62 | Simple is Hard
This post is Part 2 of 3 of the "Trusting Simplicity Instead of Increasing Complexity" series.
Simple is hard because deep down we want to believe it's more complicated than it is - there is too much at risk psychologically.
When we struggle on something that we perceive as simple or easy, it's demoralizing and we get stuck in cycles of shame that get us further away from where we want to go.
The mistake is thinking that simple and easy are describing the same thing.
In basketball, if you score more points than the other team then you win - pretty simple. But to call basketball an easy game would be quite an oversight.
With that said, the feedback loop in basketball is quick enough that you have an opportunity to learn the game as you go by making adjustments after a timeout, a quarter, or between games.
The scoreboard makes it easy to keep track of the objective and the natural cadence of the game allows you to make adjustments and close feedback loops.
With money, the objective is simpler than it seems, but the execution is anything but easy.
We're bombarded by alternatives, opinions, suggestions, circumstances, trade-offs, and misunderstandings that are constantly challenging our definition and perception of "enough", so the objective fades into the background or disappears completely.
And as Michael Lewis says in the Big Short, "The problem with money [is that] what people [do] with it [has] consequences, but [they are] so remote from the original action that the mind never [connects] the one with the other", so the feedback loop - for positive and negative outcomes - is nearly impossible to recognize.
It's important that we don't get confused about what we're calling simple.
The objective of the game - to have "enough" - is simple, but because of the constant noise and the missing feedback loops, the actual execution is hard.
Simple is hard because of the things that keep us from getting to it, but once we’ve experienced it and started to trust it, we come to realize that it’s priceless…