The Price of Complexity

Why Everything Slips Into Chaos, Unless You Stop It

The most beautiful things are often the simplest. It’s an obvious truth of the universe, but one few truly grasp. Simplicity sounds basic, underwhelming, even naive. We don't want that.

We’re seduced by the complex. We confuse layers with depth. We assume more = better. But I think the opposite is true.

I’ll start with a hot take:

Athletics, specifically running, is the most superior sport of them all when it comes to racing. Why?

Because it’s dead simple, human beings are, by default, designed to run.

But what blows my mind isn’t the running. It’s the refinement.

To take this primal, default action and spend years tuning it. To train like a maniac for a race that lasts two hours. To run 42 kilometers (for marathons) and care about every gram of your shoe.

To subtract every ounce of waste from every movement. To shave milliseconds off your stride like your life depends on it.

This is the nature of mastery:

To take something everyone can do and do it at a level almost no one can reach.

It looks simple on the outside.

But it’s devastatingly difficult.

Just like writing a great sentence or making a perfect omelette or building a company that actually works.

That’s what I think perfection is:

Clarity expressed through effort.

To subtract until there is nothing else left to remove and what you’re left with, if you’re lucky, is a kind of perfection. Because perfection, much like the speed of light, feels like an unbreakable barrier in this reality.

You can move infinitely close to it, but never break through. To break through would be to ascend, to break the barriers of reality. And who knows what lies beyond them?. (I’ll go into more detail about that in another letter)

So what is complexity, exactly?

By definition, complexity is a state of being complicated, many parts, layers, and interactions.

It’s the natural state of the universe, the baseline. And it happens on its own.

When you let things pile up, you stop editing, stop cleaning, stop cutting back.

Your thoughts.

Your calendar.

Your codebase.

Your life.

Entropy wins every single time, I'm not trying to be poetic, it's physics

The second law of thermodynamics: systems tend toward disorder over time.

And chaos is complex. Like, really complex.

Life is quite literally a war against entropy and simplicity is a form of rebellion

Which means if you want simplicity, you have to fight for it.

You have to impose it.

You have to make it.

And that’s the great irony: Simplicity is hard, Complexity is easy.

People assume the reverse. But it's not true.

Every day, you’re either organizing or unraveling and most people are too busy to notice the drift.

One email turns into 300. One app turns into a home screen of 12 folders. One meeting turns into a calendar that owns you.

You don’t intend to live in chaos.

But chaos doesn’t need an invitation, it just needs time.

So what do we do about it?

How do we make space for clarity to breathe?

I don’t have all the answers, but here are three practices that have simplified my life by a mile:

1. Selective Ignorance

This one was hard for me to swallow:

You don’t need to know about everything.

But I had to accept that I wouldn’t die if I didn’t know everything.

The first place to declutter is your mind.

The fewer things occupying it, the simpler life becomes. It all boils down to clarity.

Start by cutting the noise:

TV? Off. (Not movies.. TV news, gossip, random radio chatter.)

Skip the podcasts about the latest study that’ll supposedly help you live 2 seconds longer. Newspapers? Pass. Even newsletters, yes, including mine.

Ask yourself: How much more information do you really need?

Bonus benefit: Selective ignorance makes small talk easier. People love to share what they just heard on the news. If you haven’t heard it, they’ll be thrilled to tell you. And you’ll actually be interested.

Consume only what you need, no more.

If you run a business, make sure you're only briefed on what matters.

You don’t need to know the bathroom is out of tissue paper.

Be ignorant- on purpose.

2. Two-Item To-Do Lists

I’ve always used to-do lists, and they were always unfinished.

I’d move the same tasks from day to day like laundry, I didn’t want to fold.

But for the past month, I tried something radical. Every night before bed, I write down two important things I need to get done the next day. No more.

My completion rate is nearly 90%. (made up numbers but somewhere about there)

My productivity is through the roof.

I stole this from Steve Jobs, who allegedly prioritized work in 18-hour windows.

You don’t need a full roadmap.

Just know where to step next.

3. Eliminate Distraction

Marco Pierre White once said that the mark of a great chef is the ability to make simple food taste amazing.

You don’t need 37 ingredients or fancy techniques.

Just clarity, skill, and taste.

Same goes for life. Declutter your work desk. All I need is my computer and my notebook to do 90% of my work.

Close your browser tabs.

Don’t listen to music while you work.

Turn off your phone.

Lately, I check my messages strictly at noon or during lunch. Maybe that’s a luxury, but I love it.

The more you remove, the more what matters gets to breathe.

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That’s it from me. Embrace the simple things.

Embrace simplicity.

Also, as promised, I put together 21 journaling prompts to help you simplify your thoughts and get to know yourself better.

You can grab them HERE. Use them. Ignore them. But above all, be intentional.

Until next time:

Simplify everything.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify!… I say, let your affairs be as two or three, not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million, count half a dozen… In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life… the only cure… is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose…”

Walden by Henry David Thoreau