Aiming for simplicity
I was explaining to a friend about the complexity of an exercise movement called the Power Clean. It’s a movement that combines a deadlift, triple extension, and finishing in a slightly upward position. This movement required having the knowledge to extend at the right time, and to rotate under the barbell in order to catch it in an ergonomic position.
As I was explaining the movement, I could see that I lost her. For someone who doesn’t care about exercising, trying to use exercise science jargon wasn’t a great idea.
Like many other things in life, it’s best to keep it simple. I’d argued the ability to keep things simple means you understand it well enough to break it down so anyone, regardless of knowledge or not, can comprehend what you’re saying.
We need to not only be able to decipher it but also allow someone to do it as well with our instruction.
Complexity rewards in the beginning
As I was growing up, everyone seemed to acknowledge and favor me whenever I would use big words to explain something. Things didn’t change in college, and professors even commented “I needed to look this up, well done!”.
I felt very accomplished but if we take a step back, if someone needed to do extra research to understand what I’m saying, then I’ve failed as a communicator. That person had to put in more time and effort for what I should’ve done — explain it clearly.
We always praise whenever a child uses a big word, but rarely do we give that same praise whenever a child is able to explain things in an easy and concise way.
I have an 8-year-old niece who excels in clear and concise information. If her mom tells her to tell someone to grab a piece of equipment for such and such purpose, she does an amazing job at summing up the request in 5 words or less.
For example, if the request is for a list of ingredients for a birthday party for a family member, she would ask for the list and the name of the family member. She would go to the person in charge of buying the ingredients and tell them “For Aunty Carol, dinner tomorrow”.
She does a great job collecting the most important information and then curating it into a simple message that anyone can understand.
Why make it tough?
It drives me crazy when people have to make things more complicated than it actually is.
I had an English teacher that would tell us to always print in double space and use 12 pt. font. She would go on to tell us how it’s professional and all the colleges use the same format as she does. This rant would go on for an hour.
Personally, I think if she said I needed the double space and font to be like this so I could read it better and have space to make corrections, that would have been more than enough.
As I’ve learned in college, no one cares about how you turn in a paper unless they give you specific instructions.
We always have to give meaning to every action that we do. In a way, it validates the complexity. If the reasoning was too simple, then we might be judged for being too basic.
I used to believe that reasoning was maddening, but with the right incentives, anything can be justified. Just imagine if you were spending a lot of money on something, you would want whoever procured your item to explain all of the intricacies of the product. It has to justify all the money you just spent or else you’ll feel cheated.
Marketers have to explain all the features and details of the iPhone to justify that thousand-dollar price tag. You wouldn’t feel too good if they just said the iPhone receives calls and texts. It has to feel like you bought it for all these features, but ultimately most of your time is just focused on calls, texts, and scrolling social media.
There needs to be a reason for the complexity.
Simply too good to be true?
When something seems simple, we always think it is too good to be true. You’re correct that when something is simple, it just means a lot of work has been put in to make it look simple.
One of my friends, Jim, fixes mopeds and cars for a living. He gets plenty of customers who tried to fix it themselves, only to go to him for the solution. It takes Jim a few seconds to figure out what’s going on and what’s the problem.
Customers are left flabbergasted, even annoyed that they pay him so much for so “little” work. They don’t see that it took him many years of trial and error to get to that level.
This is a level that we should strive for — where we make things look easy. In fact, the more seamless it seems, the better. When something works so well, nobody appreciates the true value of it until it’s done.
I’ve also noticed that people who are good at what they do tend to keep things extremely simple.
I had a chance to play basketball with a professional overseas player. The man just moved differently and played like everything was in slow motion. He wasn’t doing anything flashy or with superhuman speed. But he was always a step ahead of everyone.
He told me that people complicate the game by doing too much. Too much dribbling, showboating, and forgetting about fundamentals. He focuses on basic footwork, positioning, and movement, and does them exceedingly well.
So it didn’t matter that you were faster than him, if he started in a better position, you were already behind.
“The game is simple and easy if you just focus on a few key things”. Focus, that’s a key detail experts are good at. they’re good at filtering the important details from the fluff.
A skilled technician or mechanic uses their eyes and ears to understand what’s wrong. A chess grandmaster has a library of moves and countermoves if their opponent does something. An NBA player can read how the defense and offense are operating and move efficiently for a basket.
All of this is happening within seconds. All honed and trained throughout the years. Take something complicated and find a way to simplify it so they can understand it.
The process of getting there is difficult and long, but as we begin to simplify things, we, in turn, get to understand it better. Once we develop our system, that’s when things start to slow down.
The beauty of our system is how you get to interpret information and make it simple for you to solve those problems. When you first learn math a problem is complex. One of the first things you do is try to make it simple or bring it to a point where it’s recognizable. Figure out how you like to make things simple, then refine it.
Don’t make complex for the sake of complexity. It’s simply a justification or status signal if you do.
Like an acronym I first learned in Elementary, KISS or Keep it Simple Silly.
*Check out my last article on Dealing with bad kids*
If you’ve enjoyed my articles, please subscribe and share! Please connect with me on :
