Simplifying – Why It Doesn’t Work

Simplifying – Why It Doesn’t Work?

         You have probably heard the term “KISS”, Keep It Simple Stupid. There are a number of reasons why you shouldn’t simplify. For the most part, let me just go on a rant here, who came up with that? Everyone uses this term as if it is a plausible one size fits all solution to everything it is you are doing coming from someone who does not know your goals or objective. For as long as I have been alive everyone has always told me “Keep It Simple Stupid”, really? There are two sides to every story, if there is a simple side to things, then what about the more complex side of things? Simply put, not everything is going to be solved with a simple solution. I feel that making things simple has not gotten us anywhere. Trying to pigeon hole a horse into a knot hole of a tree just doesn’t work. Now I am not saying to make things so complex you loose yourself in the workings of your design, but please don’t dumb down your design for the sake of simplicity. Saying things are simple means they lack sophistication and that things need to be simpler because you just couldn’t understand the complexity of the situation. I for one am not a person that can only understand the simple things and I do not imagine that you could only understand the simple things either. Whoever coined the phrase “Keep It Simple Stupid” was probably a person who had no faith in human kind whatsoever. Like I said, “not everything is as simple as they try to make it out to be. I also feel those that say “Keep It Simple Stupid” have not given any thought at all to what is really going on. Why should we as Americans have to put up with the notion that we are incapable of complex thought and that the mere sight of something complex should repulse us? We are given a brain for a reason, if you want to outthink your opponent, then you better start thinking a little more complex, because 9 times out of 10, your opponent is going to be thinking simpler than you because this phenomena is so integrated into our society that anyone who does not think strategically will be trying to do things in the simplest fashion they can think of, leaving themselves open to being figured out as they are not doing much because “ITS SIMPLE”.

The Basics: Time Duration

            On my continuation of the basics of strategy, another part in the grand scheme of things is the Time Factor.

           What does time have to do with a good strategy? Well, if you think about it, time has a lot to contribute to a well developed strategy. I like to think of time in the aspect of duration. Duration meaning how long will something be done in your overall strategy. Now that can be taken in to account for 5 seconds, 5 hours, 5 days, or 5 years. When you implement, you have to decide how long will you keep committed to a strategy before you decide to toss it out. I highly recommend that you keep to a strategy for a longer period of time then you would initially decide to do it for. The reasons being it is really difficult to design a strategy when you are tossing it out for another strategy all the time. For one, you have not given the idea long enough time to be tested and to have all the bugs worked out of it. I use to play a game called “Magic The Gathering” and it was a card game where you had to make a “deck” with spells and creatures in it to defeat your opponent with. My friends and I coined the term “tweaking your deck” meaning when you create your deck you have to play with that deck for many games to work out the usefulness of that deck and to fix minor errors of the functionality of your deck as most of the major problems of design of the function of your deck was worked out in the initial stages of designing it.  If you are constantly changing strategies for something else I guarantee you will succumb to the strategy of someone who has tested their strategy, developed it, and are masters of executing their strategy as you will have a design that is green and you will be more likely to abandon your strategy at the first sign of seeing your design fail.

        Overall, it is best to develop your strategies to your own unique style of doing things. This will not only make it more fun for you but will allow you to customize your design to the standards that are unique to yourself, your environment, and to your situation. Keep to your guns, rather then develop the habit of coming up with strategy after strategy and seeing nothing work. Do the work in advance so when the proverbial shit hits the fan you will not only have a rain suit on you will have a shower nearby to wash the mess of with while everyone else will be staring at the fan not knowing what to do.