Vol. 56, No. 5 — May 1975 — Keep It Simple
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It gives us a good feeling to escape
out of the complexities of life into its simplicities, and
then to find that its simplicities have solved its complexities.
We cannot blame the advancement in science that marks our
age for all our difficulties and entanglements. Science does,
indeed, produce complicated devices which we may use if we
wish, but it also supplies us with simple things that make
life easier and better and interesting. It is, for example,
far simpler than ever before to be clean, to keep reasonably
healthy, and to move from place to place. These benefits,
represented by soap, disinfectants, and vehicles of transportation,
are products of science.
People like to do simple things: dance, read, paint pictures,
make bird houses, collect stamps, or trace their ancestry.
It is when they indulge unnecessarily in projects that are
complex that they begin to need psychiatric aid.
A good working definition of simplicity, applicable to writing
a letter as well as to building a hydro installation, is given
by some engineers: a simple machine has no unnecessary
parts. The pleasure we enjoy when we are doing a job in
a simple way is like the feeling of well-being we get when
we discard our heavy clothes on a hot day.
In no other human activity is simplicity more needed than
in the communication of ideas between people. Whether we are
writing about a big catastrophe or a vacation trip we make
our report easier to understand by telling the story in simple
episodes. Simplicity in writing means that we are attuned
to the reading level of our readers, neither puzzling them
by expecting too much of them nor writing down to the level
of a school primer.
Simplicity requires accuracy. The writer of a report or
a letter needs to do preparatory work. His information must
be geared to what is needed, or it cannot be informative.
It must be well-expressed or it cannot be understood.
Elegance of language may not be within the reach of all
of us, but plainness and directness are. Literary skill consists
in using your ability to present a subject accurately in such
a way that it is easily understood in the spirit in which
you write it.
Simplicity in writing and speaking is the outward sign of
depth of thought. When people try to add novelty to their
language they are led away from what is natural, and their
words take on the look of affectation and conceit. They descend
to the level of singers who embellish their songs by facial
and bodily contortions.
A good writer will not write letters or make speeches that
are too pompous for the sort and amount of information they
give. Some people think it is bright to be profound. They
do not speak or write simply about simple things, but "in
depth". Instead of "I am glad to tell you" they write "It
affords me great pleasure to inform you."
One must know
Of course one must know what one is writing about. Then
the task is easy: tell what you know so that others may understand
it.
What is involved in your progress from writing obscurely
to writing plainly is that you collect knowledge, absorb it
and digest it.
Research does not have to be very deep in order to solve
some problems. An art gallery set up a team to examine its
suddenly increased attendance. What cultural force was sweeping
the community? Why were scores of men, women and children
visiting the gallery this year compared with the driblets
of people who came last year? The explanation was simple and
deflating: the gallery had added a rest room.
If there is something that you cannot put into simple language
you probably do not understand it or you do not have all the
information you need. There is something still to learn.
Many difficulties become simple merely through the process
o! definition. In fact, the most efficient way to get to understand
a word, a question, an assertion or an order is to analyse
and define it.
To be good, a definition must tell in what respects this
subject differs from other subjects of a like nature. If you
define a man as a biped without feathers you might be technically
correct, but to your reader you might be referring to a plucked
chicken.
You can make things clearer and keep them in your mind in
an orderly way if you classify the facts you learn, and associate
them with similar facts already in your mind. The basis of
classification of even a complex subject may be simple. Finger-printing,
for example, has as its foundation the four heads of arches,
loops, whorls and composites. Other subjects follow a progressive
classification system, every section being broken down into
sub-sections. Zoology, for example, has its subkingdoms, class,
order, family, genus, species and variety.
Keep your thinking simple
You will find that you can keep your thinking simple no
matter how involved the subject may be about which you intend
to write or speak. Learn, first of all, what the thing is
on which you are deliberating and shut your mind's door to
everything else. One of the best-known ways of getting the
jitters is to allow a simple problem or proposition to become
enmeshed in subsidiary matters.
Do not try to round up all the factors, for they are unlimited.
The introduction of topics or information that are irrelevant
will complicate your thinking. Look for enough facts and major
characteristics to make your point, and start writing.
The time to think is before putting words on paper. You
cannot divorce accurate, informative and forceful writing
from thought. "It is only as thought becomes clear that simplicity
is possible," said Lin Yutang, Chinese-U.S.A. writer, but
one may also say that it is simplicity that leads to clarity
of thought. When you boil it down to essentials, the process
of judgment (which is thinking brought to the point of action)
is always a choice between two, and only two, ideas at any
given time.
Not all of us can follow the problem-solving method of an
eminent engineer, though it might be helpful if we could.
When in difficulty about some report or project he would go
to bed and stay there until he had thought out a way of conquering
it, even if it took two or three days. The French statesman
Talleyrand followed the same practice, excusing his absence
from his office on the grounds of illness.
Keep your thinking simple. Clever ideas and ingenious plans
and involved explanations of phenomena are all very well for
lunch table conversation, but when we come to deciding and
doing things we need unadorned simplicity.
Things should be thought of as they exist, and not always
as they ought to be or may be in some Peter Pan Never-Never
Land. Look steadily at the worst aspect of them today and
at the worst that can happen, and figure out what to do now
and then. By making up your mind in advance just what to do
in this extreme, dealing with the actual event is easy and
simple.
Be precise and be yourself
Sometimes simplicity consists of precision. The necessity
to make things easily understood by a hearer or a reader leads
professional and business people into what seems to laymen
to be excessive pains in checking the smallest details. Saying
things simply includes saying them exactly. As a Greek philosopher
said: "Doth a man bathe himself quickly? Then say not 'wrongly'
but 'quickly'. Doth he drink much wine? Then say not 'wrongly'
but 'much'."
Simplicity in living is an attribute of the true philosopher
whose business it is to discover or establish principles.
It pays to disinter old principles from the centuries of academic
disputation under which they have been buried and find the
simplicities that have been the support of mankind's advancement.
When you are doing this you develop poise, and that is important.
Poise helps to keep things straightforward, and this protects
you from running into complexity and error.
The principles of wrongness and rightness are sometimes
referred to as principles of common sense, because they are
supposed to be common or universal throughout the whole human
race. There is no substitute for common sense, although we
must admit that some persons who boast of their "common sense
approach to life" are merely disagreeable, obstinate and illiberal
people.
Common sense is not all-knowing. It is only a judge of the
things that come under observation by ordinary people. It
rests upon experience and acquired knowledge.
People who are simple in their habits wish only to pass
for what they are, and do not seek to appear what they are
not. The Duchess in Alice in Wonderland does not seem
to have had the knack of simplifying, but her philosophy was
on the right track. She told Alice: "Be what you would seem
to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine
yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to
others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise
than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."
Alice was compelled to admit: "I think I should understand
that better if I had it written down; but I can't quite follow
it as you say it."
Tell your story plainly
Tell a plain story plainly, and take pains to make everything
you write meet this criterion. You will have noticed that
humour is essentially simple, and while we cannot make everything
that we write amusing we may adopt some of the humorist's
technique. He keeps close touch with facts, not fancies. He
has flashes of common sense which lay our ideas about things
alongside their realities.
Some writing is so slow in motion and so lacking in colour
that people will not try to take it in, but dull writing is
not always the product of lazy thinking. Some of it is necessary.
Legal documents are difficult to follow because they are detailed
in order to be unambiguous. It is a good exercise to take
a paragraph of a document, say a lease or a bill of sale,
and try to change the words and the construction into brighter
form without changing the meaning or leaving loop-holes.
The sort of dullness that is to be avoided is typified by
the muddled statement. Some persons try to explain things
that seem most clear, and make them appear complex, as the
Duchess succeeded in doing so thoroughly. Others think that
they make their statements appear more profound by wrapping
them in obscurity.
Another cause of confusion is the use of abstract words
without making their meaning clear in the context. Abstraction
is an intellectual faculty by which mankind differs from other
animals. It is a great handicap not to be able to embrace
an abstract idea, but to be confined always to thinking about
tangible things.
There are people who by pursuing an abstract thought arrive
at fundamental truths while the so-called "practical" people
cannot get their thoughts off the ground. Dr. Hans Selye wrote
in his Introduction to From Dream to Discovery: "In
research, we soon learn that abstractions are often just as
good as, or even more, effective than tangible, individual
facts."
Abstraction is not, in this sense, the kind that gives your
eyes that dreamy look as your mind retires from the company
you are in to meditate on something visionary, but the abstraction
that considers something as a general quality or characteristic
apart from any concrete realities, specific objects or actual
instances. For example, no one has ever seen whiteness: we
may have seen white clouds, white sheets, white houses and
white horses, but we never saw whiteness by itself. We abstracted
the quality from various white objects.
Not all people have the ability to absorb abstractions readily,
and this imposes a duty upon the writer to make them clear.
Examples can be read in Twelfth Night. Using the abstract
word "concealment", Shakespeare in an instant turns it into
a visible worm "feeding" on a visible rose; then, having to
use the abstract word "patience" he at once solidifies it
in a tangible stone monument.
We sometimes fail to communicate because of our clever ideas.
The itch for novelty lures us into surrendering to complexity.
Instead of writing simply 2 + 2 = 4 we set down the more learned-looking
x + y = y + x, which means the same thing.
It has been said by people of more gravity than understanding
that there is a rule for everything. Style in writing is such
a variable thing that the only fixed rule is to keep it as
simple as possible within the requirements of the occasion.
Good writing has shed its youthful love of pomposity, virtuosity
and literary showmanship. Its writer has learned to write
so that his art appears artless.
Make things clear
When you have written a letter or an article, and have enjoyed
a rapturous reading of it, get busy simplifying it. Tune out
the static. Everyone else's receiver may not be tuned to receive
the finer modulations of your message. See the essential points
and make them stand out clearly. Give an account of happenings
and information according to their proportionate importance.
In the interest of keeping things simple, learn respect
for precision. You may not make the same judgments as your
reader, but you are obligated to state precisely what your
judgments are.
It is not always advisable to try to attain the simplicity
and clearness of an advertisement. You can obscure a painting,
a paragraph or a great thought, not by lack of light but by
too much of it.
There are simplicists who annoy us by making themselves
perfectly clear about trifles. They put two dots on every
"i" so that no one will mistake it for some other letter of
the alphabet. This too great striving produces insipid and
trite prose or poetry.
People are accustomed to talking about painting and sculpture
in terms of their beauty. Writing, too, has its aesthetic
qualities. We can admire a paragraph by a great writer because
of its simple construction that nevertheless conveys a rhythm
attractive to the eye, the ear and the tongue. The plain and
simple in writing can be as graceful as the sublime.
There are people who avoid saying a plain word. They feel
bound to be something more than simple in their language:
to be pungent, witty, or ornamental. Nothing whose sole purpose
is to convey facts should be obscured by beautification. Its
beauty is in its plainness.
A country's language is a horn of plenty crammed with every
kind of word. It may be as disorderly as a basket of laundry,
and you must search diligently to find words so true and simple
that they oppose no obstacle to your flow of thought and feeling.
Simple writing is when you give your reader words that he
understands without translating them into some other kind
of words.
Simplicity in writing is aided by observing these practices:
prefer a concrete word to an abstract word; prefer a direct
word to one that talks beside the point; use active verbs;
prefer short words to long words. As examples, consider these
words having for everyday use the same meaning: pay/remunerate;
begin/initiate; give/render; learn/ascertain; try/endeavour;
end/terminate; get/acquire; buy/purchase; about/approximately.
Boil it down
We hear on every hand demands for brevity. We want diamonds
and cars bigger and longer, but anything written should be
short.
The object of conciseness needs to be allied with that of
making what you write complete in conveying the desired information
in a way that is easily understood. Do not think of length
versus shortness, but of long-drawn-out versus compactness.
Anything more than is needed is too much.
The prize for compactness in a business letter might be
awarded to the tenant who received a notice of eviction from
his landlord. He checked his rights with the municipal housing
authority and wrote: "Dear sir: I remain. Yours truly."
Brevity in writing is not, as some people profess to believe,
always achieved by writing short, sharp phrases that use words
as reluctantly as a miser would in dictating a telegram. Such
a practice does not add to the simplicity of what you write
if the topic is a complex one, because some things cannot
be put briefly except by being put falsely. There are many
occasions in science and business when shortness must give
way to accuracy.
The rule is: eliminate everything that does not concern
the topic or add to its interest or intelligibility.
The material substance of what you write should be drawn
from your total life experience, but your piece should not
recite all that happened to you. If you are asked to submit
a report on the state of productivity in your factory or office,
do not seize the opportunity to tell about the difficulties
caused by labour slowdown, shortage of material and machinery
breakdowns. Tell simply what is asked for: what the optimum
productivity is; how much is going through the shipping door
in a week; how much is going into stock, and how much is spoiled.
Over-writing is unproductive and self-defeating. During
the Second World War the newspaper reporters with the invading
forces had no means of sending their reports except by carrier
pigeon. The pigeons were so overloaded that many of them fell
back to earth.
Work simplification
To accomplish something we must take our minds off the end
and start at the beginning. What is the simplest way to do
this task efficiently? Two persons may argue vehemently about
the best way to peel a sack of potatoes. The work will get
done when some simple soul comes along and takes a potato
out of the sack and starts peeling it.
Methods of work are prescribed by procedures, regulations
or instructions in one form or another. An attempt to improve
or simplify work methods must begin by examining these instructions
alongside the work being done. Bad habits or careless methods
or short-cutting will make instructions ineffective.
Here are some questions to ask about every detail of a job
you are trying to simplify: Why is this operation necessary?
Does it serve a useful purpose? Where, when and by whom can
it be done most efficiently? Is everything being done that
is necessary? Is anything being done that is not necessary?
It is not good enough to answer the question "Why is this
necessary?" by saying "It is our policy;" or "The manager
wants it done this way;" or "We have been doing it this way
for umpteen years." That is not work simplification but lazy
evasion of responsibility.
So long as jobs are kept simple or broken down into simple
parts to be tackled one by one they get done with ease. There
is a popular opinion among certain sorts of workers that the
harder you make your work look the better you must be working.
If you emphasize the difficulty of a job to yourself or to
others you are cultivating defeatism.
Points for managers
"System" and "simplicity" are related in more than sound:
one is incomplete without the other.
Some managers bog down in needless complexities. When a
matter of concern is raised, the simple way to handle it has
five steps that have proven to be efficient: find out what
the problem is; make sure that the problem is real; start
research; throw the information into usable form; solve the
problem.
It pays to make spoken or written instructions clear beyond
doubt. If you say a thing simply people will be ready to accept
your word, but if you enlarge upon it you open the door to
implications that will be received with caution. To win attention,
to get action, to gain support, talk and write in blacks and
whites. Give orders clearly and decisively so that no one
is left in doubt as to your intentions and requirements.
Do not become enamoured of deep research to the exclusion
of doing the little things that are awaiting action. Do the
best with what is at hand. The Wright brothers did not sit
down at a draughting table to plot the details of a world-wide
air transport system. They built an airplane.
Simplicity flies out the window when procrastination enters
the door. Things that are postponed usually take on an added
air of difficulty, and many problems that are put into a pigeon-hole
because the solution does not present itself at once emerge
with more problems attached to them.
It is smart to be simple
Do not be afraid to be simple. The energetic doing of little
things in the most simple way will often lead to the accomplishment
of big purposes. A tough problem can be tackled confidently
by anyone who will take the trouble to resolve it into its
simplicities.
Acting simply does not mean concentrating upon the obvious
and the easy. It does not mean avoiding the difficult things,
but simplifying them and eliminating what is not necessary.
The simplicity that makes daily life run smoothly consists
largely in avoiding tyrannical trifles.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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