Simplicity looks timid but plays strong. It produces rare and desirable fruits that complexity can never offer.
When you choose to keep things simple, that means only picking a few things to hold onto. The rest gets slung out without ceremony.
So you’re immediately forced to confront some deep truths.
What really matters to you and what is merely about following society’s expectations? When push comes to shove, what can you live without? And what is truly non-negotiable if you want to experience meaning and happiness?
But it goes further.
As you dig down into whatever’s left in your life, you must work to make these things simple too.
Complexity keeps you skating over the surface — constantly flitting from one flashy idea to another as they go zipping by. Distracted from anything other than superficial contemplation of any one part by the myriad of irrelevant things jostling for your attention.
This usually leaves you failing to see the wood for the trees. Or maybe it makes the big picture view downright impossible — there are simply too many moving parts for you to spot how the system as a whole behaves.
With simplicity, all that crap is stripped away. You’re left with nothing but the bare bones. You’re forced to stop and really look.
You can see everything that’s there clearly. You can understand exactly how it works and what results it’s producing. Then you can decide whether it suits you.
Complexity is a way of hiding what really matters from ourselves. It’s an unconscious ploy of self-deception where we distract ourselves from what really matters with a load of flimsy rubbish instead. We’re not deliberately trying to deceive ourselves, of course. Rather, when we make (or keep) things complex this allows us to avoid grappling with the hard and unpleasant truths that we might not want to admit.
It keeps us from having those breakthrough insights that we say we want… But which might mean we then have to make big changes to our predictable, safe, and comfortable lives.
So ask yourself if all your complexity is really necessary. Or is it just a way to hide from your true self?
This reminds me of ideas from Rich Hickey, the creator of the Clojure programming language, in his talk “Simple Made Easy”. He contrasts the concepts of simplicity and easiness. He explains that “simple” means something that is singular and unentangled, while “easy” refers to what is familiar or readily accessible. I would add that simplicity is very fragile and it falls apart and becomes complexity when you choose _easy_ ways or cut corners
Yes. As it happens, I’d just listened to a couple of people discussing Rich Hickey’s take on simplicity on a podcast shortly before I wrote this. I don’t think it was a huge influence, though — I’ve been very interested in exploring the idea of simplicity for some time now (mostly prompted by a quote from the Dalai Lama about how it’s important for happiness).
Then, shortly after I write this, someone mentioned another quote from Rich Hickey in an email newsletter I’m subscribed to. I was tempted to do some more thinking/writing around that since I liked the idea so much — but have decided to leave it for now at least. The quote from Rich Hickey is: “Simplicity isn’t just easier—it’s more powerful. It lets you adapt, grow, and change without dragging the weight of complexity.”