Why we get in the way of our best ideas

We've all heard it: 'Keep it simple'. It's one of those principles that sounds obvious the moment someone says it in a briefing, in the boardroom, or mid-conversation. We nod. We agree. And then go on to do the exact opposite.

We say we value simplicity, but the moment we have something to prove, it falls away. Somewhere between understanding the power of simplicity and choosing it in the moment, something gets in the way. And I think it's worth asking honestly: what gets in the way of us choosing simplicity in the work that we do?

The tension between simple thinking and our instinct to do more than is needed isn't new. It's something most of us have been wrestling with long before the brief, the boardroom, or the budget was involved.

Think about a time when someone said: tell me about yourself. The instinct wasn't to find the simplest answer. It was to find the most complete one. The one that left no room for doubt. We carried that instinct with us everywhere. Into the job interview where we gave a strong answer and kept going, adding context and explaining the explanation. Into the performance review where three good things didn't feel like enough. Into the presentation with too many slides and six objectives when only one mattered. We do this in different rooms, on both sides of the brief, for the same unspoken reason. This isn't a brand problem or an agency problem. It's a human one.

Committing to one thing means letting go of everything else and letting go is often the hardest part. When a simple idea makes it through strategy and into any room where it must be sold, two things happen: the fear that it looks like not enough work was done, and the deeper worry that being so committed to a single idea is too big a risk. Psychologist and behavioural scientist Gerd Gigerenzer calls it defensive decision-making: when people choose not what is best, but what is easiest to defend. In a high-stakes environment, it feels safer to be wrong with a complex spreadsheet than to be right with a simple feeling. So, another message gets added, a third claim for a stakeholder and a fourth objective because one felt too thin. Not to make the idea stronger, but to make the people behind it feel protected. In that moment, we stop serving the work and start protecting ourselves.

The complexity we create rarely feels like protection in the moment. It feels like diligence, thoroughness, and doing the job properly. That's what makes it so hard to catch and so easy to repeat. We add because the stakes are high and standing behind one idea, in a room full of doubt, takes more confidence than most of us feel in that moment.

Simplicity is far easier to admire in someone else's work than to defend in your own. We see it in the brands we keep coming back to, the ones that are easy to understand and impossible to forget. The work that stops us mid-scroll and leaves us with a reaction that is equal parts admiration and envy: why didn't we think of that? Getting to the idea is rarely the hard part. It's the confidence to stop there - to stop adding once the idea is already whole. We admire that ease in someone else's work because we rarely extend the same trust to our own.

We're so focused on what we're saying that we forget what it feels like to be on the receiving end of our work. Simple means the person on the receiving end doesn't have to work. They don't have to sort through claims or weigh up messages or decide what matters. It's already been decided for them. That's not less work. That's the hardest work there is - knowing what to say, deciding what to cut, and having the confidence to leave it there.

Start noticing the moment you feel the urge to add. Not to stop it immediately, but to get curious about it. Ask what's driving it. If adding more genuinely strengthens the idea, keep it. If it's coming from anxiety rather than clarity, cut it. Once you start doing this honestly, you realise the best creative decisions were never just about the work. They were about knowing yourself well enough to know when you're getting in the way of it. That's the whole practice. Not a checklist, not a process, just that one question asked honestly every time the urge to add shows up. That gap, between what the work needs and what you need, is where the real editing happens. And it's less about cutting words than it is about catching yourself.

People don't need more. They need something they can hold onto, something clear and something true. The bravest thing we can do for the people we're trying to reach, and for ourselves, is to choose to say what matters, mean it completely, and trust that it is enough.