The Laws Of Simplicity

Recently, I read The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda, former MIT Media Lab guru and current President of RISD.

It's a good, quick read that expands upon his 10 Laws of Simplicity. They are:

1. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
7. More emotions are better than less.
8. In simplicity we trust.
9. Some things can never be made simple.
10. Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

None of these ideas, taken separately, are rocket science, but when put together, they have a lot to tell us. If we were to simplify the entire book down to one sentence, I'd say it's this:

Life is complex; simplify everything you can so that you can devote yourself to the things that are most complex.

Think about that concept applied to our schools... how many of the processes that we as administrators go through are much more complex than they have to be, usually because of fear of a lawsuit or because a process that was once simple has gone through one or two too many committees and now bears no resemblance to what it was once supposed to be.

Schools are some of the most complex institutions in our society. We should be spending our time on the things that matter most -- helping students navigate our world... working with teachers as they work on their craft... and yet, so many principals spend their time figuring out who they vendors they have to use are or making sure that payroll is in the proper format... or dealing with any number of budgetary issues that are harder than they have to be.

We need to examine every process in our schools and ask ourselves, "What do we really need? What do we have to do? What is just a CYA process that we could solve in other ways?"

Every one of Maeda's laws could and should be applied to education. What process in your school would you simplify?