Complicated and Simple

As I write this, my wife is sitting on our deck doing one of her favourite things.

She is gazing at a painting that she's working on.

The kinds of things she produces blow my mind.

To me, what she does is very complicated.

To her, I don't think it feels that way.

***

Earlier this week, I stayed at an outdoor summer camp three hours away from home.

The summer season was over, and so a few colleagues and I were the only ones there.

The property that the camp is on is massive. There are several buildings and lots (and lots) of land.

While I was there, I learned that after the season ends, two people—the Director of the camp and the Assistant Director—stay on site to shut down the camp for the season.

Two people on a site that large was mind-boggling to me.

What they had to do seemed so complicated.

Yet, I bet if I asked, it may not feel that way to them.

***

I've been thinking about how things are both way more complicated and way simpler than we think.

Anything can be broken down into an art and a science.

When you take the scientific view, you can gain an appreciation for just how complicated things are.

The artistic view, makes it feel so simple that it's almost effortless.

In fact, if you watch someone who is very good at something—this can apply to anything—it will seem as though they are doing the thing effortlessly.

I realize that in order to achieve this level of effortlessness, this level of simplicity, you have to evolve through the complicated stages first.

Complexity is contained within simplicity.

They are part of the same continuum.

***

When you're doing something for the first time, you should expect it to be complicated.

If it's easy, then you probably don't understand it well enough yet. Some games use this principle, easy to learn, difficult to master. The beauty is, once you understand it well, it'll be easy again.

I've found that this nature of complicated to simple can sometimes lead to a trap when we first start something.

The trap is that when we first start something, we think if it's not complicated, we're not doing enough or we're doing something wrong.

For example, when I first started coaching people one on one, I felt like my value was only in asking really intricate and deep questions.

I was almost too afraid to ask the simple questions.

The ironic thing is as I work with my own coach, I realize that the most powerful questions she asks me are incredibly simple.

***

Everything is both simple and complicated.

Your point of view just depends on where you are in the journey between them.