Why people overcomplicate things
Working in technology and startups, I see people, including myself, have the innate tendency to overcomplicate and overthink things. This is a problem because complicated systems are really hard to maintain, build on top of, and understand.
There is something called Gall’s law, which states: “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.” This is a powerful reminder to always start simple.
The phenomenon of overcomplicating things has led to my favorite meme, called the midwit meme. It’s a bar chart where at the beginning is a dumb person with a low IQ, the middle is the “midwit” and at the end is a high IQ expert. The “midwit” always has a complicated solution or idea, and the dumb person and the smart person always have the same exact solution or idea. It’s implied that the dumb person has the simple idea because they can’t think in complexities, so they can only think of something simple, and the smart person has the simple idea because they understand the area so well that they know the simple option is usually the best option. Here’s an example of the meme:
So why do people tend to overcomplicate? It usually comes down to one of the following reasons.
They want to feel smart.
People tend to want to use their brain power to its fullest level, even when it’s not needed. In the software world, they’ll choose fully customizable and complex tooling over simple, more opinionated tooling that can accomplish a task much faster.
They want to feel useful.
A lot of times, someone's intelligence is simply not needed for a situation, but they insert it anyway because they want to feel like they are being productive or valuable. Product managers do this often. They are not designing or coding, so they often have a lot of downtime - during their downtime, they want to feel useful, so they’ll come up with complicated and not needed ideas.
Simplicity is hard and requires a deep understanding.
The famed physicist Richard Feynman said, “Anyone can make a subject complicated, but only someone who understands can make it simple.” Sometimes, the simple solution is actually the hard one, and the more complex solution is easier.
People are perfectionists
Some people are perfectionists, and perfectionists feel the need to cover every possible scenario or to do things in the most thorough, comprehensive way. This often leads to many unnecessary complexities.
Overcomplicating things takes a serious toll on all sorts of aspects of life — our companies, relationships, and our own lives. Have you ever noticed that when you try to give yourself advice on something, it’s always hard and seems like such a complicated situation, but then when you give advice to a friend, it’s always clear and simple? With no outside perspective,
Aim for building systems that are simple at the start. Over time, they can grow more complex, but they should always have a very easy-to-understand base layer.