When I was young and dumb, I was always impressed by finance people who used jargon and overcomplicated things.
Markets are complex so I assumed that meant they required complex explanations and strategies.
Boy was I wrong.
Once I finally learned how much I didn’t know, it became clear that these were not the right people to follow. People who make things too complicated, even if they are intelligent, aren’t helpful.
The secret sauce is the ability to understand a subject and explain it in plain English. Simplification is the way.
Here’s a sampling of some favorite quotes on simplicity from Albert Einstein1, Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci, respectively:
The five ascending levels of intelligence: smart, intelligent, brilliant, genius, simple.
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.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
One of my favorite thinkers/writers/speakers who has the ability to teach in a simplified yet intelligent manner is Seth Godin.
I’ve been reading his daily blog for well over a decade now. He wrote a blog post back in 2010 called The World’s Worst Boss that I still re-read once a year or so:
That would be you.
Even if you’re not self-employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your responses. You manage how you sell your services and your education and the way you talk to yourself.
Odds are, you’re doing it poorly.
If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talked to you, you’d quit. If you had a boss that wasted as much of your time as you do, they’d fire her. If an organization developed its employees as
