Inspector Jacques Clouseau: “At times like this, I wish I was but a simple peasant”.
Simone Clouseau: “It's times like this that make me realize how lucky I really am.”
So have you ever heard of Richard Feynman? He was a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist who messed around with things like quantum mechanics. Like Carl Sagan, Feynman had a rare ability to explain deeply complicated subjects in simple terms.
To Feynman and Sagan, cryptic jargon, big words and complexity only demonstrated that you really didn’t have a clue what you were talking about. They understood that knowing something and communicating it are two different things.
I’ll take that one step further.
Sometimes a person does in fact know what she’s talking about, but because she wants so desperately for others to think of her as intelligent, educated and an authority in her field, she sounds just the opposite, her language so contorted she seems like she’s hiding something. Trying to mask her shallow understanding.
In Hollywood, they have something called a slug line. It’s basically a super condensed wrap-up of a movie’s idea—
A young man is transported to the past, where he must reunite his parents before he and his future cease to exist.
Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as a motive.
A boy’s favorite cowboy doll is threatened when a new action figure supplants him – a spaceman who believes he is real and not a toy.
If you’re a screenwriter and you can’t explain your idea in 10 seconds, like I said. You don’t have an idea. You probably don’t have a career either.
Consider if you will, the wheel. It’s one of the most elegant ideas ever conceived by humankind. You didn’t have to be an MIT engineering genius to see what it was capable of, which is a good thing seeing how there were very few MIT engineering geniuses around at the time. I’m thinking around 4,000 BC, best as I can tell.
Ideas that are overly complicated or obscure often struggle to gain traction because they alienate those who lack the specialized knowledge or expertise to understand them. Simple ideas are just the opposite. They have the power to transcend barriers of age, education, culture, and background, making them accessible to virtually everyone.
When you can distill your concept down to its raw essence, free from unnecessary jargon or complexity, you make it infinitely easier for others to grasp its value and potential.
When you're forced to strip away the extraneous layers and focus on the core essence of an idea— a concept which, for anyone who’s read my book, “The Houdini Solution” can assume, is near and dear to my heart—you're more likely to uncover novel insights that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.
We tend to think simplicity is synonymous with insignificance. The paper clip. The safety pin. The lever. The arch. The alphabet. Simple ideas, for certain. But hardly insignificant. Each has had a profound impact on society and culture precisely because they address fundamental human needs with elegance and efficiency.
In various interviews and Apple keynotes, former Apple lead designer, Joni Ive, has touched upon the significance of simplicity in design. "Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product."
A few days ago, a post in my LinkedIn feed caught my attention. The author was art director, designer and creative director, John Doyle. The image was a Sports Illustrated magazine with a photograph of Mickey Mantle on the cover. Nothing else.
“I was walking across the grand concourse in Grand Central Station, rushing to catch my train to Westport, CT. I passed the Hudson News Stand and I saw that cover. It screamed out loud in the myriad of magazine covers and just said, ‘I was here. I mattered.’”
There it was. The simple core. The face of a beloved American athlete and nothing more. Boyish and heroic. It doesn’t need explaining. It doesn’t need complexity. It’s voice is clear as a bell. “I’m here,” it says. “I matter.”
You have to put yourself on the other side of your communication. You have to become the consumer in proxy, otherwise you are only convincing yourself. Know how your target will receive it, the feelings it will likely evoke, the questions it might prompt, the sentiments it will reach, because your message was delivered at a time it needed to be heard.
Is this comment pithy enough? ❤️