Working definition
Simplification is sophistication: you remove behaviours, addictions, and noise so energy lands on what actually moves the gap.
How it works
Complexifiers default to add; sophistication defaults to no. Keep the list of what you would gain from saying no — then act on it.
Signature
Chocolate after meals · Netflix · distraction loops — name them so Rome is progressive, not a fantasy leap.
Your move this week
Add three lines to your say-no list tied to this week’s Battle.
Scientific grounding
Cite
- Soll, J. B., Milkman, K. L., & Payne, J. W. (2015). A user’s guide to debiasing. In G. Keren & G. Wu…. The Wiley Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making (pp. 924–951). Wiley.
- Kool, W., McGuire, J. T., Rosen, Z. B., & Botvinick, M. M. (2010). Decision making and the avoidance of cognitive demand. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139(4), 665–682.
Sophistication is subtraction that reduces decision tax — say-no lists are deliberate bias control, not austerity cosplay.
Adjacent
Personal Definitions · Signal vs Noise · Problems at the Height of Ambitions