process has some suggested steps or phases. From Wikipedia: Herbert Simon, in the "Sciences of the Artificial" (MIT Press, 1969) has defined "design" as the "transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones" (p. 55). Design thinking is, then, always linked to an improved future. Unlike critical thinking, which is a process of analysis and is associated with the 'breaking down' of ideas, design thinking is a creative process based around the 'building up' of ideas. There are no judgments in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation. Wild ideas are welcome, since these often lead to the most creative solutions. Everyone is a designer, and design thinking is a way to apply design methodologies to any of life's situations. Simon goes on to describe a seven step process: Define, Research, Ideate, Prototype, Choose, Implement, Learn.

Whether the process has five, seven or eleven steps - the design thinking process can be discomforting especially if the individuals/teams are more comfortable with unambiguous and structured approaches. Creativity, imagination and ideation are the underlying themes and nothing is wrong until proven so by means of experimentation and validation. Experiencing the process is the best way to learn more about it. 

The concept of design thinking is not limited to the learning design/training community. More and more businesses and institutions have adopted this mindset with a hope to solve business challenges and be more competitive. 

To learn more about the process of design thinking, here are my top recommendations:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking - The process of problem-solving using design thinking

• http://www.unusualleading.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/HBR-on-Design-Thinking.pdf - Design Thinking by Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO - An excellent article published in HBR on how thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services, processes—and even strategy.

• http://designthinkingforeducators.com/ - The Design Thinking Toolkit for Educators - This contains the process and methods of design, adapted specifically for the context of education. 

• http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2009-11-03/how-business-is-adopting-design-thinkingbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice - Some fantastic stories about how companies are implementing the design thinking approach to become more successful

The 5 W's of Project Planning

I recently attended a 2-day workshop in the context of planning for a big project. It was a good refresher class on the basics of project planning. Here's a summary of what I learned and relearned, different words and some different techniques - but the classic theme - the 5Ws of Project Planning:

1) The WHAT - what are we doing? Other questions to ask are what will be the desired outcome of this project? what are the key deliverables of the project?- It did take the facilitator to ask us this question atleast five times before we were able to articulate 'what we were doing in the project'. The answer to this question is not as simple as it seems especially when there are multiple people working on a project and even more stakeholders that matter. Everyone has to be aligned to the answer of this question. 

2) The WHY  - why are we doing this? why am I personally involved in this project? why am I driven to do this? - I really liked this question. It forced me to think about my personal reason to be involved in the project and how my work was going to make a difference. I think it is a very inspiring and motivating question to ask of everyone on the project team. It is also a question that can help get others onboarded to the project. The answer to this question is what will help you continue your good work on the project!

3) The WHO - who are concerned about this project? who are the key stakeholders who can impact?  - These are some of the usual questions about the stakeholders of a project. But a good way to deal with the 'many' is to prioritize and focus on the top 5. Identify the stakeholders whose opinions really matter and who can critically impact the project positively or negatively. Bottom-line,  you cannot make everyone happy all of the time. Identify the ones that you really want to make happy at the end of the project.

4) The WHICH - which risks will need to be considered? - the big question - risks. The first thing to remember is that we can't deal with all the risks and there are plenty in a project. If probability (x-axis) and impact (y-axis) are plotted from low to high in a 3X3 matrix, you certainly cannot focus on all the 9 quadrants. Pick 4-5 quadrants that truly matter. Focus on risks that have medium to high probability and medium to high impact. The thing about risks again is that you can't control everything in a project. But it is important to identify and discuss the risks that can be mitigated.

5) The WHEN - when do the activities need to happen? what comes first, what comes last? what are the control gates? when will the project be over? - The interesting bit about this question was that we started to think about the answer starting from the end. The facilitator encouraged us to envision and imagine that day when the project will be over and we will be congratulating each other for the success. We were to articulate that day and identify who was the key person congratulation everyone on the team success. Again, a powerful question. It helped us identify the most critical stakeholder (the driver) of the project and also align everyone to the 'final deliverable' - the end point.