Few simple ideas enter the world simple. Simple ideas become simple over time through enormous effort. Most ideas are born complicated, inelegant, and inarticulate and messy.

If the only ideas you are willing to entertain are simple ones, you will be limited to ideas other people have already simplified, which means, you will have original ideas.

Think of the word we reach for when we think about simplicity: distill.

The analogy not only bears extension, it demands it:

1. Start with living ingredients. Not artificial synthesized chemicals. Things that grow out of the soil in the light of the sun.
2. Crush that living stuff into a pulpy, messy mash.
3. Let the pulpy, messy mash ferment. You allow it to bubble, froth, steam and start to smell funny.
4. Identify what part of that fermenting mass of nastiness is worth keeping and start collecting it in its purest form.
5. Sneak the nasty by-products out the back door and get rid of it before anyone sees or smells it.
6. Bottle it all up in a beautiful tidy package that looks like it descended from the sky on a beam of light.
7. Brace yourself for the phenomenon of retroactive obviousness: “If the idea’s that simple, it must have been here all along. In fact, now that I think about it, I had a similar idea not long ago…”*

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* Note: William James observed this phenomenon: “I fully expect to see the pragmatist view of truth run through the classic stages of a theory’s career. First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.” This passage has been distilled and popularized in this elegant form, which may or may not be James’s own words: “When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It’s not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say ‘Anyway, it’s not new.'”