Simple Rules

How to Thrive in a Complex World

By: Donald Sull, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Narrated by: Jeff Cummings

How simplicity trumps complexity in nature, business, and life.

We struggle to manage complexity every day. We follow intricate diets to lose weight, juggle multiple remotes to operate our home entertainment systems, face proliferating data at the office, and hack through thickets of regulation at tax time. But complexity isn't destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there's a better way: by developing a few simple yet effective rules, you can tackle even the most complex problems.

Simple rules are a hands-on tool to achieve some of our most pressing personal and professional objectives, from overcoming insomnia to becoming a better manager or a smarter investor. Simple rules can help solve some of our most urgent social challenges, from setting interest rates at the Federal Reserve to protecting endangered marine wildlife along California's coast.

Drawing on more than a decade of rigorous research, the authors provide a clear framework for developing effective rules and making them better over time. They find insights in unexpected places, from the way Tina Fey codified her experience working at Saturday Night Live into rules for producing 30 Rock (rule five: never tell a crazy person he's crazy) to burglars' rules to choose a house to rob ("avoid houses with a car parked outside") to Japanese engineers using the foraging rules of slime molds to optimize Tokyo's rail system.

Whether you're struggling with information overload, pursuing opportunities with limited resources, or just trying to change your bad habits, Simple Rules provides a powerful way to tame complexity.

©2015 Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Good but

This book gave plenty of examples but at the end of the day it was really too complicated to come up with simple rules. It really wasn't a simple rule to creating some simple rules

It could've been much shorter

Everything is repeated many many times. It gets tiring. Aside from that, you can learn many things from this book.

Good But Formulaic

It followed the very benign (and occasionally dull) path of most business texts, although the imported knowledge was very useful. It's reminiscent of the initially novel but eventually annoying need to crack the walnut shell to get at the food. It's rewarding but not practical for continuous consumption.

Couldn't keep my attention.

the book seemed redundant and slow. finished it but with a bit of effort. Some of the concepts were interesting - started counting how many times the title was used..... :-(

It's always good to be reminded that simple is key

I thoroughly enjoyed and learned from this book. The information was helpful and it was presented in an interesting way.