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Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas, and welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. As project managers, we often find ourselves overwhelmed by complexity, features piling up, meetings multiplying, and clarity just slipping away. That is why today I want to bring you something I learned recently, a set of principles created by John Maeda that can help you to bring more focus, more flow, and more impact to your projects. And John Maeda, one of the main quotes that he started his talk at South by Southwest, I was present. There was an absolutely brilliant and deep quote. He said, simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. And it perfectly captures the challenge we face in project management. Cutting through the noise to deliver what really matters. And today I will share with you quickly. John Maeda's Ten Laws of Simplicity, which he put in a book, can guide us to lead. Simpler, smarter, and more effective projects. So let's go low. One is to reduce. In project terms, this means eliminating anything that doesn't directly contribute to values, features, reports, and even meetings. Focus on the minimum viable project. What must get done to move forward? The second law is organize, when tasks and information are structured clearly, whether through a Kanban board or a simple roadmap, things move much faster and with more confidence. Law number three is time. Use short, fixed time frames like sprints or timeboxes to bring urgency and avoid the illusion we traditionally have of endless time.
The fourth law is learning. Every single retrospective, lessons learned, session, or stakeholder feedback loop is a chance to improve and not just to deliver. Law five is differences. Understands that diverse thinking is critical, and this will help you to reduce blind spots and uncover creative risks and smart solutions. This is something I always remember in my professional life. When ten people agree on something, you probably don't need ten of them. You may need just one. So, accept the differences because they will make you move forward. Lost six is context. Always link tasks back to the bigger picture. Understand the contribution of a single work package or a single sprint in an agile project to the organization, to the user, to the beneficiary, and to the world. You need to understand the context of the work you are doing now. Seven is emotion. Your team is not a machine; remember that, you need to celebrate small wins, recognize effort, and maintain team morale through tough phases. Understand one thing: a project is not easy and it's not easy at all. So, you need to understand that keeping your team with positive emotions and positive direction is what will make your project succeed. Law number eight is trust. Involve your team early, share imperfect drafts, and build a culture where transparency beats perfectionism.
Many times, people don't want to show imperfect things. They prefer to wait until they show something that is perfect. And many times, they lose a great opportunity to receive feedback and improve much faster. Law nine is failure. In project work, setbacks are inevitable. What matters is how fast you turn failure into learning. Remember, if everything is too perfect, something is going wrong. And law ten is the one. And truly define a single guiding principle for your project, something everyone can rally behind when making decisions. And also, Maeda shared three keys to simplicity that I love them. The first is that he called away to hide complexity behind clean interface templates and defaults. The second is open. Make sure your dashboard documentation is accessible to everyone who needs clarity. Don't hide things. And the third is power. Don't confuse simple with weakness. Simplicity often means more focus, more speed, and much better outcomes. Look, if this resonates with you, I really encourage you to visit John Maeda's website at http://lawsofsimplicity.com. It's full of insights that go far beyond what I said today and can be directly applied to our work as project managers. Look, I hope you enjoyed this episode and use these laws of simplicity in your work and in your projects right now. See you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
