Why Your Brain Will Always Defend Complexity
On the surface it may seem that simplifying your (digital) life will feel like a breath of fresh air. In my experience it's the opposite of that. Complexity feels completely rational and comforting, while ruthless simplicity feels unnatural and wrong every step of the way.
I have written about this perceived duality of the two voices. One is the "default voice", which feels very familiar and rational. The other is one that speaks from a meta-position. This one says something like: "I hear you, Default Voice, your arguments feel bulletproof, but I have better intel. And you will have to trust me on this."
For me, the default voice is the one that has been defending complexity. (Unless the magnitude of complexity becomes ridiculous. If it does, even the default voice will have a hard time defending it). By the same token, I suspect that this default voice is behind defending procrastination and rationalizing fear and lack of real action. But this is a slightly different story.
I used to have a highly complicated setup. The whole thing was sustained by the default voice. It was the meta voice that eventually put an end to this and brought clarity. But it took time before I could actually hear what the meta voice was whispering. And -- most importantly -- it felt wrong listening to the meta voice and doing what it told me no matter how vocal the default voice was getting along the way.
At some point, I had three computers running Linux. And a "backup" MacBook. I had an Android phone running Lineage, an "backup" iPhone, and an iPad. On the software side it was Nextcloud, Syncthing, self-hosting, and open source apps.
I was at the peak of this privacy-driven nerdiness when I ran into a Reddit post in a privacy-focused Reddit community. The author of the post quoted a person they knew who was defending conscious and unabashed normie setups that relied on Google services1 and/or Apple hardware for everything. "I am well aware of the data collection and all the other egregious things they do, but I choose these normie setups anyway. I could go the privacy route if I wanted to. But I choose not to. You see, I know my time on this planet is not unlimited, and I choose to spend it doing the stuff I feel truly matters to me. Professional pursuits and spending time with my loved ones come to mind". I am reproducing this from memory. The actual quote was a bit different, but this is the gist.
My default voice was startled to hear something like this. It was (and still is) so easy to justify the kind of complexity I had built. You are invested into these complex systems physically (devices, servers, software) and theoretically (you have spent hours carefully perusing the "theory"). You can produce a laundry list of arguments why this complexity makes sense. And all of it is going to be true, at least in some way.
Your "smartest", "most rational" voice is the one that will always try to drown you in complexity. Unless you go meta on it and examine the bigger picture, which is your whole life and what you're actually doing with it.
I now think my meta voice -- totally mute at the time -- actually registered the message from the Reddit post. A seed was planted. It then just took a couple of years to germinate. (Or maybe it was something else entirely and the post had nothing to do with the change of heart. Who knows.)
Eventually the meta voice became a bit more insistent and hard to ignore. But at no point did what it said actually feel right. Even when I made a decision I was going to simplify. Even when I promised myself I was going to simplify ruthlessly. Even when I sold off both of my laptops running Linux2. Even when I was nuking the server running Nextcloud (probably deciding to go with iCloud at the time). Even when I was nuking my PKM system.
Every time I hit 'delete' on a complex workflow, my brain fired off alarm bells telling me I was destroying my own productivity (if not my life). Stripping things down didn't feel like relief; it felt like self-sabotage (if not sheer reckless stupidity).
But this time I decided to listen to my weaker meta voice. I could no longer afford to waste time and brain cycles on this intricate setup. I had way more important matters to tackle. And I had to face the truth: What I was actually doing was using all this nerdiness to distract myself from the more important issues in my life and the painful choices that had not been made and had long been overdue. But this is a story for another time.
The weaker meta voice has won. This time. And with caveats. But it did.
Has it been winning for you? Or is the default voice all the way?
If a guy who ran three dedicated Linux machines and self-hosted Nextcloud can throw it all away for an iPhone, a Mac and Google Docs, I think many of you can actually stop agonizing over your Obsidian tags.
Footnotes
Originally published: 2026-07-01