We live in a world where we can send people around the moon, build cars with hundreds of thousands of parts, and coordinate global supply chains. These are all complicated feats of engineering and planning.

And yet, in schools, workplaces, and families, we still struggle with things like:

• Stopping cell phone use in class
• Reducing student apathy
• Fixing a dysfunctional team at work
• Raising a teenager
• Getting people to think before they act

Why is it that we can handle complicated engineering problems, but we get stuck on these messy, everyday human ones?

The answer is: we’re wired to hate complexity.

In this post, I’ll walk through:

1. Why humans have such a hard time dealing with complex situations
2. Some real-world examples of where we go wrong
3. The implications of treating complex problems as simple
4. Three practical strategies to handle complexity better
5. Why I’m running the MindShifting Practice Lab – and who it’s for

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1. Why We Have Problems Dealing With Complexity

Our Survival Brain Hates Ambiguity

The moment we label something a “problem,” our survival brain (the limbic system) lights up. Its job is to keep us alive, and it tends to see the world in binary terms:

• Right vs. wrong
• Safe vs. dangerous
• Us vs. them

That part of the brain craves simplicity and certainty. It wants one obvious answer and wants it now.

When that system takes over, it:

• Grabs onto the first solution that feels safe
• Treats any disagreement as a threat
• Floods us with adrenaline and cortisol
• Cuts us off from critical thinking, exploration, creativity, and curiosity

In other words, the very part of our brain that is designed to protect us from danger ends up sabotaging us when we face messy, human, complex problems.

Simple, Complicated, Complex (and Chaotic)

Here I’m drawing on a framework from David Snowden, who actually distinguishes four types of situations: simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic.

In other articles—

• Why Simple Situations Blow Up and
• Effective Problem Solving for Students and Adults

—I talk explicitly about chaotic situations.

In this article, I’m going to focus on three of the four: simple, complicated, and complex.

Very briefly:

• Simple problems
  • There’s an obvious answer; pretty much anyone can see it.
  • Example: You’re thirsty, you reach for a glass of water.
• Complicated problems
  • There might be several right answers.
  • You may need experts, data, and a plan.
  • If you do the right things, you can be confident your plan will work.
  • Examples: Building a car, designing a bridge, sending people around the moon.
• Complex problems
  • There is no known right answer ahead of time.
  • Human beings, emotions, and group dynamics are often involved.
  • People act and react unpredictably.
  • Small changes can ripple in unexpected ways.
  • Examples: Improving a school system, raising children, building a healthy culture at work.

Here’s the catch:

Virtually every situation involving human beings, emotions, and group dynamics is complex, not simple or merely complicated.

But our brains pretend they’re simple, because that’s more comfortable.

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2. How This Shows Up in Real Life

“Relatively Simple” Education Reform

Recently, on Substack, I posted a video about how our tendency to treat educational issues as simple actually makes things worse.

A self-described scientist and K–12 education expert responded that the solutions are “relatively simple.” His suggestion:

• Agree on national K–12 objectives
• Create a straightforward, comprehensive list of all major K–12 issues
• Prioritize that list and go after it in a logical way

On the surface, this sounds reasonable. But notice the underlying assumption:

Education is a problem we can solve with one sentence and a better list.

That’s classic simple/complicated thinking applied to a complex system. It assumes that if we just get smart people in a room and decide on the “right” objectives and priorities, we can fix education.

What it ignores:

• Local variation in communities and cultures
• Power dynamics, politics, and history
• Values conflicts about what education is for
• Unintended consequences of “one-size-fits-all” policies

In other words, it ignores complexity.

The District That Cut Paraeducators

Another example came from someone in one of my MindShifting classes.

A district had budget problems. They looked at the numbers and concluded:

• “We can’t cut teachers (student–teacher ratios).”
• “So we’ll cut paraeducators using a simple formula.”

On paper, this was a clean, simple solution.

In reality, paraeducators were:

• Supporting special education
• Monitoring safety risks
• Providing one-on-one support
• Handling transportation and other logistics

The “simple” solution broke a complex system. The district had to go back, patch things up, and rethink.

“Just Study Harder”

A participant preparing for a financial advisor exam kept failing, despite taking course after course and reading thick prep books.

The firm’s simple solution?

“Here’s another book. Here’s another course. Study harder.”

That framed the situation as simple:
“You are not trying enough.”

In reality, his learning style and the test-prep format were misaligned. When he stepped back, looked at how he actually learns best, and experimented with different strategies, he passed the exam.

Complexity here lived in the interaction between:

• The material
• The format
• His cognition
• His stress and circumstances

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3. The Cost of Treating Complex Problems as Simple

When we treat complex challenges as simple, several things happen:

We Fall for Quick Fixes

We crave the feeling of doing something. So we:

• Change the survey instead of changing the course
• Cut positions instead of redesigning support
• Rewrite objectives instead of engaging stakeholders

It’s like mowing the tops off dandelions. The lawn looks better for a few days, but the roots are still there. The problem pops right back up.

We Defend Our First Idea at All Costs

Once our survival brain locks onto a solution, it tells us:

• “This is the answer.”
• “Anyone who disagrees is wrong, dangerous, or stupid.”

That’s when:

• Debate replaces curiosity
• We cherry-pick data that supports our view
• We ignore feedback that something isn’t working

Complex problems, however, require:

• Iteration
• Feedback
• Adjustments
• Multiple perspectives

We Misuse Experts

Experts are crucial—particularly in complicated domains. But in complex situations:

• Experts are often deeply invested in their own methods.
• They default to what has worked before, even when the context is very different.
• They may drive the decision toward their preferred solution, rather than stewarding a discovery process.

In complex systems, we still need experts—
but more as guardrails (“Don’t do anything obviously dangerous or stupid”) and contributors, not as the sole drivers of what to do.

We need diverse voices: users, owners, managers, teachers, parents, students—people who live in the system and see different parts of the elephant.

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4. Three Practices to Handle Complexity Better

So, what can we actually do to work more effectively with complex problems?

Here are three simple-to-learn, powerful-to-apply practices.

Practice 1: The Rule of Three Options

Our brain wants one obvious solution. If challenged, it turns things into a binary: my solution vs. yours.

To break out of that trap:

Always force yourself (or your team) to generate at least three possible options.

• 1 option → “This is the answer.”
• 2 options → “Good vs. bad.” A fight.
• 3+ options → You move beyond the limbic binary. You open up curiosity.

A story from one of my companies:

We had a course that was getting poor evaluations. I asked a manager to make a recommendation.

Her first idea?
Not to fix the course—but to change the survey. If we asked simpler questions, the scores would look better. (Wait, isn’t that what we often do when test scores are down in education? We make the test easier?)

Instead of criticizing that idea, I said:

“Good idea, that might work. Now come back tomorrow with two or three other things that might also work.”

She looked perplexed, but as she pushed herself to generate additional options, she realized:

• The real problem was that the course wasn’t teaching what it was supposed to.

She came back with ideas about:

• Changing the teaching techniques
• Adjusting the curriculum
• Improving the examples

We picked one, tried it, and the survey data improved.

That was so much more effective than telling her that her idea was wrong!

By forcing herself to go beyond the first “simple” fix, she opened the door to seeing and addressing the real problem.

Practice 2: The Three Stories Framework

When you’re considering a significant move in a complex situation (a new program, a schedule change, a strategic initiative), take time to imagine three stories, all set one to three years in the future:

1. Story 1: It Worked
   • Imagine you’re in the future and the initiative is a success.
   • Ask:
     • What did we do to get here?
     • Who was involved?
     • What did we put in place to support it?
   • This clarifies critical actions and highlights risks you’ll need to navigate.
2. Story 2: It Failed (Pre-mortem)
   • Now imagine it did not work.
   • Ask:
     • Where did it fall apart?
     • What did we underestimate?
     • What resources, training, or buy-in were missing?
   • This helps you see failure modes in advance and strengthen the design before you launch.
3. Story 3: Something Weird Happened
   • Imagine an unexpected event: a pandemic, a key leader leaving, a building closing, a major tech outage.
   • Ask:
     • How did we adapt and keep going?
   • The specific event probably won’t happen—but you train yourself to:
     • Expect surprises
     • Build in adaptability, which is essential in complex environments.

One teacher, Jessica, used this framework to redesign how she engaged students in science using virtual reality. By walking through these three stories, she:

• Strengthened her initial idea
• Anticipated why it might fail
• Prepared for weird events like the network going down

When she finally implemented it—treating it as a tiny experiment rather than a grand solution—it worked, and she was ready to adapt if it hadn’t.

Practice 3: The Three Sage Questions

Complexity means that most often, the first thing you try will not fully solve the problem.

If you regard that as failure, you are doomed.

When “it didn’t fully work” is equated with “I failed” or “I’m a failure,” then:

• Failure feels like a verdict on your worth.
• You will cling to bad ideas much longer than you should.
• You’ll avoid trying anything new.
• You’ll start looking for who or what to blame, instead of what you can learn.

To stay in your sage (resourceful) mind instead of your survival mind, ask yourself—before you act:

1. What can I learn?
   • This turns every attempt into a lesson, not a verdict.
2. What can I practice?
   • Maybe you’re practicing a skill: having hard conversations, leading a meeting, designing an experiment, staying calm under stress.
3. What am I going to do next if this doesn’t work?
   • You pre-decide your next move.
   • That might be trying another option—or simply rewarding yourself for trying (“If this doesn’t work, I’m still going to celebrate that I took a shot.”)

These questions:

• Normalize experimentation
• Reduce the fear around “being wrong”
• Help you stay creative and adaptable, which is exactly what complex situations demand.

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5. Why Consider the MindShifting Practice Lab?

Most of what I’ve described here—how our brains mis-handle complexity and how to respond differently—is covered in my book:

MindShifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success

Reading about it is the first step, but to change reactions into responses, you also need to practice it.

That’s why I’m running a four-part MindShifting Practice Lab on:

• June 3, 10, 17, and 24

The purpose of the lab is to:

• Practice these tools together
• Apply them to your own real-world complex situations
• Socially reflect on what happens—learning from each other’s experiments and perspectives

In other words, the Practice Lab is where we live what’s in the book:

• We recognize when we’re oversimplifying complex situations.
• We notice how our brains react when the first thing we try doesn’t fully solve the problem—and how to stay curious and resourceful anyway.

If you’re:

• Frustrated that the “obvious fixes” in your system keep failing
• Tired of quick answers that don’t change anything meaningful
• Curious about how to retrain your brain to handle complexity better

…then this lab is for you.

Here is the free registration and information page.