Have you ever been part of a group that dismissed an answer because it seemed too simple?
While simplicity is often the hallmark of great ideas, it’s not always easy to recognize. Simple solutions can appear deceptively shallow, leaving us feeling that something so straightforward must lack depth. This bias against simplicity is powerful; in many cases, we reject the simplest answers before fully understanding their value. I call this The Simplicity Paradox.
Once an idea is accepted, it becomes entrenched, but, when ideas are still in their “seed” stage, they’re often brushed aside, especially if they appear too simple.
This phenomenon has been referred to in other areas as “elegant simplicity” or “deceptive simplicity”, which is similar to the heuristic, “Occam’s Razor”, which is where simpler explanations are often preferred, but only after fully understanding the complexities involved.
The Simplicity Paradox states that simplicity often masks the underlying complexity and effort required to truly understand and express something. The paradox lies in the idea that achieving simplicity often demands a deep, complex journey of learning and refinement.
A person with deep understanding can make even complex ideas seem straightforward in their essence. Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” (SEE E=mc2.) Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, and inventor once said, “I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.”
Richard Feynman,an American theoretical physicist, also spoke about this idea, emphasizing clarity and simplicity as markers of genuine understanding. Feynman emphasized the importance of truly understanding a subject in order to explain it clearly, and he developed what’s known as the Feynman Technique for learning. He believed that if you can’t explain something in simple terms, then you don’t fully understand it.
In his teaching, Feynman encouraged people to break down concepts to the simplest language possible. He argued that, when you really grasp something, you can communicate it without jargon, in a way that anyone can understand. His approach was to keep digging deeper until every aspect of a concept could be explained simply, showing that true mastery means seeing through the complexity to the underlying simplicity.
I remember when I first started a job at a software company and I asked my manager what our software did. He simply said, “It’s field service software.” Not knowing what that meant, I asked him to explain it and then when I, explaining it to others, it would take me around 5 minutes to explain it until one day I too just began saying “It’s field service software.” This is because I finally had the depth of understanding as to what those words mean.
Language itself embodies this paradox, as each word seems straightforward but carries layers of meaning shaped by collective agreement and individual interpretation. It’s as if each word is a distilled vessel of thought, simple on the surface but rich in the depth and history of human understanding.
But what happens when you know you’re right, but your idea is still rejected outright?
This is chapter 3 of Think Again, available on Amazon Kindle.