Simplicity

all good

Edward de Bono has useful ideas, but sometimes he is a bit long-winded about expressing them. This is quite an easy book to read though - it's actually quite short, but has been padded out with lots of pull-quotes in huge text. Worth a read if you're interested in making things simpler.

This book, ironically, is not simple. There are many thought-provoking aspects to making the complex simple. Edward cites the difficulty a cartoonist faces in presenting a complex situation as an easily recognisable joke. Being an amateur cartoonist myself, this had relevance to me. It is also important to evaluate for whom the simplicity is for, the operator, or the end user. An example being a machine which auto-adjusts itself; the complexity is in the engineering, but the operator reaps the reward of simple operation. Some practical application is given towards the end of the book, but, ultimately, I think the work is aimed at the overarching principles of management/ society. The book's downfall, in my humble opinion, is the difficulty in navigating your way through it; no contents page, index or easy search options, (other than a summary on page 279); this book should be SIMPLE. Nevertheless, worthwhile points are made.

a hoax...sorry

Many of the criticisms of this inspiring and inspired book result from approaching it in the wrong way. It is living proof that creating the appearance of simplicity is or can be a complex process. Rather than taking the message in a linear fashion I’ve found that it works to take bite-sized chunks at random and absorb the lessons individually. This, after all, is a lateral thinking approach rather than a systemic view, and fits the subject matter. At any rate, it worked for me, such that I now put it into practice in my professional life and in the novels I write, and feel things succeed for creating manageable patterns we can easily take in. De Bono, I salute you!

As others have said there is much to like and be irritated by in this book. For me it most needs an overhaul as it is 15 years old and some of the rambling anecdotes are now out of date. If you can get by the self-applauding style and the fact that every other page has no content there is a lot in here unfortunately it needs a bit of finding. I suspect that other more recent books on the topic of simplicity might be more rewarding to read though the text does make some important points.

This is a great book and I wish that I had read it years ago. Edward de Bono not only makes the case for simplicity but he exhorts us to pursue it and he gives us a framework for doing so. I can look back on many occasions when I wish I could whipped out such a book from my briefcase and thumped it in front of the annoying or imbecilic person with whom I was dealing at the time and said "Go home, read that, then come back and resume this discussion". I find that I have underlined many useful comments or ideas. My favourite is possibly this: "An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore." On the other side of the coin, de Bono has some harsh words for people who try to establish themselves as experts by making things more complex and more difficult to understand. Keep this in mind when dealing with "experts". The book loses points for being way too long. In the edition I read, the main text was printed only on the right hand pages and an extract or summary of that text was printed in large letters on the facing left hand page, thereby turning a 150 page book into a 300 page book. Very irritating. Indeed, in illustrating a point in the book, de Bono says that he could have made the book - by which I assume he is referring to the main text on the right hand pages - shorter (simpler) but his publishers told him that it had to be a certain length! So, by his own admission (or, perhaps, apology) this should have been a 50 page book. It's a pity, because it would have been a better book if it had been simplified. Maybe one day de Bono will take a leaf out of his own book and simplify his main works into a single slim volume. It must be satisfying to look back on a life's work filling the bookshelves, but how much more satisfying would it be to have that life's work in a single volume and thereby easily accessible. It could be called "The Readers Digest de Bono", or "The Best of de Bono" or, perhaps, ideally, "de Bono Simplified".

As with most of EDB's books there are some good and thought provoking ideas in here but I found reading the book a chore rather than a pleasure because 1) the writing style has been dumbed down to such an extent it loses any flow, merely becoming a list of bullet points with often seemingly contradictory statements, 2) the layout, with the main text only on the right hand with disjointed extracts on the left, is self indulgent and unnecessary, and 3) most annoying of all is EBD's constant self promotion ranging from quoting Nobel Laureates on how wonderful he is through to intimating that he revolutionized the oil industry. His ego apparently knows no bounds. Worth reading for some of the ideas but don't expect to have fun in the process.

Das ist ein Buch was es auf den Punkt bringt was Einfachheit bedeuten soll. Sehr gutes Buch würde ich wieder kaufen.

This is an eye opener, to lead a simple life one must think of it while doing everyday tasks

Amazing book!

I wanted to read this book for sometime because a friend of mine commended it, but it was hard to find it in my city. I was not sure about buying in amazon beacuse of the time for the book to get from Great Britain to Mexico (shippin in Mexico is usually delayed when it comes from overseas) but the package arrived just on time; it took some weeks, but it was at my door and the quality of the product is as stated in the website in the first place... :)

Grundsätze gelten damal wie heute. Die erläuterten Ansätze können im Business wie im Privatleben genutzt werden. Einzige Verbesserung: noch mehr konkrete Möglichkeiten zur täglichen Umsetzung anhand von Beispielen bringen.