The Real Cost of Simplicity

Early in my career, I developed a beneficial crutch—data. Born from a love of science and spreadsheets and lack of self-confidence, I developed a data-driven approach to my work. I felt that if my ideas were informed by data, they’d have merit.

My data-driven approach proved effective and I quickly gained a reputation for challenging assumptions. The more rigorous I was, the more people listened. So I kept adding: more analysis, more insights. It worked, colleagues praised me—I didn’t stop to ask if it was necessary.

A breakthrough occurred during campaign planning. I suggested we don’t create a video. The video was resource-intensive and expensive with little evidence of contribution. “But we always do a video! A campaign must have a video!”—people protested initially, but we believed in ourselves, were brave and committed. That year we didn’t do a campaign video. And it worked. The campaign was successful. We didn’t need a video.

We tend to fall into a trap where we think that the outcome will match the work we put in. When something succeeds, we attribute it to our efforts instead of analysing what specifically contributed to the success, and what did not.

The trap is nasty. It rewards adding more, while doing less is inherently risky. If I kept the video and the campaign failed, people would blame external factors or bad execution. The campaign succeeded without the video which validated my decision; if it failed, the perception would be because there wasn’t a video. I made the risky decision not to do the video, I’d be the scapegoat.

Thinking “the more resources or time we put into something the better it will be” simply isn’t true. In the campaign example, the real gain from not doing a video was the opportunity cost, allowing resource deployment elsewhere.

We often need to do less than we think.

Three years ago, I built a web app to solve a problem: what are we going to eat this week? Every Wednesday night, my wife and I plan our meals, and I wanted to speed up the process (it can take hours).

I immediately started thinking about all the features it needed. I ended up with a recipe library and a complex planning tool—timeline, meal types, cooking types, flexible dates. It was intense.

I kept adding more functionality and complexity to, in hindsight, impress people. Something simple could seem easy. If the simple version didn’t work, that’s a reflection on my abilities. With complexity, it reflects on the users’.

After a few weeks, I stopped using it. I'd made the planning tool too complicated.

I recently rebuilt the planning tool with radical simplicity: mark a recipe as "cooking this week" or "next week." It looks like a worse solution on paper, but it works, and I'm using it.

I thought I needed to do much more than I did. Where complexity killed my momentum, simplicity recharged it.

Simplicity isn’t a compromise. It’s the goal.

However, it is really hard to keep things simple. When looking to increase revenue, engagement, or productivity, we’re too quick to add something rather than look at what we could stop or take away. This habit snowballs, complexity creeps in, and we again look for something else to add.

I still struggle with this. Even writing this article, I caught myself wanting to add more examples, commentary, and... To prove I'd thought deeply about it. To appear smart. To create complexity to hide behind.

But here's what I've learned: doing less doesn't mean you're lazy or uncommitted. It means you're focused. It means you're confident enough to let the work speak for itself.

And yet, simplicity leaves little to hide behind. You’re exposed. If the work fails, it’s on you. Confidence often isn’t enough to displace the vulnerability created through simplicity. The complexity trap has teeth that cut deep.

If you're sitting on a project, campaign, or feature and worried it's not enough, ask yourself: is it incomplete, or am I creating something to hide behind?

You likely already know the answer. You know what’s best for the work, but you’ll add complexity anyway. Adding complexity is easier than addressing the discomfort of simplicity.

Simple is the uncomfortable answer.

Are you ready to let your work speak for itself, or do you still need the complexity?