The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 402 - Occam’s Razor

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hi, Jen.

Jen: Well, it is nothing short of a miracle that I have any hair left on my head today. Because I spent the last few days tearing all of my hair out, trying to solve a problem. And the irony is that the thing I want to talk to you about today is razors. So, connect the dots.

Pete: Woah. Connect those dots, listeners, because I cannot. Let's find out what on earth Jen is talking about. This is The Long and the Short of It.

Pete: Your hair looks great. You've been metaphorically tearing it out, I'm guessing?

Jen: Yeah...not shaving it with a razor, though. No, the razor that I actually want to speak to you about today is Occam's Razor. Have you heard of Occam's Razor?

Pete: Occam's Razor. I have heard of it. It's one of those concepts I definitely have come across and gets thrown around. But now, I'm on the spot and I'm like, "But what exactly is it about again?" Is it something about simplification?

Jen: Oh yes, Peter. Yes, indeed, it is. It is basically that idea that the simplest solution is probably the solution.

Pete: Oh, right. Right. Or put another way, we love overcomplicating solutions.

Jen: Yeah. So let me just set the scene for you, Pete.

Pete: Alright, alright, alright. Hit me.

Jen: I built an app (which I'm very proud of) for my clients.

Pete: Just what a fun sentence, by the way. Jen Waldman built an app, everybody. She's a coder.

Jen: I know, pretty cool. And there was one final step to make sure it was all connected and integrated and synced and all the things, and it just wasn't working. And I'd spent many days on this, at this point. So, I was not ready to give up. So, I went to a Panera. I don't know if you have those in Australia.

Pete: I don't even know what that word is.

Jen: And I sat down at a Panera and I told myself, "I'm not leaving this Panera until this problem is solved."

Pete: Can you stop saying the word "Panera"? What does that mean, Panera?

Jen: Oh, it's just...it's a restaurant.

Pete: Oh.

Jen: It's like a soup and sandwich kind of place.

Pete: Alright. I just googled it, Panera Bread. We don't have that, but it looks lovely. It looks delicious.

Jen: It's fine. I was there for the free Wi-Fi.

Pete: Ah, it's one of those places.

Jen: Yeah. I knew they weren't going to kick me out. So, Pete, I'm so embarrassed to tell you this.

Pete: No, don't be.

Jen: I spent four hours with Claude Code, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. And we tested every possible thing you could test. We hooked up every possible thing. And then, at hour three-and-a-half, it asked me to send a screenshot of how I was actually using the app. And it turned out, Pete, that I was simply pressing the wrong button on the app, because one button said "Complete" and the other said "Done". And as soon as the steam stopped coming out of my ears, I asked myself, "Jen, how did you let it get this far? How did it never occur to you to ask yourself, what is the simplest possible answer? User interface confusion. Literally, the words on the buttons." So I changed the button to "Log It" and the other button to "Done". And it turned out the whole thing was working correctly the whole time, Pete. What the heck?

Pete: I mean, there's so much to say about this and so many different threads to pull. I mean, there's the whole fun fact that we could talk to you about you're now building apps on Claude Code, but we don't need to talk about that necessarily. That's a fun rabbit hole. There's also just the reality...so I am by absolutely no means a coder. However, once upon a time, I did a course called Ruby on Rails. I learned how to code something called Ruby on Rails, which is like a programming language. And I remember, this was like ten years ago, I remember that one of the lessons was called something like "80% of Coding is Googling and Debugging".

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: And I still think about that when I'm trying to make things. Because the part that you get stuck on, where you get frustrated, where you spend four hours is often this tiny little annoying thing that you google and you figure out and you find some solution, and you go, "Oh my god, is that really it? Like, I was misspelling commit? I spelled "commit" with one "m" instead of two, and that was the whole freaking reason this thing wasn't working." Like, I just feel like anyone who's ever built anything or coded in any way is nodding their to the story going, " Oh yeah, Jen. Welcome to the world of building stuff with software."

Jen: Oh my god. Well, it got me thinking about all the other areas in my life where I'm avoiding the simplest possible solution. Like, okay, I talk about Gretchen Rubin a lot on this podcast because I really enjoy her work. One of the, I think she calls it "lessons of adulting" or "lessons of adulthood" is that the thing you are looking for, that you think is missing, is right where you think it is. So you don't see your keys in your backpack, and you start panicking and looking all over the house. And she says, "Look where they're supposed to be, because that's probably where they are." Why am I looking in the bathtub for my keys, when I know they're supposed to be in my backpack?

Pete: Why would they be in the fridge? They're not in the fridge.

Jen: Right? I mean, sometimes maybe you drop a key in the bathtub, but most of the time they are where you think they're supposed to be. So, what is it? Is it that the simplest solution is so obvious that you don't see it, because it's right in front of you? Like, what is this? I feel like I could save myself hours, if not years, of misery.

Pete: I feel like there's a lot that goes into it, a lot of potential explanations. Two separate things. One is, I wonder if this is why the running joke in technology is, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Jen: Right.

Pete: When something breaks and you go, "Oh my god, I probably need to buy a new computer and reconfigure the entire hardware," and it's like, "Have you restarted it?" And so often, the restart just happens to fix everything, because it's the most obvious, logical, basic thing to do. There's that. The other thing I think about as it relates to this Occam's Razor idea is, is it hubris? Is it ego? Is it something where we convince ourselves that we're smarter than we actually are? Or we want to believe that we're smarter than we actually are? And so, we go, "Well, obviously it can't possibly be this simple solution, so it's got to be some super complex thing that I come up with. So let me really go down some random rabbit hole and come up with some complicated solution for something, because that will tickle my intellect and make me feel like I'm a smart person."

Jen: Yep. I'm sure that has a lot to do with it.

Pete: I mean, I'm thinking about the way corporations work and leaders work within corporations. And how, I mean, there's just so many examples of someone or something being so overcomplicated when it doesn't need to be. And I'm like, is this a bureaucracy thing because we have so many people working and like putting their fingers in certain projects? Is it like, what is it? To my point, is it ego? Is it hubris? Is it just Occam's Razor in action? Like, what exactly is going on here?

Jen: Oh, gosh. Well, you know, Pete, since I am using some AI tools, I am instructing my AI tools to apply Occam's Razor when working with me. Because I'm realizing this really is a tendency of mine, to overlook the obvious.

Pete: Yeah. So I've always thought of these two as hand-in-hand, Occam's Razor and the Pareto Principle. So the Pareto Principle is, I guess, also known as the 20/80 Rule, which is essentially this idea that 20% of one's inputs usually produce about 80% of the output. So there's like all sorts of examples of this, that when it comes to growing a business, 20% of the things you do are actually responsible for 80% of the growth. When it comes to your wardrobe, you usually 80% of the time wear 20% of the clothes in your wardrobe. Like it's this generalized principle, which actually has a bunch of interesting research behind it. But I feel like they go hand-in-hand. That so often, it's far fewer things that create a bigger impact than we realize.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And to me, it's like if I'm Occam's Razoring, i.e. overcomplicating things, I'm probably going, "Oh no, there's like 99% of things that are going to create 99% of the results that I need," as opposed to 20%.

Jen: It's so funny because I feel like in my life (and I think I spoke about this in a recent episode), I've done such a good job of identifying the 20% that are making a difference and really focusing in on it, that when I find myself in this kind of a situation where it's the 1%, that one little tweak is offering 99% of the output, I feel my life slipping away from me.

Pete: Wait, say more. What do you mean?

Jen: I'm like, I cannot believe that I wasted four hours on something that could have taken literally one minute. And it just feels so out of balance. And it makes me feel so out of control. And listeners, does it surprise you to hear me say that I don't like feeling out of control? That's not a surprise to you? Okay, great. Yeah, and it just makes me feel so out of my own self. I don't like the feeling, which is why I'm so glad we're having this conversation, because this is going to help me keep this front of mind and make sure that I am starting to actively seek simplicity.

Pete: Yeah. So, I love the idea of actively seeking simplicity. I wrote down a question of like, where am I overcomplicating things? And a cousin question to that (which I first heard from Tim Ferriss, I'm sure he borrowed it from someone else) which was, what would this look like if it was easy? That's a forcing function question.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: When we're designing a solution to something or we're stuck on a problem, you ask yourself, what would this look like if it was easy? Or where am I overcomplicating this? The other thing I feel just compelled to say is, moments like the one you described, I think, are unavoidable when you're learning new skills. You haven't been building apps in Claude for your entire life. You haven't been a coder for the last twenty years of your life. And so, you're learning a skill that is new to you. And as a result, you're going to make these pretty funny (on reflection) mistakes...or maybe not funny (on reflection), because you still seem pretty mad about it. Frustrating (on reflection) moments. Like, I think about the time I created a studio at home to record some pre-recorded courses, and we talked about this in some episodes.

Jen: Oh, I remember this.

Pete: And I like bought the camera, got all the lights, set up everything in my room. And then, I would like record an entire video or I would, because I was stupid, record like seven videos in a row, each of them about three to four minutes. And then, the first time...oh god, I remember this. I went back to watch them, and I'm watching myself talk but I'm not hearing any sound. And I'm like turning the volume up on my computer, like, "What the hell?" Turns out, I hadn't turned the microphone on. So I just recorded all these videos with no audio. There was nothing I could do except go back and re-record it. So like, the Occam's Razor of it all was like, maybe turn on the microphone first. But I remember talking to my friend Josh, who is a, you know, he works in video production and runs a very successful company in that industry here in Australia. And he was like, "Yeah, but this is the fun part of you learning the skill. Now, you'll never not press 'Record' on your microphone ever again." At the time, I was like, "I get it, Josh. But I really wish I had it saved that time." So I guess I'm playing the role of Josh in this moment now, being like, "This is you learning a new skill," and you can be me and be frustrated at the fact that it's still annoying.

Jen: Oh, thank you for giving me grace. I will work on giving it to myself.

Pete: So it's funny, I feel like in many parts of your life, you're quite good at keeping things simple. In fact, I feel like it's one of your superpowers. I'm trying to work out if you're good at applying the Occam's Razor or avoiding the Occam's Razor. What I want to say is you're very good at simplifying complex things.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So why are you good at it in some areas, and why not in this case? For me, it's like maybe it was because you were learning a new skill. But I feel like this is actually one of your superpowers.

Jen: That's so interesting. Well, my therapist would tell you opposites are the same.

Pete: Oh, really? Okay, okay. I feel like that's a separate conversation for another day, Jen's therapist.

Jen: Right. But no, I think you're right. I do think I'm good at taking something that is very complicated and being able to simplify it, whether it's like a concept or a process or what have you. But the thing that I'm realizing is that I have, to your point, an understanding of what I'm simplifying.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And in this case, I probably didn't quite understand enough. Maybe I'm giving myself too much grace there. Because I also could have just gone and looked with fresh eyes and asked, "Could there be a simpler answer?"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: I mean, it's really just the fact that I forgot to do that. I just sort of like went with the flow down a detour that led nowhere.

Pete: I also feel like there's something in the fact that it was a screenshot that unlocked it. So like, when it comes to solving a problem, it's useful to share the full context with the person or the AI that's helping you solve the problem. Like, "Here is my screen. This is what I could literally see. Can you help me?" That's a really effective way to get to the problem, in this case. And so, if applied in a more general sense, providing the appropriate context to someone can help them provide a simple solution for you, and thus either avoid Occam's Razor or leverage Occam's Razor. I still haven't worked out which one it is.

Jen: Oh my gosh, Pete. I think you just gave me the aha moment. Because when I am working with clients...and they're facing challenges big and small all the time. That's why we work together. They will talk about the outcome they want, and ask for my advice or opinion. And I'll say, "Well, it depends. I need more context." And then, I will ask clarifying questions so that I can understand the context. And in this case, you're right. We were dealing completely with theoretical information and we were not talking about the facts of the context. Wow. I just need to take a dose of my own medicine, is what it sounds like.

Pete: I mean, I guess. I don't know how to conclude.

Jen: What's the simplest possible answer, Pete?

Pete: Oh my god. Wow. That is so meta. I was about to...I was stuck, listener, because I was trying to come up with some like pithy, complicated, clever, close-the-loop kind of ending. But actually, maybe we just need to apply the razor and say, that is The Long and The Short Of It.