Complexity addiction – simple is beautiful

Example #1: The diet/food industry. A nightmare of opinions. One day, bananas are good for you, the next, they are bad for you.

However, the rules for eating are generally very easy.

1. Eat real food. (If it is in a package, box, tin, plastic…then it is less than real food)

2. Eat mostly plant-based food that has been the least contaminated as possible (organic is desirable)

3. Eat less.

There are some exceptions…some people need more salt, some people do have real allergies. But these are exceptions that would fit into real, plant, and not too much.

Yet people distrust these three simple steps. Too easy. Too simple. And so we have a massive billion-dollar ‘magic’ bullet diet industry. We are looking for the next best thing. The next fad. (Yep…paleo is a fad….)

Example #2. Tax laws. Crazy, stupid, complex. It doesn’t have to be like this. But to create simple tax laws, we need to start with a clean sheet of paper. And imagine all the people who would lose along the way….and all those lovely little tax loopholes that might close….so the investment to stay complex is more important than to simplify.

We love complexity…our businesses depend on it. Whole departments of people are employed to manage it. The waste is massive. Waste in time, money, effort, and layering more complexity on the complexity. Sometimes we call it bureaucracy.

Next time you find yourself adding layers to complexity…seek instead the simple.

Like life…

Quality relationships, making a contribution to others, doing something that you do well, noticing beauty every day…investing in your health…laughing and always learning….

Almost all the other stuff is just BS to keep us from really loving life.

Photo credit: Jason Samfield via Compfight