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1-Page Summary of Simple Rules

Overview

The Power of Less is about Leo Babauta’s approach to minimalism. He focuses on developing good habits as the key to long-term change. If you want a new life or to get more toned, there are hundreds of books and experts out there that can help you achieve your goals. You just need to sit down with some coffee and cookies, start reading, and in a few hundred pages, it will be dark outside and you’ll have forgotten half the tips you’ve read by then anyway.

Rules can be too numerous to remember, so it’s better to focus on important rules. Rules are only effective if they’re memorable.

A company’s success is also dependent on how well it manages its rules. They should be simple and easy to follow, so employees can focus on what really matters. Research suggests that successful companies prefer a small set of simple in-house rules instead of more elaborate systems.

So, how can you figure out the right rules for your situation? You need to read on and learn what kinds of rules work best, why it’s a good idea to paint the same subject over and over again, and why you’re not losing weight.

Big Idea #1: The world is incredibly complicated, but it can be simplified into simple rules.

Consider a medical doctor at an army hospital, who sees several patients with severe injuries. How does he decide which patient to treat first? Luckily for him, there are some rules that can help him make the right decision.

Clear guidelines for well-defined activities or situations help you make good choices when things get complicated.

Rules help us make decisions. They reduce the amount of information we need to consider, thus preventing us from over-thinking a situation and making an informed decision quickly.

Check your patients’ vital signs to figure out how serious their condition is, such as their pulse. Those with the most alarming vital signs have to be treated first unless they’re beyond hope.

As one of the only tools that helps us deal with complexity, we need simple rules more than ever. Our world is far from straightforward. Firstly, our technological devices are interconnected and markets are worldwide. Moreover, our own rules and regulations have gotten so intricate that it’s hard to keep up with them all.

The US tax code is too complicated. It’s 3.8 million words long, which is seven times longer than War and Peace. That means that the government employs 1.2 million people to figure out how to pay taxes just so they can cope with it. Experts are overwhelmed by the complexity of the system: every third piece of advice from an IRS expert is wrong on average!

In our complex world, mistakes are bound to happen. However, following a few simple rules will help you avoid many of those mistakes. Find out more in the coming key points.

Big Idea #2: Rules are easier to follow than guidelines.

If you want to lose weight, there are many diet programs that might help. However, they all have one thing in common—a set of rules that is hard to remember. It takes a lot of time and effort just to get the basics.

The first advantage is that Simple Rules come in small numbers, so they’re easy to remember and follow.

Michael Pollan, a best-selling author, has three simple rules about diet. The first is to eat real food and not too much of it. The second rule is to mostly eat plants.

It seems too easy to be true, but if you live by these rules, it will help prevent diabetes and heart disease.

The rules are simple and flexible enough to allow for choice. Although they provide concrete guidance, they don’t tell you exactly what to eat at each meal.