The opposite of hard is not simple

So what is the opposite of “hard” if it isn’t simple? It’s easy.

No, really. The opposite of “hard” is “easy”. Just like the opposite of “simple” isn’t “hard”, it’s “complex”.

A lot of people don’t seem to realize this. I can’t tell you the number of times that I have heard people mix up “hard” and “complex”, or assume that the two mean the same thing. For example, the stereotypical dumb girl line of “Math is hard.” Actually, math is complex; putting the work in to understand the complexity can be hard, but once you do that, math isn’t that hard anymore.

The same thing happens with “simple” and “easy”, often with people assuming that these are the same thing — if something is simple, it must therefore also be easy. That isn’t always the case, however; accepting help from someone you don’t like is simple, but it’s not easy, and using a well-designed piece of software such as a desktop publishing package can be easy, but it’s not simple.

Nat Eliason, over on his blog, has an excellent (and quite long) article here discussing the relationship of hard, easy, simple and complex. He also discusses how businesses profit from convincing people that something that is simple but hard to do is actually complex, such as getting a good night’s sleep, or getting fit and losing weight, so that they can sell you products or services that promise to make this complex thing simple and easy. It doesn’t work, of course, because the thing that is really hard to do stays hard to do, but we give them our money anyway, because they tell us what we want to hear.

But I would add that we also confuse something being hard and something being complex (and simple versus easy) in order to defend our egos. If something is simple but hard to do and we are unsuccessful at doing it, what I see happen frequently (in both myself and others) is that instead of admitting that we aren’t succeeding at something that’s simple, we work at convincing ourselves and those around us that it’s really very complex, and that’s why we failed.

For example, the goal of eating more vegetables and less refined sugar and flour. Simple, right? But also hard, because eating habits are often very deeply ingrained. But how quickly do we tell everyone that this is complex, when we don’t succeed in doing it? Well…there’s the whole issue of finding ripe vegetables at the grocery store. And finding tasty things to go with it, like cheese or dip. And then we have to prepare it, and who has time for that? And then there’s the problem with making the vegetable dishes portable so that we can take it to work. And what if our co-workers want to go out for lunch somewhere that doesn’t have good vegetable dishes? Refusing that would be downright anti-social.

And on, and on. I know, because I’ve done it myself.

Simple doesn’t mean easy, and hard doesn’t mean complex.

But let’s apply this now to doing your creative thing. For most arts, producing creatively at a beginner’s level is simple, but also hard. It’s hard to express yourself authentically, it’s hard to risk allowing people to see what’s in your head and judge it. It’s also simple to sketch some stick figures doing something, to scribble down a little story, or form a shape out of clay, or start whatever other art you fancy. As a beginner producing beginner’s art, it’s very simple — the growth of an artist can be mapped by how she goes from producing simple pieces to those of increasing complexity. Art goes from simple to complex with the maturity of the artist, but it never stops being hard.

How many of us, though, want to do an art, discover it is hard, and stop doing it or never even begin, telling ourselves that it’s not just hard, it’s also complex. Or we look at an advanced artist who is producing very complex art, and convince ourselves that we could never do that, forgetting that even the advanced artist had to start with simple.

Recognizing the difference between hard and complex, and recognizing each for what they are is another example of something that’s hard. But successfully doing so makes life much more simple.

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