Why Simple Lessons Are So Difficult

“Listen before you speak.”

Four words. Universal wisdom. It appears in movies as a central lesson. There is cultural consensus that it’s good and right. Everyone knows this rule.

So why doesn’t everybody follow it?

Meetings Suck

How often do you hear someone say “This meeting should have been an email.” Everybody agrees there are too many meetings. Yet people keep scheduling too many meetings.

They schedule meetings that are too short and need extensions. Or meetings that are too long with cramped content. People show up unprepared, despite everyone agreeing that meetings must not be wasteful.

How often does someone say “I’ll think this through and write you an email with my thoughts. I’ll keep it concise.” instead of “Let’s meet again next week to discuss this further”? Almost never.

This pattern keeps following me around. We collectively know better, yet apparently we collectively ignore what we know.

Three Theories for Why We Fail to Learn from Simple Rules

Theory A: People Don’t Actually Learn Anything

People can undoubtedly acquire skills, but maybe we struggle with consciously learning from language in way that would change behavior. Maybe we struggle to receive, store, and retrieve information that contradicts what we already believe or want to do.

Children learn constantly. Adults can develop technical abilities. But conscious learning—taking in information that fundamentally changes how we act? That might just be much very rare.

Theory B: Simplicity Is Deceptive

Because these rules appear so simple, maybe we don’t elaborate on them properly. The rules remain surface-level without a chance of becoming engrained and fostering a deeper understanding of when and how to apply them.

“Listen before you speak” sounds straightforward. But what good does remembering the words? It does not automatically help develop the judgment to recognize when a particular moment calls for patient listening versus immediate action. Complex pattern recognition might be condensed into a simple rule. But the inverse—unpacking that rule to spot such patterns in the real world—is a different story entirely.

Theory C: Every Rule Has an Anti-Rule

For every simple lesson I can think of, there’s an opposite rule that seems equally valid:

Without context, both rules in each pair appear sensible. It’s easy to (unconsciously) choose whichever one justifies what one already want to do anyway. In this way, these rules might justify action rather than inform it.

Someone might leave a meeting saying “that should have been an email.” The next minute, facing a different problem, they can think “communication is key” and schedule another meeting. Same person, same environment, contradictory rules. Probably no awareness of the inconsistency.

Caught in Recursion

When I try to think of ways to mitigate, what comes to mind?

“Context matters.”

“Find the right balance.”

“Develop better judgment.”

Those are just more simple rules. And, of course, they have their own contradictory rules:

“A rule is a rule.”

“Pick a side.”

“Trust the process.”

Simple rules all the way down.

True Wisdom

I suppose that this reframes what I would call “wisdom”.

Wisdom isn’t collecting aphorisms or knowing more three-word rules than other people. It’s pattern recognition—being able to recognize intricate patterns in complex, often social, environments. The ability to read the room; to possess situational awareness; to quickly assess and assert whether it is time to “listen before you speak” or to “strike while the iron is hot”.

Someone who holds a bunch of simple rules in their head, but lacks the experience required to develop proper pattern recognition, may apply them randomly—or flip-flop between contradictory advice and mistake that inconsistency for nuanced thinking.

This should shock absolutely nobody, but I guess what I am saying is: “Experience matters.”

The Simple Lesson About Simple Lessons

Thinking back to times when I derided people (in my head) for not being able to follow simple rules, I guess I was wrong to do so. They almost certainly were following a simple rule—they just picked the wrong one.

Someone who is inexperienced, well, they can gain experience. I suppose that a simple rule can act as a communication device to discuss something that happened, to teach a lesson or to learn together. What it should not do is obfuscate true complexity and nuance.

Rules can act as shortcuts to thinking. They cannot substitute it.