“There is always a market for the highest quality.”
—Tim Ferriss
Complexity is a means of hiding poor quality, not improving it. It is better to start with fewer, higher quality ingredients, to intentionally limit yourself, and to highlight those ingredients than it is to start with a larger quantity of low quality ingredients and to try to make up for low quality with variety and complexity. Low quality does not become high quality simply by having more of it.
Starting with a limited number of high quality ingredients does not guarantee success, however. Simplicity is unforgiving. It gives us nowhere to hide. Simplicity requires us to be humble, to let the ingredients shine. If we have a few, high quality ingredients, the goal is to enhance their positive attributes, to draw them out, not to mask them.
Adding unnecessary complexity to a dish will only diminish the overall quality of the final product. Complexity does not improve quality. It mutes it. More is not better. Better is better.
“As in life, so too it is in budo. As in budo, so too it is in life.”
-Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Meditations on God 