‘As Simple As Possible, But Not Simpler': What I Learned from My Minimalist Muesli

'Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.’
Edward de Bono

There was a curious chapter in my childhood when I decided to make my own muesli. 

It was the late 1970s. And I recall associating the cereal with all things healthy, natural and European. Sort of Abba, Heidi and Ski Sunday combined in a breakfast bowl.

I set about enhancing a base of oats with some sultanas and raisins I had located in the larder. And then I added some peanuts I bought from Ken’s the Newsagent. Once bathed in a generous dash of red-top milk, my muesli slipped down extremely well.

And yet, after I’d got through the first batch, it occurred to me that preparing the cereal had been quite a bothersome business. All that mess, measurement and surfaces that needed wiping down. (I confess I’ve always been a little lazy in the kitchen.) I wondered if I could achieve the same level of satisfaction by withdrawing an ingredient or two. And so I made the second batch without sultanas. And the third without peanuts. 

Still my muesli was pretty tasty. I congratulated myself on a job well done. With minimum fuss.

It was only when, a few weeks later, my Mum ran out of dried fruit supplies, that my Minimalist Muesli failed to deliver.

‘You’re just eating cold porridge, Jim,’ she observed one morning as she rushed past me on the way to work.

She was right. Somewhere along the road of reduction my Minimalist Muesli had stopped being muesli at all.

'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’
Albert Einstein

In business we often crave simplicity. It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves why we value it so highly. And why we must take care when pursuing it.

The world seems to be getting ever more convoluted and confused. So many partners and platforms; data and decisions; routes to market and radical futures. This complexity reduces comprehension and retards action. We risk being swamped in information, fatigued by change, paralysed by choice.

'There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable.’
Peter Drucker

The reason we pine for simplicity at work is that it reduces friction and increases efficiency. It makes things easier to understand, execute and communicate. Properly articulated, simplicity unifies and inspires. It gets us marching in the same direction, to the same drumbeat.

'That’s been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.’
Steve Jobs

We should celebrate and reward people who can reduce and distil; condense and concentrate; clarify and crystalise. These are precious skills in an ever more fragmented world. Because simplicity is the great accelerator.

We just need to be mindful that there is a point at which simple turns to simplistic. I guess that’s the point at which my Minimalist Muesli recipe became cold porridge.

'Simple and true,
I just don't know
What I'm gonna do without you.
Simple and plain,
And I just don't know
How I would ever say it any other way.
Simple and true,
I still love you.’

Sara Bareilles, ’Simple and True'

No. 396

Do We Know Too Much and Understand Too Little? What Einstein Might Have Told Us about the Quest for Truth

‘It’s like riding on the subway. I know where I get on and where I get off. While I’m travelling I don’t know where the hell I am.’

I recently attended a production of ‘Insignificance,’ an excellent 1982 play written by Terry Johnson (which in 1985 was turned into an equally splendid film by director Nicolas Roeg).

Set in 1954 New York, ‘Insignificance’ imagines a series of encounters between Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joe McCarthy. It’s a funny, intelligent, disturbing work that asks the audience to think about fame, identity, misogyny, time and nuclear war.

‘Do you ever get the feeling it might be later than you think?’

Running through the play is a debate about knowledge and understanding. Monroe is in awe of Einstein because he knows so much. But Einstein is at pains to point out that knowledge is over-rated – understanding should be the objective.

‘Knowledge is not truth. It’s just mindless agreement. You agree with me. I agree with someone else - we all have knowledge... You can never understand anything by agreeing, by making definitions. Only by turning over the possibilities. That’s called thinking. If I say ‘I know,’ I stop thinking. As long as I keep thinking I come to understand. That way, I might approach some truth.’

Einstein goes on gently to chide Monroe:

‘You know too much and understand too little.’

I couldn’t help thinking of our own modern malaise. In the internet age infinite knowledge is accessible at the touch of a keyboard. And yet we seem in an endless quest for the latest news, the killer fact, the inside story. What we seek to know seems so temporary and transient. Have you heard? Have you read? Have you seen?

In business we similarly pride ourselves on using the most fashionable phrases, the coolest case studies, the most notable names. We congregate around the same theories, flock to the same theses, patronise the same platforms.

How often do we pause properly to understand what we’re talking about? How often do we question our own assumptions? How much do we ‘turn over the alternative possibilities in our minds’?

You have to wonder if this is knowledge at all. Or is it just conventional wisdom, complacent consensus, ‘mindless agreement’?

It’s said that the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who died in 1834, was the last person to read every book ever published. After that it became an impossible endeavour. But perhaps the quest for total knowledge was always somewhat futile.

In ‘Insignificance’ Einstein is parted from his only copy of the calculus that he has been working on for some years. Monroe is concerned. But Einstein seems pretty relaxed. He explains that in his working method, the process of writing the calculus internalises it. He doesn’t need the copy. Through thinking he understands, and through understanding he approaches truth.

‘I have finished my work four times. Each time I have destroyed the calculus and started over.’

This year I have resolved to spend less time seeking to know, and more time seeking to understand.

Happy New Year!

No. 162