The KISS Principle: Simplicity Is Expertise
KISS. Keep it simple.
It's a principle that shows up all over software development, and once you really understand it, you start seeing it everywhere else too.
The premise is straightforward: simplicity and value are not the same thing as complexity and value. More moving parts does not mean more quality. It usually means the opposite.
What it looks like in software
Here's a pattern you'll notice if you spend enough time around engineering teams.
Junior engineer:
Designs a solution with layers of abstraction, new patterns, clever tricks, and architecture that takes a week to explain. Feels impressive. Hard to read. Harder to maintain. In three years nobody touches it.
Senior engineer:
Looks at the same problem and writes something that fits in a screen. Simple logic. Clear naming. A new developer can understand it in ten minutes. It still runs five years later.
The junior developer looks at the senior's solution and thinks: that's it? This person is supposed to be experienced?
Early career complexity is mostly ego. It's the need to prove that you belong, that you know things, that you're not a fraud. The designs are intricate and ornamented and completely unmaintainable. They might use every design pattern in the book. But can another developer read them? Will they still run in five years? What business value do they actually add?
To truly master something, you have to learn to express it simply. That's the proof of expertise, not the complexity.
Apply it to your life, not just your code
At the start of every year, people pile on resolutions. Change their body. Fix their career. Improve every relationship. Build new habits. Read more books. Wake up earlier.
All at once.
It's the same mistake as the junior engineer. More complexity doesn't produce better results. It produces paralysis, overwhelm, and a list of things you feel guilty about by February.
The KISS principle applies here too. Pick less. Do it better.
My compass questions
I came up with three questions I ask myself whenever something new lands on my plate. I call them my compass questions. They're simple on purpose.
Before saying yes to anything, ask:
- Will this improve my career?
- Will this improve an important relationship?
- Will this improve my mental or physical health?
If the answer to all three is no, don't do it.
That's it. Three questions. No elaborate decision matrix. No weighted scoring system. Just three clear filters that you can apply to anything in seconds.
The elegance is the point. A complicated decision framework is just another form of avoiding the decision.
What simplicity actually requires
Here's the part that trips people up: simple is harder to achieve than complex.
Anyone can pile on features, add conditions, build elaborate systems. Stripping something down to its essential form takes real understanding. You can't simplify what you don't fully grasp.
That's why junior code is complicated and senior code isn't. The senior engineer has seen enough to know what actually matters. They've learned, through experience, what to cut.
You can build that same muscle in your own life. Start noticing where complexity has crept in. Your commitments, your systems, your goals. Ask whether it's actually serving you or just making you feel busy.
The simple path and the right path are usually the same one.