Years ago, in the early 1300s, William of Ockham lived in a small woodland village in the county of Surrey, deep in verdant southeastern England. William was a Franciscan friar, which is one of the four major orders of the Catholic Church, founded by Saint Francis of Assisi in the 1200s. As a friar, William lived in service to his served community rather than cloistered away like a monk. Though he suffered through Church controversy ( he and Pope John XXII got into it, and he was eventually ex-communicated for heresy), he was at heart a theologian and logician, a thinker and a theorist. Mostly, William thought about people, the role of the Church and his life around him. He is perhaps best known for a principle that bears his name, Ockham’s (sometimes spelled Occam’s) Razor…“Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate”, or “entities need not be multiplied beyond necessity.” In plainer English, when you have two courses of action or competing theories that achieve the same prediction, objective or outcome, you should prioritize your research and energies first on the simpler of the two. I have reduced the Razor a bit more…simpler is better.
We are born pre-wired with natural curiosity and inquisitiveness, and then trained from an early age to think and innovate. Too many of us have come to equate thought and innovation with depth and complexity instead of better and simpler. Our built-in competitive spirit spurs us on to progressively complex strategies designed to eke out just that little bit more, that slight edge over the competition. We want to prove to someone else, or even ourselves, just how damn smart we are. But so often, our innovativeness gets us in trouble…there is always the misunderstanding, the unintended consequence, the unexpected event, the blindside, someone with a different agenda roiling your design and spoiling your fun.
What is simpler?
After the devastating tsunami that ravaged Indonesia in late 2004, a coastal city there received 8 neonatal incubators for the local hospitals, courtesy of a few western-based NGOs. Within one year, all 8 of the units were done for, goners, expensive boat anchors. Frequent power surges, 24/7 tropical humidity, and instruction and repair manuals only in English(but, of course) hastened their demise. Fast forward a bit, and Tim Prestero, an MIT fellow and co-founder of an organization named Design That Matters, solved this little dilemma with a similar looking incubator, but with guts from automobiles….car headlights for warmth, dashboard fans for ventilation and door chimes to sound alarms. These incubators could be plugged into a cigarette lighter or hooked up to a motorcycle battery. Anyone with basic automotive knowledge can operate and repair these units, spare parts being plentiful.
That is simpler.
What is not?
Just about everything else in life. Taxes. Health care. Financial instruments. Airline fares. Insurance policies. You name it. It really should be and can be much, much simpler.
When designing a strategy for your life, keep it simple. Cut out the chafe, ignore the collateral and silence the noise. Identify and understand your priorities, really dig down and get to your core to keep things simple. Like public speaking, sports, the sales process, most anything else, if you practice you can do this. You can get better, and simpler. For the most part, if we can avoid doing dumb, and dumb usually comes from trying to be too clever, we will be fine. Practice choosing the simpler first. Practice Ockham’s razor, and witness your life improve.
Towards that end, I have come up with a short and easy to remember list of undeniable truths of life to help keep me on tract, avoid doing dumb and practice simple:
Life is not fair
People are not rational
Change is inevitable
Complexity serves others
and…
Simpler is better
Mike is a registered investment adviser and fee-only Certified Financial Planner (tm).
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