Remove something else

Throughout Henry Ford’s life, he always pushed to make things simpler. The Model T was an engineering marvel when it was first produced, but that’s in part because Ford was constantly finding things to remove. Every item he took out would reduce the weight, and it would also leave fewer items that might break.

Steve Jobs was the same way. Apple products and interfaces are famous for their relative simplicity. He worked hard to keep things as simple as possible (at least on the front end) so that users would more quickly understand how a product worked.

It’s not easy to be effective at reducing. As attributed to Blaise Pascal are the words “ if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter “. It’s easy to add features (and words) to things that you produce, but it’s considerably more effort to trim things back down.

In marketing, the best trimmers tend to win. If you can get your message to be clear and concise, your emails short and effective, and your website full of whitespace to help users see your main message, you win. It’s not always easy, but it’s always effective.

Originally published at https://www.mickmel.com on October 24, 2023.