Law 2: Organize
Law 4: Learn
Savings in time feel like simplicity.
> Excerpted from Pages 23-24 of my book, The Laws of Simplicity
The average person spends at least an hour a day waiting in line. Add to this the uncountable seconds, minutes, weeks spent waiting for something that might have no line at all.
Some of that waiting is subtle. We wait for water to come out of the faucet when we turn the knob. We wait for water on the stove to boil, and start to feel impatient. We wait for the seasons to change. Some of the waiting we do is less subtle, and can often be tense or annoying: waiting for a Web page to load, waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or waiting for the results of a dreaded medical test.
No one likes to suffer the frustration of waiting. Thus all of us, consumers and companies alike, often try to find ways to beat the ticking hand of time. We go out of our way to find the quickest option or any other means to reduce our frustration. When any interaction with products or service providers happens quickly, we attribute this efficiency to the perceived simplicity of experience.
Achieving notable efficiencies in speed are exemplified by overnight delivery services like FedEx and even the ordering process for a McDonald’s hamburger. When forced to wait, life seems unnecessarily complex. Savings in time feel like simplicity. And we are thankfully loyal when it happens, which is rare.
14 Responses to “Law 3: Time”
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Just thought I’d throw this in for argument. The concept of “waiting” seems, as you express it, similar to the well-known definition of a weed: something undesirable which in another context could be perfectly acceptable. I sense it runs the risk of circularity, but I’m not enough of a philosopher to untangle that.
Another approach to beat the ticking hand of time could be to make the waiting acceptable (buskers in long queues, gracious atmosphere in slow-food restaurants), or to acknowledge when it is necessary (as in the absorption of — wait for it — complex information)… but then perhaps one is no longer “waiting” but merely “pausing”. Hmmm.
Waiting has taken on new meaning for me this month as I enter the final month of my first pregancy. How close and how far away her birth seems, all the more so because it is unpredictable!
That Tom Petty song keeps running through my head: “the waiting is the hardest part”.
Interesting how we choose to wait in lines at the supermarket when we could order groceries online.
Or indeed as rita johnson writes how much of waiting is about perspective. I enjoy baking bread, but I do not “wait” for the dough to rise. I let it rise, plan for rising time *while I do other things*.
I missed this comment by Rita. A “weed” as a metaphysical concept versus the weeds in my yard. Poetic. I can use that. Certainly because now it’s winter and I don’t have to worry about the weeds …
As I travel the world talking about LOS, I find that listeners will often bring up what Laura points out here — that waiting, in some cases, isn’t always something with negative connotations.
Given that today is Thanksgiving in the States, I’m thankful for your comments. Happy upcoming winter holidays!
i subscribe to the “space” music site - hearts of space…http://hos.com/ it is a weekly show and they have a huge archive of shows… i found often that i would spend more time searching thru the archive looking for the perfect show - listen to a bit and try another…
i see recently they have added a “radio channel” and include in the description “no need to choose” - where they stream their shows at random throughout the day -(kind of like a mega ipod shuffle)and i listen to that now….
it’s a case of “trust” - let them do the choosing…also reminds me of what was written about in the paradox of choice - a satisficing choice made by others is simpler than shooting for an optimizing choice…
this really brought the point from your book and the paradox of choice alive for me - i have always been one who thought the more choice the better…but i see now that giving up control sometimes does make life simpler - in a good way
A long time ago there was this application on computers called “fortune.” It’d deliver a fortune of the day, much like a fortune cookie. Logging out would be tied to running fortune usually so you’d have a nice sendoff from the computer.
I tend to follow whatever instructions I get from fortune cookies (within reason of course). Makes the day go by easier for me by removing choice, as Mike points out.
waiting + impatience = waste
waiting + contemplation = use
Thanks for the poem Dave. It’s like a mathematical haiku. It will help me through waiting in rush hour traffic on the way home. Regards, John
Does anyone know where I can get more statistics about how much of our lives are spent waiting in line?
Thanks
I think that “time” is a question about priorities. When people said “I don´t have time for that”, they really said “I have another priorities”, because the “time” is constant for all the people. The problem about complexity is the problem about how you put the design in the priority list about the people. Sorry for my english, I’m form argentina and congratulations about your book.
Priorites — yes. Whether your priorities might be to relax, or your priorities might be to rush. Thanks Jose, John
I have seen an interesting software design to save time when one work on the computer. The idea behind reminded me about your book “The Laws of Simplicity”, so maybe you would like to see this product yourself: www.humanized.com/ To me it looks like this product still needs more developing, but I wanted to share it with you anyway, since You convinced me that ’simple is beautiful’.
Thank you!
> No one likes to suffer the frustration of waiting.
But each one of us is free to set own threshold that triggers the frustration.
Waiting time = opportunity time
opportunitiy time = lost time to do valuable work & use creativity to put into value
Cheers, Ralf
Waiting tests your patience. But if we are alone in waiting then its a best time for introspection or we can think.