Incidental complexity

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• Iterate on complex ideas to find simplicity
  • Generally, the necessary part is called essential complexity and the part which is not is called incidental complexity. Complexity always has to exist somewhere, so it's still important to recognise when you're just pushing essential complexity to somewhere else. As understanding increases, the ability to tell what complexity is essential and where it should live will improve.
• Discover incidental and essential complexity by keeping a zettelkasten
  • Writing can be thinking, and a zettelkasten requires that the writer deconstructs their ideas into smaller pieces, and build up links between them. Writing around an idea builds up context, which can help to figure out which parts of an idea are essentially complex and which parts are only incidentally complex.