Simplicity is the highest form of taste

Taste keeps coming back into my work — not sensory taste, the kind you develop. Especially now, when AI can generate almost anything.

I keep returning to simplicity.

The best solutions are almost always simple

A great pitch is simple. You understand it in one breath.

A strong tagline is simple. It lands immediately.

A great product feels simple. Not because it lacks depth, but because the depth is held with care.

A good interface is simple. You don’t have to think about what to do next.

A clear strategy is simple. You know exactly what matters and what doesn’t.

A well-designed deck is simple. Each slide carries one idea.

A strong brand is simple. You can recognize it and remember it.

A good system is simple. It scales without becoming fragile.

A thoughtful workflow is simple. It removes friction instead of adding steps.

Good design has always known this

Dieter Rams, one of my favorite designers, whose approach was “less, but better,” said it clearly:

Good design is as little design as possible.

Not because less is trendy. Because clarity takes discipline.

Japanese philosophy has always resonated with me here. Concepts like Kanso and Ma are not about minimalism as a style. They are about intention. What you choose to leave out is the work.

And this is what I learned at Zugata, a startup later acquired by Culture Amp, where we were reimagining performance reviews. A process most people dread. Heavy. Rigid. Overbuilt.

We wanted something that felt lighter. More human. Focused on continuous improvement, not a once-a-year event. Something that could live in the flow of everyday work instead of interrupting it with what feels like more work.

But the real challenge was not the idea. It was everything around it. A lot of how I think about simplicity today traces back to Srinivas Krishnamurti, our CEO and product leader. He held a very high bar: if it wasn’t simple, it wasn’t ready. That principle has stayed with me ever since.

We knew what we did not want to become: something like Workday, an experience so dense, overwhelming, trying to do everything at once.

So we kept coming back to the same question: What can we remove? Every screen. Every interaction. Every detail.

Do we need this? What happens if we take it away? Is this helping, or just existing?

We cut. And then we cut again. What remained felt clear. And because it was clear, it felt calm. And because it felt calm, it felt good to use. And because it felt good to use, it was what people called “delight.”

At 0 to 1, simplicity is survival

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. That idea becomes very real when you are building 0 to 1. Limited time. Limited bandwidth. Limited resources.

You cannot do everything. So you have to decide what actually matters. What is the real MVP? What can we cut? What can we simplify just enough to get this out into the world?

Not perfect. Not complete. Just clear enough to launch, learn, get feedback, and iterate.

In early-stage work, simplicity is not a philosophy. It is survival. And the teams that move fastest are not doing more. They are deciding better.

Simple sounds easy. It isn’t.

Simple might sound easy, but it’s not. It’s hard.

Because we are complex. Our thoughts, emotions, and experiences are layered and often conflicting. There is nothing simple about being human.

So when it comes to solving problems, we make things more complex than they need to be. We add. We layer. We embellish. We over-explain. We overbuild. We over-engineer. Sometimes it feels like we are trying to prove something. When really, we are just losing the point.

What we should be doing is the hard thing: making it simple.

Any damn fool can make it complex. It takes real work to make it simple.

Simplicity asks more of you.

It asks you to cut. And cut again. Even the things you like.

To let go of ideas you are attached to. To stop hiding behind complexity.

To be clear.

And this kind of clarity can feel vulnerable.

Simplicity is a form of taste

Not just aesthetic taste.

But judgment. Restraint. Care.

It is knowing what matters. And having the discipline to protect it.

Because every extra thing you add is a tax on someone else’s attention.

And this is why simplicity is the highest form of taste.

Especially in the age of AI. AI is great at generating.

It needs us to decide what matters. To cut. To restrain. To curate. To judge.

And in the end, the best work is not the one with the most in it.

It is the one where nothing else needs to be.

It’s simple — brutally simple.

Happy cutting.