The Most Important Solutions Are Simple Just Not Easy

Here’s an exercise.

Watch this 4 minute vid which shows how people solve their problems AND how corps study you to serve you solutions. It’s also amusing. The late HBS prof Clayton Christensen reveals some surprising facts about the habits of people who buy McD’s milkshakes.

The Job Of A Milkshake (YouTube)

Then…

This post shows why you don’t need a manufactured solution. You don’t need a “milkshake”.

Decomplication (Link)
Nat Eliason

My takeaways:

We all know the concept of simple but not easy. It’s the truth to everything worth having. Good relationships, good health, good output. You can’t fool yourself and there’s no shortcuts to these things.

It’s easy to forget that because we want to forget that. It’s inconvenient. So we tie ourselves in confusing webs of apps, CBD and expensive mattresses to figure out how to do something babies just do: sleep. And that’s just one example.

We succumb to:

The Law of Artificial Complexity: As the number of people experiencing a problem increases, so will the artificial complexity of the solution.

We need to remember:

The Law of Decomplication: The more people that are experiencing a problem, the simpler the solution should be.

So strip the problems back down to their essence.

- - Losing weight: People without access to food get very skinny. If I eat less, I will lose weight.
  - Networking: Famous people tend to hang out with other famous people, or people as accomplished in tangential fields. If I want to get to know someone I respect, then I should do something that puts me on a level where I could be friends with them.
  - Productivity: The goal of productivity is to get more done, and the biggest reason you don’t get things done is that you’re doing other things. If I remove the ability to do other things, I’ll do the thing I’m trying to be productive on.
  - Sleep: Removed from modern society, sleep is not a problem. If I can create a sleep environment as if I wasn’t in modernity, I should sleep fine