There’s what’s difficult and there’s what’s simple.
But then there’s “simple but not easy”.
How can something be “simple but not easy”?
In truth, it can’t! It doesn’t make any sense, it’s paradoxical.
The true meaning of “simple but not easy” is that it is UNKNOWN
The difficulty is ultimately UNKNOWN, in how:
-it appears simple (especially intellectually)
-but it’s not easy in practice (to execute, control, predict)
The true difficulty is concealed
Thus there are two reasons why a “simple” thing could be difficult:
-it’s unpredictable
-or it involves fallible human mind: in particular psyche, with all it’s biases and emotionality
The problem of unpredictability is an epistemic problem
The so called “epistemic arrogance”
We like to think we know more than is knowable
It’s simple truth that it is going to rain EVENTUALLY — but it’s not so simple to foretell the exact day and hour and minute!
The problem of human mind is actually also epistemic — in that it’s rooted in our ignorance about our ability
There’s the infamous Dunning–Kruger effect: the lowest-ability individuals tend to overestimate their skill the most. Of course. The less you know — the less you know how little you know.
When you’re ignorant about your ability — you will underestimate the challenge before you.
It may appear easy intellectually — but unless you understand that appearances can be illusive — you will underestimate the challenge
Then you’ll call it “simple but not easy”
It was never “easy”. You just didn’t understand it, nor your ability, nor your own biases.
If you had solved many real world problems — you would have understood that it’s NOT ALWAYS as easy as it seems
Now, what is the significance of all that?
Obviously correctly appraising the difficulty of a given undertaking is of vital importance
If you underestimate the task at hand — and devote too few resources to it — you will fail (and waste your resources/energy/time/investment, with nothing to show for it, no return)
Likewise if you overestimate the task — you will devote too many resources to it — resulting in underwhelming returns — compared to expanded resources — which could have been devoted to something more profitable
A lot of what you think is hard is actually easy
A lot of what you think is simple is actually hard
You’ll waste your time trying simple solutions on hard problems
You’ll waste your potential avoiding easy opportunities which you considered hard
It’s imperative that you understand what is EASY and what is DIFFICULT
How do you understand what is EASY and what is DIFFICULT?
You learn
BROADLY
Obviously what you learned specifically becomes “easy”. This is self-evident.
What concerns us however is knowing BEFOREHAND how difficult something is
And BEFORE you expanded your resources learning that thing
Therefore you learn broadly
So that you have general ideas about the difficultly of various things
Furthermore
Learning, truly learning, involves doing
It involves you getting real results in the real world
As you solve problems — you mature
And you begin to understand yourself
You can only understand yourself in relation. Relation to something. Relation to doing.
(one can only distinguish something by comparing it to something else)
And once you understand yourself, once you know yourself — is when you delude yourself a little less
Therefore learn, and learn all you can
Stay ACCOUNTABLE at all times, keep your word — it’s the only way to learn (otherwise your results are falsified)
Be humble, no, learn to be humble, let the world humble you, which it will, if you take on it
Take on easy things and difficult things
And as you get wiser — you’ll be taking at things just adequately difficult
Adequately difficult for you to conclude them successfully (with high probability of success) — and highest possible return of investment
And then still learn more in the process
And then take on greater still challenges,
And STILL succeed