Simplify

Any fool can take something simple and make it complicated. It requires nothing but ego and a thesaurus.

Simplifying the complex takes talent.

The insecure mind takes a clear idea and tangles it — more words, more steps, more sophistication than the thing could possibly need — because the tangle is the point. Complexity makes him look smart. A simple answer, stated plainly, does not show off the man who found it. So he hides the simple answer inside a complicated one and calls it rigor.

The brilliant mind does the opposite. It takes the genuinely complicated thing and works it down until a child could understand it. That is not dumbing it down. That is the highest form of mastery there is — you do not fully understand something until you can make it simple.

Why, then, do you complicate things?

It is not because the problem demands it. It is because your ego wants credit. You want to be seen wrestling something impressive, so you inflate the thing you are wrestling. You addle a clear situation on purpose, twist it up, and admire yourself for surviving the mess you made.

Meanwhile the simple pleasures — the plain, already-perfect things that needed no improvement — get ruined by your need to enhance them.

Not everything is asking to be optimized. Some things were finished before you touched them.

Deplore it in other men and be ashamed when it is you.