When someone asks you what simple really means we instinctively blurt our ‘easy’. But is simple really that easy? Think again...
On my first day in college as an architecture student I was struggling way too much with a work that comes under “simple” category — drawing lines. I was just asked to draw two to three (12-14, more like it!) pages of simple, free-hand vertical and horizontal lines. Easy, right? No way! That was by far the most difficult work I’ve ever done.
This made me rethink what really is ‘simple’, because most of the so-called simple stuff is not actually easy. One can easily give a lecture on quantum physics than say thank you, sorry or express their feelings to dear ones. Mostly the best solutions to difficult problems are simple ones. Like once there was a conference for improving the production of a toothpaste. Many ideas came up like improving advertisement, marketing, flavour etc. but the most efficient solution was “increasing the size the outlet of the tube”The more the paste comes out, the sooner they buy another one — simple, but brilliant. One can easily complicate stuff. But simplifying them is a lot of work.
A contestant at the TOP Chef Masters USA won the title with a simple upma . Even in computer coding, the shorter and simpler the code, the efficient and usable it is.
Generally we humans have a very special skill in abusing and undervaluing simple things. But what we don’t realise is that a circle looks simpler than a doodle but try drawing a circle free hand. A simple smile comforts us more than all the advice in the world.
Simple is pure, great and it is definitely not easy.
