SUCCESS.com SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIESPage 1

SUCCESS PointsIn this book you’ll learn:

• Why taking breaks is essential to success

• That the universe is governed by simple rules, which we violate repeatedly

• How to retrain your brain and stop devoting attention to thoughts that aren’t productive

• How too many rules and regulations kill innovation

McGraw-Hill © 2012 Matthew E. May ISBN: 9780071795616 240 pages, $24.00

NOVEM

BER2012

Between the LinesCreate space for meaning.

QUICK OVERVIEW Most people have a lifetime’s worth of experience writing to-do lists. But have

you ever thought about writing a to-don’t list? That counterintuitive idea is one of many suggestions found in The Laws of Subtraction, the newest book by innovative guru Matthew May. Inspired by John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity, May defines six laws that advocate reducing options and setting boundaries to achieve maximum creativity, efficiency and success. He weaves inspiring quotes, examples of corporate success and narratives from business leaders into each chapter to create a thought-provoking book. Ultimately, The Laws of Subtraction encourages readers to consider whether or not today’s unlimited choices and glut of options help or hamper people in their quest to succeed. This summary offers insights from Laws 1, 2 and 5.

APPLY AND ACHIEVE In a book guiding readers to more innovative thinking, efficiency and

creativity, you wouldn’t expect to find a chapter devoted to doing nothing. But May’s sixth law spotlights the importance of doing exactly that—or as close to it as we can achieve. Some of our most creative moments can come from those times when we step out of our normal routines and let our minds wander. In fact, nonstop activity can actually be less productive than focusing away from problems and letting the mind work quietly. Looking for a way to take these important mental breaks? Why not take a few moments to meditate or even take a nap. Another option is pulsing, which is one of the easiest ways to build breaks into your day. Simply work in 90-minute cycles separated by short breaks. During those breaks, take a walk, doodle, listen to music—give your brain a chance to renew itself. Other options include retreats, travel or simply walking, which actually promotes creativity. Whichever way works best for you, get out of your own way today and let your brain do what it needs to do.

The Laws of Subtraction 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything by Matthew May

The Laws of Subtraction

Page 2 SUCCESS.com SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIES

I ’m sure you have a story like this. Preparing for our annual family camping trip, I perform the obligatory equipment check. Of course, all the � ashlights need new D-cell batteries. O� to the local hardware store I go,

since we don’t stockpile batteries in the refrigerator like some folks do. When I return home, the fun begins. I’m not talking about the camping trip. I’m talking about trying to get the batteries open. The plastic packaging is super heavy-duty, slick and hard to grasp. It’s deceiving, because it looks like it should easily pull apart. It doesn’t, and for the life of me, I can’t get the thing open. Feelings of inadequacy creep in: I must be missing something… it can’t be this hard, can it? I begin blame shifting, wondering what possessed the package designers to think they needed this clearly excessive level of protection for a six-dollar purchase. A nearby package of light bulbs—perhaps the most fragile household items on the planet, protected by nothing more than a � imsy bit of corrugated cardboard—is laughing at me. Frustration is mounting, as I’ve already wasted four minutes, and I need to open three of these. I grab the kitchen scissors and try to cut into the case, but the double reinforced edge stops me cold. I need to somehow pierce the softer middle with something sharp. Steak knife to the rescue. I’m able to make a cut… not without a good bit of muscle, mind you, but I’m in. I try prying apart the opening, slicing my thumb on the razor-sharp plastic edge I’ve created. I’m bleeding. That’s when the cursing starts.

You can imagine the rest. You’re right to think this is a silly story about a benign

annoyance. I tell it only to introduce in a lighthearted way a challenge far more serious and frustrating than trying to break open a package of batteries. It’s the larger and more serious problem we all face: thriving in a world of excess everything.

The world is more overwhelming than ever before. Our work is deeper and more demanding than ever. Our businesses are more complicated and di� cult to manage than ever. Our economy is more uncertain than ever. Our resources are scarcer than ever. There is endless choice and feature overkill in all but the best experiences. Everybody knows everything about us. The simple life is a thing of the past. Everywhere, there’s too much of the wrong stu� , and not enough of the right. The noise is deafening, the signal weak. Everything is too complicated and time-sucking. Excess everything is choking us. Amazingly, as consumers, we seem to put up with it. We tolerate the intolerable: stupidly standing in some silly line, searching for

what we want through the convoluted � oor plan of the local mammoth warehouse store, or struggling through the maze of whatever automated voicemail system we’re up against, or opening a package of D-cell batteries.

You’d think that if we hate all the excess as a consumer, we would absolutely detest it as a producer. But we don’t. The reason we don’t is that we see no clear and immediate path to turning things around. We know that the situation isn’t going away. We know that we can’t run or hide from it. So we shrug our shoulders and go along with the herd.

At the heart of every di� cult decision lie three tough choices: What to pursue versus what to ignore? What to leave in versus what to leave out? What to do versus what to don’t? I have discovered that if you focus on the second half of each choice—what to ignore, what to leave out, what to don’t—the decision becomes exponentially easier and simpler. The key is to remove the stupid stu� : anything obviously excessive, confusing, wasteful, unnatural, hazardous, hard to use, or ugly. (Battery packaging exhibits all seven qualities in a rather inglorious way.) Better yet, refrain from adding them in the � rst place.

This is the art of subtraction: when you remove just the right thing in just the right way, something good usually happens.

LAW #1: WHAT ISN’T THERE CAN OFTEN TRUMP WHAT IS

If you know what to do and how to do it, you can use this law to achieve success in the real world. You can cut through the noise and confusion of a chaotic world so that even the most complex things make more sense. You can draw and direct attention to what matters most so that your products and services have more meaning for others. You can focus energy and make your strategy more e� ective. You can generate greater visual and verbal impact to make your message stick and stay.

“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.”

—Lao Tzu

The Laws of Subtraction

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FedEx used Law #1 to dramatically change their image and create one of the most indelible logos ever designed—one that helped breathe new life into an already strong brand and simultaneously signaled the world that the company was going places. What’s special about the FedEx logo isn’t the vibrant colors or bold lettering. It’s the white arrow that exists between the E and the x.

The ability to use patterns to make meaningful relationships out of seemingly unrelated elements is a uniquely human attribute, and the hallmark of creativity. What really matters in all of this is to be aware that these principles of perception exist, and to be able to use them like Lindon Leader did when he created the FedEx logo. We need to pay attention to the fact that what isn’t there can often trump what is.

The Zen of Nothing During my time with Toyota, I became interested in Eastern

culture. I had to, really, because much of my job was designing programs that incorporated the views of both the Japanese and U.S. management. Eastern and Western ways of looking at the world are often quite di� erent, and often diametrically opposed. Reconciling that tension in a harmonious way meant I had to understand the Asian perspective, which necessitated understanding the genesis of certain methods. I traced several to 12th century Zen philosophy.

What struck me was the reverence given to emptiness as an aesthetic ideal. One of my favorite Zen-related words in Japanese is Ma, not because it’s one of the few I can pronounce correctly, but because of what it means, and what it doesn’t. The rough translation is “interval of space or time.” But even that doesn’t quite capture the essence, and no English words or concepts exist to accurately de� ne or describe it. For me, it means being fully aware of what is and isn’t there, being conscious of how they work together to involve the viewer in an altogether new experience, and understanding that to ignore either is to miss the true meaning of the whole.

According to a course on Japanese history taught at Columbia University, “Ma is not something that is created by compositional elements; it is the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements.”

And that is the whole point of the � rst law of subtraction.

LAW #2: THE SIMPLEST RULES CREATE THE MOST EFFECTIVE EXPERIENCE

The e� ect of any experience is determined by how actively engaged we are as we move through time and space in a particular setting. How we perceive these two dimensions—how they land on us in a speci� c event, how we interpret the feeling we get—is what gives the elements of time and space real meaning. The more enjoyable, expedient, and e� cient an experience is, the more meaning we give it.

When you focus on these elements of experience, you begin to think di� erently. You begin to search for natural and self-organizing patterns of human behavior. You begin to ask how to exploit those patterns for good, rather than just control them. You discover that the most e� ective experience can best be achieved not by demanding that people comply with a mandate from on high, or conform to an exhaustive set of rigid regulations, but by one or two simple rules. You realize that those simple rules can often emerge from the right context, need not be stated to be understood by everyone, and produce the highest levels of participation. You understand that telling people what to do isn’t nearly as e� ective as inspiring them what to do. This is the stu� of meaning.

Making Complexity Work Chaos theory tells us that everything in our natural world—

from microorganisms to weather patterns to the growth of populations—is a part of a complex system that is moving toward equilibrium. Just because something looks chaotic or unorganized doesn’t mean it is.

The impatient human mind seeks order and symmetry, and when we don’t see it immediately we are compelled to quickly impose it. It’s when in our impatience we fail to look beyond the obvious that we rush in with our rigid regulations and hierarchies in an attempt to control what is already in balance that we tip things the other way and get the exact opposite of what we really want.

This is the art of subtraction: when you remove just the right

thing in just the right way, something good usually happens.

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The reason the simplest rules create the most effective experience is because our universe is governed by simple rules. Yet in our false belief that we have better answers, we violate them repeatedly, nearly always to our detriment. Brilliant thinkers over the course of civilization have devoted their lives to understanding and explaining how nature works. While ignoring that information stif les our creativity and stunts our effectiveness, exploiting it can be incredibly powerful.

My guidance is simply this: whatever problem you’re trying to solve, look first for naturally occurring patterns and rhythms. If you don’t see them at first, strip away the obvious things that might be obscuring them. The second law of subtraction is natural. We need to keep that in mind when we are creating, designing or building anything.

LAW #5: BREAK IS THE IMPORTANT PART OF BREAKTHROUGH

The mysteries of the mind and brain are many and complex. Neuroscience, through the magic of technology, is just beginning to unravel some of them. Given that my livelihood revolves around creativity and change—in fact, creating change—I am a voracious consumer of all things neuro. I’m especially fascinated by neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is the mind’s ability to change the brain. Neuroscience can now con� rm that our mental machinations do alter the physical structure of our brain matter. So, when you change your mind, you change your brain. This is great news for most of us, because the universal issue facing everyone in this age of excessive complexity is change. Whether it’s breaking a habit, adopting a new one, coming up with new and original ideas, shifting a business focus, changing behaviors, changing company culture, or changing the world. At the heart of the matter is the issue of breaking out of well-grooved patterns—minds and mindsets—and creating new ones. In other words, unlocking the brain.

I � rst met Dr. Je� rey Schwartz, a practicing neuropsychiatrist a� liated with UCLA, in 2008. What’s interesting about Je� is that he deals with one of the most prevalent, challenging and debilitating patterns in the brain—Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He’s an internationally recognized authority who developed a successful behavior therapy at the UCLA School of Medicine for patients su� ering from OCD, called the UCLA Four Steps.

And here’s the thing: he doesn’t use drugs to treat patients. He teaches them to reset and rewire their brain by changing how they think.

It’s when we believe we can make a break that we break through whatever barriers may be holding us in place. This is the reason I am drawn to Je� ’s work in the � rst place. It’s not because I’m curious about OCD per se, but because of what he knows about breaking free of those kinds of � ercely strong patterns. If his method helps people with OCD, doesn’t it make sense that we should be able to use it in making any kind of change?

As he described the four steps to me, the answer became obvious: Yes. Step 1: Re-label

“The � rst step is to Re-label a given thought, feeling, or behavior as something else,” Je� says. “An unwanted thought

The UnPolicy at Net� ix At Netflix, the streaming video and DVD-by-mail service that has upended the brick-and-mortar video rental business, vacation policy is bold and simple: the roughly 600 salaried employees can take as much time off as they want for as long as they want—provided that their managers know where they are and that their work is covered. Nobody tracks vacation days.

In other words, the Netflix vacation policy is to have no policy at all. It hasn’t always been so. In 2004, Netflix treated holidays the old-fashioned way: everyone gets a set number of days each year, use them or work the system to get paid for time not taken. Employees recognized that this arrangement was at odds with how they really did their work-from-home jobs: responding to emails on weekends, solving problems online at home at night. Since Netflix wasn’t tracking how many hours people were logging each workday, why should it track how many holidays people were taking each work year? Good point, said management. So the company scrapped its formal plan.

“Rules and policies and regulations and stipulations are innovation killers. People do their best work when they’re unencumbered,” says Steve Swasey, Netflix’s vice president for corporate communication. “If you’re spending a lot of time accounting for the time you’re spending, that’s time you’re not innovating.”

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SUCCESS.com SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIESPage 5

The Laws of Subtraction

could be relabeled ‘false message’ or ‘brain glitch.’ This amounts to training yourself to clearly recognize and identify what is real and what isn’t, refusing to be tricked by your own intrusive thoughts and urges. Essentially you call the thought or urge exactly what it is: an obsessive thought or a compulsive urge. For someone with OCD, instead of saying, ‘I have to check the stove, they would start saying, ‘I’m having a compulsive urge to check the stove.’ ”

Now, in order to do this, notice that you are really engaging in a bit of personal subtraction; you are removing yourself from the equation, and observing yourself objectively. Step 2: Reattribute

The second step is to Reattribute, which answers a key question, which Je� poses: “Why do these thoughts keep coming back? The answer is that the brain is mis� ring, stuck

in gear, creating mental noise, and sending false messages. In other words, if you understand why you’re getting those old thoughts, eventually you’ll be able to say, ‘Oh, that’s just my OCD, or that’s just a brain glitch.’ ” That raises the natural next question: What can you do about it? 3: Refocus

The third step is to Refocus, and it is where the toughest work is, because it’s the actual changing of behavior. You have to do another behavior instead of the old one. Having recognized the problem for what it is and why it’s occurring, you now have to replace the old behavior with new, more constructive things to do. This is where the change in brain chemistry occurs, because you are cutting new grooves, new patterns, new mindsets. Step 4: Revalue

It all comes together in the fourth step, Revalue, which is the natural outcome of the first three. With a consistent way to replace the old behavior with the new, you begin to see old patterns as simple distractions. You devalue them, really, as being completely worthless. Eventually the thoughts and urges begin to fade in intensity, the brain works better and better, and the automatic transmission in the brain starts working properly.

“Two very positive things happen,” Je� says. “The � rst is that you’re happier, because you have control over your behavioral response to your thoughts and feelings. The second thing is that by doing that, you change the faulty brain chemistry.”

Je� con� rms that his methods can be used to create change in any area of business, work, or life. “Since it has been scienti� cally demonstrated that the brain has been altered through the behavior change,” he says, “it’s safe to say that you could do the same thing by altering responses to any number of other behaviors.”

What all of this meant to me was that we can learn to improve our ability to defeat the traditional thinking traps we fall into when we try to change our view of whatever challenge we’re facing. We can override our default. We can retrain our brain by exercising the Apple tagline: Think di� erent.

The neuroscience of change reveals the power behind the � fth law of subtraction: Breakthrough often demands one simply making a conscious break from existing routines and patterns, then sticking with it.

The Laws of Subtraction Law #1: What isn’t there can often trump what is. In other words, cut through the chaos and focus on what really matters. Do that, and even the most complex things make sense.

Law #2: The simplest rules create the most effective experience. Focus on movement through time and space, and the effect of that experience, and your thoughts will change accordingly.

Law #3: Limiting information engages the imagination. And the art of limiting information allows people to create their own story, which then engages them more fully.

Law #4: Creativity thrives under intelligent constraints. Constraints help shape and focus problems, fuel passion and give you speed and momentum.

Law #5: Break is the important part of breakthrough. When a well-worn pattern is broken, creativity emerges. We think differently when a break occurs, more creatively.

Law #6: Doing something isn’t always better than doing nothing. Try doing nothing and you’ll find it’s impossible. But our brains are most creative when we take a break from normal business in some way.

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© 2012 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. Materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without prior written permission. Published by SUCCESS, 200 Swisher Rd., Lake Dallas, TX 75065, USA. SUCCESS.com. Summarized by permission of the publisher, McGraw-Hill. The Laws of Subtraction by Matthew E. May. © 2012 by Matthew E. May.

The Laws of Subtraction

ACTION STEPS Get more out of this SUCCESS Book Summary by applying what you’ve learned. Here are a few questions, thoughts and activities to get you started.

1. Take a few minutes to pare your day down to the basics and then write a To-Don’t list to keep you on track.

2. Take a break from your normal business and spend that time quieting your mind.

3. Today, when a habitual, negative thought pops into your mind, consciously question it. Ask: Is this thought true?

4. Clear the clutter from your work space.

5. Having trouble fi tting everything in one day? What tasks can you eliminate or ignore?

6. Identify three things you do every day just because you have always done them that way.

7. What rules do you follow that don’t really make sense?

About the Author The Laws of Subtraction is the fourth book written

by Matthew May, the founder of Edit Innovations.

May, a motivational speaker, is also the author of

the best-selling In Pursuit of Elegance, The Shibumi

Strategy and The Elegant Solution. May is considered

an expert in the � elds of innovation strategy, design

thinking and corporate creativity. His articles have

appeared in numerous publications, including

USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. May, who

graduated from the Wharton School of Business and

Johns Hopkins University, lives in Southern California.

Recommended Reading

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Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck by Anthony K. Tjan, Richard J. Harrington and Tsun-Yan Hsieh

Just Start by Leonard A. Schlesinger and Charles F. Kiefer, with Paul B. Brown

Judgment Calls by Thomas H. Davenport and Brook Manville