Chasing Simplicity

I tried contact lenses recently. No complaints about the process itself — they went in fine. The full field of vision was something I missed for a long time. But it made me notice how many steps are involved: Wash your hands, open the packaging, carefully take the lens, place the lens, blink, blink again. Repeat for the other eye. Dispose of the packaging. Every single day.

And I thought: glasses just sit on your nose. One step. Done. Sure, they can break — and then you’re stuck waiting at the optician’s. That’s a real downside. But day to day, they’re simpler. Less to think about, less to manage.

I can’t wear those super cool cycling glasses with prescription lenses. But decent prescription sunglasses get me 80% of the way there. And 80% with no faff beats 100% with a daily routine that feels wasteful and convoluted.

When I talk about simplicity, I don’t mean minimalism. I’m not counting my possessions or sleeping on a futon. It’s more practical than that.

Simplicity means fewer things that can go wrong. Less to fiddle with. Less to maintain. A smaller attack surface, if you like.

It means choosing boring tech because it’s more reliable. Choosing common parts because they’re widely available when something breaks. You don’t pick the latest exotic bike component or a proprietary fitting — because if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, good luck finding a replacement.

Say whatever you want about the motoring TV franchise Top Gear. If it taught me one thing it’s that you’ll always find spare parts for an old Mercedes-Benz in the middle of an African desert.

There’s a principle buried in most of my choices: the 80% solution. Forgive me, dear reader, if I bore you again with examples from the wonderful world of cycling and tech — my two passions.

Mechanical disc brakes aren’t quite as good as hydraulic ones. But they’re 80% as good. And there’s no hydraulic fluid that can leak, no lines to bleed. When something goes wrong — and something always goes wrong — you can fix mechanical brakes with a basic multi-tool on the side of the road.

That trade-off shows up everywhere once you start looking. The simple todo system that captures thoughts without demanding a tagging philosophy. The pen I care about, the paper I don’t.

80% of the performance, with a fraction of the complexity. That’s not settling — it’s choosing where to spend your energy.

Simple things tend to do one thing well. Fewer moving parts. Easier to understand, easier to fix, easier to make your own.

There’s a reason I’m drawn to this. I think it’s because simplicity removes the noise between you and the thing you’re actually trying to do. It gets out of the way. You’re not managing the tool. You’re using it.

The best systems I’ve built work like that. Quietly, in the background. Not demanding attention, not requiring maintenance. Just doing their job so I can do mine.

Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Simplicity has its downsides.

Simplicity can also create friction. You can have plenty of simple things, each doing its one job brilliantly, until you need them to work together. And they don’t.

The tool that does one thing very well? Now you need it to do a slight variation of that one thing. Just once. And it fails. Not because it’s bad, but because it was never designed for that. Simplicity drew a boundary, and your problem just crossed it.

That’s the tension. Simple things are wonderful in isolation. But life isn’t isolated. Systems interact. Needs shift. And sometimes the 80% solution hits its ceiling at exactly the wrong moment.

I don’t have a neat resolution for that. Simplicity isn’t a philosophy you apply universally and everything works out. It’s a bias. A default. A starting point that serves you well most of the time, and occasionally reminds you that trade-offs are real.

The trick is knowing when 80% is plenty — and when it isn’t. Most of the time, it is. Most of the time, the simpler option is the better one, not because it’s perfect, but because it leaves you with energy and attention for the things that actually need them.