"Strive for simplicity. You never have to fix what you leave out"

Simplicity is a discipline of subtraction: choosing what not to build, not to say, not to carry. Every added feature, clause, or component introduces new interfaces, dependencies, and failure modes. What is left out never breaks, never confuses, never needs maintenance. The hidden costs of addition, cognitive load, coordination, testing, training, compound over time, while subtraction compounds in the opposite direction, yielding clarity, speed, and resilience.

This principle shines in engineering, where each part is a potential point of failure and every ounce matters. It holds just as strongly in software: fewer moving pieces mean fewer bugs, fewer security holes, faster onboarding, and simpler upgrades. Writing improves the same way; a clean sentence is easier to trust than a crowded one. In organizations, cutting meetings, policies, and handoffs reduces friction and restores focus on outcomes rather than rituals.

Simplicity is not laziness or minimalism for its own sake. It requires deeper understanding: what is essential to the problem and to the user, and what merely gratifies the builder’s sense of cleverness? The hardest work lies in deciding what to omit, and having the courage to defend that decision. Good simplicity clarifies purpose; bad simplicity amputates it.

A practical approach: start by articulating the one thing that must succeed, then align everything to that. Default to no until a clear, user-facing benefit outweighs the future burden. Prefer general solutions over special cases. Design for extension rather than prediction, leave room to add later if evidence demands it. Cutting is easier and safer at the beginning than at the end; entropy favors complexity, so keep pruning.

What remains after subtraction is not emptiness but concentration. By removing the expendable, we reveal structure. By resisting the allure of “just one more,” we buy reliability we won’t need to repair. Simplicity compounds into trust.