Keeping it Simple

My morning started with my toddler waking up crying long before it was time for him to be up for the day. It isn’t so much that he isn’t ready to face the world early in morning, it’s more that at 6am, the world isn’t ready to face Brecken. My wife started to get up to get him a bottle, but being the loving, sensitive husband and father I am, I told her I would do it so she could go back to sleep. My alarm had gone off just seconds earlier so I didn’t have my contacts in yet and I began to fumble around for my glasses when my wife says in more-than-a-little-threatening tone, “you’d better hurry before he wakes up the whole house.” Desperate to avoid the ire of my pregnant bride, I hurried downstairs to fetch a bottle for the young prince.

I manage to navigate through the kitchen, half-blind and in the dark, and made my way to the drawer containing the bottles. It would be too easy if we had just one brand and size of bottle, so we have at least three or four different styles and makes of baby bottles in that %&$# drawer. And exactly none of the pieces and parts are interchangeable. Why there isn’t a standard baby bottle cap and nipple is beyond me. You may be wondering, “Pieces and parts? It’s a bottle, how many parts could there possibly be?” Ah, I am glad you asked. Hundreds! You have, of course, the bottle, but there is also the cap to the bottle, the nipple, and then some of the brands have a little filter looking thing that does only-God-knows-what, but if you don’t have that part the bottle will leak. Apparently, they just design the bottles with that extra piece because making a bottle cap that sealed the nipple right to the bottle would make parents’ life just way too cushy. Then there’s this funnel looking thing attached to a straw type thing that goes inside the bottle and ends in a fairly sharp point. Which makes sense, because it seems important for a young, angry child to have access to a sharp object hidden inside their bottle (Is this how shivs are snuck into prisons? Do they have toddler prisons? It’s not a bad idea! Can I send my toddler to prison? I have so many questions …)

Okay, so here I am in the kitchen, rifling through the thousands of non-interchangeable parts, trying to match up all the right pieces within a particular style and brand of bottle so I can feed my child before he wakes up the rest of the villagers. It’s quite literally putting a puzzle together in the dark, but remember, I am also mostly blind, and most of the pieces don’t even fit this particular “puzzle.” As I paw through the drawer, the volume of my son’s cries starts increasing, reminding me the pressure is on and I am running out of time. I feel like Ethan Hunt trying to dismantle a time bomb as it quickly ticks down. Maybe it was all in my head, but it is about this time I remember hearing the Mission Impossible score playing in the background.

I finally pieced together all the correct, brand matching parts to this bottle (at least I’m pretty sure I got it right, but after all, I was mostly blind so who knows?), only to find someone had removed the little scoop from the formula box. Realizing I was nearly out of time before the “time bomb” upstairs explodes, I just started pouring formula into the bottle, “yeah, that seems like four scoops …”

I rush the bottle up to Brecken’s room, mere seconds before doomsday strikes, and deliver the world’s most complicated bottle to my son. The world has once again been saved and I am the hero.  When Hollywood makes a movie of this morning’s adventures, I hope they get the Captain America guy to play me.

I realize I am getting a bit long-winded with this, so here is the point: why make a bottle so complicated? Why make anything so complicated? There is elegance and genius in simplicity and the baby bottle cartel bosses have clearly missed it.

Our brains long for simplicity but our egos crave complexity. We like complex solutions because they give us outs. They relieve us from the responsibility of failure because, with such complexity, there’s just a lot of areas to place blame outside of ourselves. They give us excuses for procrastination because it takes a while to figure out such a multifaceted solution. They also provide reasons for not even attempting to solve the problem because it’s quite difficult to find the right path amidst such intricacy. But I think the overarching reason we seem drawn to complexity is that simple doesn’t mean easy and we often try to circumvent difficult but straightforward solutions with complexity.

You may not have a PhD in “exercise-induced physiological adaptations,” but if you want to improve your fitness, it’s fairly simple to set your alarm clock an hour earlier so you can get up while it’s still cold and dark and go for a run. But that solution is far from easy and actually sounds quite miserable. You may not be an endocrinologist and fully understand the hormonal triggers to weight gain or how those hormones are connected to diet, but I’m sure you at least have an inkling that downing another triple-shot-mocha-latte-double stuffed-bulletproof-smoothie with 107 grams of sugar and 53 grams of fat maybe isn’t the best health choice. You may not even have an advanced degree in finance, but you probably understand that eating out at restaurants eleven times per week or buying a car that’s worth more than your annual income on a 10-year loan is likely not in line with good a financial plan.

Uncomplicated solutions are often not easy but can be very effective. Complexity gives you something to hide behind, but it may also be a barrier to moving forward. Avoid the seduction of senseless complexity and keep things simple.