Overcomplication’s less-common little brother

We tend to overcomplicate things a lot. But hardly anyone talks about undercomplicating things.

The thing is, to actually get stuff done, you must at a minimum meet the complexity of the real world.

So, things in the space of stuff that we get done don’t tend to be undercomplicated because we finished them, and so by definition we didn’t undercomplicate it. However, when things don’t need to get done, and instead just need to be discussed, we tend to undercomplicate them. And that doesn’t get enough attention.

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What do I mean by this?

It helps to know your own biases so that you can know how to compensate for them. For example, when we discuss politics, economics, impacts of tax policy, or social issues—we tend to drastically undercomplicate these issues.

And you can tell that we continue to undercomplicate them because we keep having to come back to them! They are problems that just don’t seem to ever go away.

So next time you find yourself with an easy answer to a hard problem, pause and ask: Am I undercomplicating this? Sometimes, the real solution is messier than we’d like—but that’s what makes it real.