This email is inspired by Episode #141 of The Knowledge Project podcast, featuring serial entrepreneur and incisive business thinker Kunal Shah.
Our brains are designed to ignore complex information.
A saber-tooth tiger is simple.
A lush grove of blueberry bushes is simple.
An invading tribe is simple.
In the pre-agriculture days, if we spent our mental energy balancing quadratic equations, we wouldn’t have the attention to spot the tiger, find the blueberries, or hear the invading tribe in the distance.
Death would ensue.
Thus, our brains are designed for a simple world, filled with simple threats, simple opportunities, and simple selves.
Humans are biased to love simplicity.
Simple speech is successful speech… it’s speech that spreads and sticks.
A simple mission moves mountains (like Elon’s “Mars” mission).
A simple product practically promotes itself.
This doesn’t mean one should oversimplify, in Einstein’s words; “make things as simple as possible…but not simpler.”
To quote Brancusi, “Simplicity is complexity resolved”.
