Great products have restraint

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in building products is the exercise of restraint. The other day I started using a new product which was an early version available to the public and I thought “wow this is really good”. Someone has made a conscious decision as to what to include and what to exclude. This is product restraint.

Other times, I’ll start using a product and think “this is really convoluted”. I can’t figure out what to do. I have to jump through a lot of hoops. They’ve added too many features to the product. A challenge that the product creators would have come across is figuring what to put into the product. Product management is about building the right thing at the right time. This is incredibly hard to do. An art and a science.

Lets start with what restraint means.

Defining restraint

According to a definition I found on google, restraint is:

“a measure or condition that keeps someone or something under control”.

An example given is “decisions are made within the financial restraints of the budget”.  Some more alternative definitions:

“the act of restraining, holding back, controlling, or checking”

“the ability to control or moderate one’s impulses, passions, etc: to show restraint”

Personally, I define it as the exercise of control. Its about having some barrier or limitation placed on something.

The fastest growing Spotify list

A good friend of mine Joe Vuong has the #1 fastest growing playlist on Spotify. Its called “Acoustic Lounge“. Joe is also the founder of the business Townske. The music is described as “Sit back and relax to a carefully crafted collection of originals and covers by famous and upcoming artists”.

The list is 196 songs, totalling 12 hours and 10minutes. There are approximately 400,000 followers and was selected as an Official Spotify playlist. It might have been surpassed now by some other lists but at one stage was fastest growing. Its also one of my favourite play lists which I listen to it a lot. Go on, press play below.

The reason I bring it up is because Joe told me something critical about creating this popular list. He said: “Its not what you put in, its what you leave out”.

Its easy for Joe to add in more songs. In fact, there are millions of songs out there he could add. To create the most awesome and fastest growing list, he has to exercise a lot of restraint to figure out what to leave out.

Product restraint

What is restraint in the context of product management?

You can laugh but only this way

Product restraint in mobile apps

Conclusion