People love to be experts.
Unfortunately, they believe that a part of being an expert is talking with a level of complexity when explaining things to the layman.
But here’s the thing…
True experts make things look incredibly simple and concise.
Wannabe experts hide behind complexities…. or they keep things complex because they don’t clearly understand the material to begin with.
That said, I believe that the path to gaining true clarity and understanding relies on our capacity to “simplify”.
And this applies to anybody.
If you’re facing a problem and you can’t describe it absurdly simply, then this likely means that you don’t understand the problem well enough.
And if you don’t understand it well enough…
- You can forget about solving it.
- You can forget about other people understanding you.
- You can forget about helping other people solve it.
This is true for everyone, but it’s particularly important for therapists/coaches to grasp this, because your results depend on the other person getting it or not.
Not only this, making things more complex than they need to be wastes energy. It literally wastes brain power capacity that you could use for something else.
Now, I might make things look a bit more complex here, but let me geek out for a minute and try to show you what I mean visually:
Here are 2 computer codes for the same command. For those who don’t know, a command is when you ask the computer to do something.
Code 1
Code 2
The first code is overly complex and inefficient (requires more energy), whereas the second one is simpler and more efficient.
Like I said, those two codes produce the same outcome, and do the same exact thing.
Except that the first one burns 12% more energy than the second (according to GPT), all this because it’s too complex for what it needs to be. (Assuming energy consumption is directly proportional to execution time and CPU usage)
For those who say 12% isn’t that big of a deal…
Consider that this program might run 12000 times in a single day. A 12% loss a single time isn’t the end of the world, but X12000 is an insanely BIG waste of energy.
Now, let’s put this in the context of your brain.
Your brain and biology work in a similar way but in a more refined & complex way.
Imagine how much energy you’re wasting when you’re taking 25 steps accomplish something that could be completed in 2-3!
This is why thinking in terms of First Principles AND simplifying things makes EVERYBODY win.
Now if I lost you at some point here (which would kind of go against my message…), I’m sorry, but worry not.
The only thing you need to understand is this:
Simplifying a problem to its most basic form is the ONLY WAY for you to gain clarity on how to solve this problem efficiently.
That said, it might be wise to spend a good amount of time trying to SIMPLIFY the problem instead of solving it out of sheer brain power.