Why we overcomplicate things
December 2025
Back in the 1960s, NASA spent millions of dollars designing a zero-gravity pen. The Russians, on the other hand, used a pencil.
This story — which, I admit, is likely apocryphal — underscores something we see every day across work and life. We pour massive amounts of time and energy into complex solutions for complex problems. Sometimes, the answer is as simple as using a pencil.
Which begs a bigger question: Why are we all so drawn to complexity in the first place? To explore this, I’d recommend a sharp essay by Carl Hendrick titled, “Why Does Thinking Feel So Hard?”
Hendrick explains why “smart,” complicated solutions can feel productive, even when they’re not. Sometimes you really do need to invent a zero-gravity pen for a very challenging issue. Other times, a bit of graphite and wood will do the job just fine.
Key quote: “[Psychologist R.H.] Waters claimed that students instinctively chose the route that demands the least mental work. But strangely, they did this even when they knew a more effortful pathway would lead to deeper understanding. At a time when psychology was dominated by behaviorism, and education was steeped in what would later become the moral language of grit and discipline, this was an uncomfortable proposition. Effort was seen as a virtue, not a variable. Waters’ suggestion that learners actively minimize mental effort, not out of laziness, but as a basic cognitive strategy, was both unconventional and ahead of its time.”
Why co-founder relationships fail
I thoroughly enjoyed this Founders podcast with Michael Ovitz, the legendary founder of Creative Artists Agency (CAA). It’s a roaming conversation about ambition, excellence, curiosity, pattern recognition — and, perhaps most interestingly — why most business relationships fail over time.
To Ovitz, it’s usually not about a divergence of strategy, or even ego. It’s something far simpler: most business partners never develop truly complementary temperaments that enable them to build something for the long-term.
Key quote: “I don’t want to put a percentage on it because I honestly don’t know. But if you asked me off the top of my head, I’d say 90% [of co-founder relationships] fail. It’s very hard to have two strong founders that share a singular vision… It’s very hard to find leaders who understand principles of business, how to execute them, how to handle people, how to be a leader, how to get along with your co-founder, how to have an intellectual process to support your vision, and how to unfold your vision, and while you’re doing that, to be open-minded. That’s really difficult.”
A few more links I enjoyed:
Key quote: “When cells disconnect, they physiologically disconnect from the other cells. Their cognitive light cone shrinks. The boundary between self and world, which is what the cognitive light cone defines, shrinks. Now they’re back to an amoeba. As far as they’re concerned, the rest of the body is just external environment, and they do what amoebas do. They go where life is good. They reproduce as much as they can, right? So that cognitive light cone, that is the thing that I’m talking about that scales. And so when we are looking for life, I don’t think we’re looking for specific materials.”
Key quote: “When belonging fractures, new patterns of leadership often emerge. At Airmedtec, influence no longer followed hierarchy alone. People who had never seen themselves as leaders began to take responsibility for stabilizing teams and rebuilding routines. Small acts like mentoring a colleague or reviving a tradition became the scaffolding for a new culture. This redistribution of leadership sent a clear signal: belonging is not something handed down from the top, but something built collectively. As teams found new rhythms, the sense of shared responsibility deepened.”
