Don’t Fetishise Complexity
Mastery of complex fields, complex skills and complex problems often brings great personal, social or financial rewards. From algebraic geometry to Brazilian jiu-jitsu, we value things that are difficult to master, and complexity is a key parameter of difficulty.
In business, complexity can offer a competitive edge if it makes a desirable product hard to replicate: whether it’s software, or a luxury watch.
So if you’ve mastered some form of complexity in your work, you might be tempted to share some of it in your presentations to non-expert audiences.
Here’s the problem: the value you enjoy through mastering complexity in your work, and the value that external audiences get from your achievement, are completely different.
Complexity is beautiful and fascinating to experts. But this can lead to fetishisation- in other words, granting complexity an unreasonable amount of importance.
My laptop, for example, is a complex object that I value very highly. To a computer scientist or chip designer, the intricacies of my laptop’s design are probably very interesting.
But it’s not my laptop’s complexity that I value: I value its abilities to help me get my work done smoothly and efficiently. In other words: I value the benefits it provides me, which can be expressed very simply.
