Being smart about being stupid

Difficult problems require clever solutions.

That’s what I used to believe. But clever doesn’t necessarily mean good, and complicated definitely doesn’t mean better.

Over time, I’ve come to appreciate that some of the best solutions are often the simplest. Sometimes almost embarrassingly so.

It’s easy to overengineer something, introduce unnecessary complexity or spend a disproportionate amount of time perfecting something that was already good enough.

Whilst this perspective stems from technology, I’ve found the same principle applies well beyond technology. Business processes, people, everyday life. Sometimes we create complexity where there doesn’t need to be any.

Often, the difficulty isn’t choosing the simple solution, but recognising it in the first place. It’s easy to get lost in a problem. Sometimes it takes stepping back, or explaining it to a rubber duck, to see what’s actually needed.

That said, simple doesn’t always mean easy. Getting to a straightforward answer can require forethought, experience and an understanding of what matters. It’s also knowing when complexity is justified, and when that final 10% really does matter.

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is keep it simple stupid.