Do you make things harder than they need to be?

Over 700 years ago, William from a village called Ockham surmised that

"Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity."

This has become known as “Ockham’s Razor”

This simple idea has become a universal tool for proving things in science, philosophy, psychology and theology. The idea is that the process with the least amount of steps tends to be the one that will have the best outcome.

Or as Albert Einstein said:

"Everything should be made as simple as possible - but no simpler."

Therefore we should not overcomplicate things. We often do this when we are trying to avoid taking action, be it forever planning a project, or what we are going to do in the future or researching a paper, but spending little time actually writing it! This is often due to fear or lack of belief in our abilities which can lead us to procrastinate far longer than necessary. Successful people bite the bullet and deal with things in a methodical manner, so why don’t you?

Complicating facets of our lives also helps shift responsibility away from us, as we try to blame other factors for our lack of action. If this rings true for you, try to become aware of when you are making things more difficult than they ought to be and gently question why you may be doing this. You may be surprised by the answers. Sometimes it can be because we don’t want to actually do the thing in the first place. If this is the case look at alternatives or if it must be done, try to do it thoroughly and quickly, but without over analysing. As the saying goes “analysis is paralysis”. Don’t get stuck at this stage, take some tentative steps towards your goal and I promise you, you will reap the rewards.