How have you used simple rules in your personal life?

Don: I use simple rules all time in my professional and personal life. I’ve used rules to double the profits of a business in the midst of the Great Recession and to lose 15 pounds. In fact I first used simple rules decades before we wrote this book. During college, I worked as a bouncer at a biker bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After my second trip to the emergency room, I realized that relying on sheer brawn was a losing strategy for a middleweight boxer. So I came up with a set of simple rules, including “don’t let

trouble in the door” and “double up on doormen for ska and heavy metal.” The most effective rule was “keep the bikers on my side,” so I would let their friends in for free and keep an eye on their bikes. Whenever trouble was brewing, I’d ask a couple of the bikers to come with me, approach the knuckleheads who were getting ready to rumble, and explain they could either leave now or take it up with my friends Man Mountain and Shotgun. It worked every time.

What surprised you researching and writing this book?

Don: First, how widespread simple rules are. Bees use them to find a nest, Tina Fey to produce a comedy show, burglars to choose a house to rob, and the fifteenth century Jesuits to explore different missions. Second, despite this bewildering diversity all simple rules fall into six basic categories. For example, Pixar uses rules to decide when to release a movie and female crickets to decide when to stop searching for the best mate and settle. These are very different rules, but both are examples of what we call timing rules. Finally, there’s the importance of simple rules in creative and innovative activities. Most people think that creativity requires you to “think outside the box.” We found, however, that trying to innovate without any constraints overwhelms creativity. Instead, the trick is to innovate within loose boundaries. Simple rules provide the perfect balance of consistency and flexibility for creative tasks, which explains why Monet used them for painting, the White Stripes for recording in the studio, and Elmore Leonard when writing nearly 50 novels.

Why do simple rules work?

Kathy: The most obvious reason is that simple rules often help people, groups, and even organizations make better decisions. Simple rules are cognitive short-cuts or heuristics that save time and effort. They focus attention and simplify the way that we think – they’re rules of thumb.
Yet there’s a twist. Simple rules are more than just weak approximations that we use when we are short on time and information. Rather, simple rules help us to pay attention to what matters most in a choice, and can proxy for a wealth of implicit information. This means that there are many situations in which simple rules produce better decisions than complicated analysis or lots of data.

Are simple rules effective for changing personal behavior?

Don: Yes, there is a growing body of research showing that people are more likely to remember and act on simple rules than more complex alternatives. One study looked at how entrepreneurs learned accounting. The researchers found that entrepreneurs who learned simple rules of bookkeeping implemented the changes, stuck with them, and improved their financial results. Entrepreneurs who learned accounting as a complex set of principles did no better than the control group that received no training. In many cases, voluminous scientific research can be reduced to a few robust rules to guide behavior. For instance, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh reduced decades of sleep research into 4 rules that reduced insomnia more effectively than the most powerful sleeping pills without any side effects.

Are there are situations in which simple rules just don’t work?

Kathy: Sure, simple rules are not always the right tool. One situation is when people have to engage in a routine task with lots of steps. Many steps make it easy to forget one. In these situations, a check list works best. In fact, we have lots of admiration for Atul Gawande’s masterful book, The Checklist Manifesto. Situations like aircraft take-off, prep for hospital surgery, and getting organized for Thanksgiving dinner are all times when checklists work well. I would not be without my checklist to pack for business trips. I just don’t want the hassle of forgetting my toothpaste or ear plugs.

At the same time, checklists and simple rules can work together. Take health care. Checklists are smart medicine for doctors getting ready to operate – to avoid calamities like cutting open the wrong leg or giving too much anesthesia. But simple rules can also help doctors diagnose medical problems like depression and acute chest pain quickly and at low cost.

If simple rules are so effective, why do complicated solutions remain so common?

Don: While most of us hate complexity, its important to remember some people benefit from it. The complexity of the US tax code allows special interest groups and lobbyists to hide tax breaks that benefit only a few. Lobbyists who write volumes of regulations routinely join the private sector to help guide companies through the labyrinth they helped build. One of the most enduring obstacles to simplicity is what we call “the myth of requisite complexity”—the mistaken belief that complex problems demand complicated solutions. But this is often not the case. One study compared how the judicial systems of over 100 countries and found the more regulations imposed on courts and judges, the worse the results as judged by citizens. The regulations were well-intentioned, but the result was that more rules lead to less justice.