In my previous blog post Why Marketing Feels Complicated I made a passing comment about difficult and complicated not being the same thing.   And I’ve been thinking more about that distinction since mentioning it, and felt there was more to explore, because often we do confuse the two.

What I’m seeing more clearly now is that something can be difficult without being complicated and on the flipside of that, something can also be complicated without actually being difficult.

Let me explain…

Running a business can feel difficult, making decisions can feel difficult, putting yourself out there can feel difficult, talking about what you do can feel difficult, selling can feel difficult. But none of them are inherently complicated.  Take ‘putting yourself out there’ as an example.

You might be nervous about what people will think, worry that nobody will read what you post, wonder whether you are saying the right thing, feel uncomfortable being visible or afraid to get it wrong.  All of that can make putting yourself out there difficult.  

But the actions themselves are simple. You write the blog post or record the video and you post it.  You write the email,  then you send it.  That’s it, but it’s our thinking about those actions that makes things complicated.

And I think that’s an important distinction because when we think something feels difficult, we either avoid it altogether or think the answer must be to add something.  Another strategy,  framework, course, tool, platform, system, learn something new! Before we know it, something that was just difficult has also become complicated.

We add instead of removing

Take marketing as an example. Marketing can be difficult – you have to put yourself out there, know who you want to help, find the words to explain what you do and talk about your work when there’s no guarantee anyone is going to buy what you have to offer..  You also have to keep showing up when you’d much rather hide behind your laptop- all of that can feel difficult.

But does it really need to be complicated?

Because somewhere along the way, marketing has become an entire industry built around making it seem that way.

You need a content strategy, a customer avatar, a funnel, a lead magnet, a nurture sequence, a content pillar, a personal brand, a social media strategy, a sales strategy, a launch strategy,  a strategy for your strategy! 🙂 

Before you know it, you’re spending more time trying to work out how to market your business than actually talking to the people you created the business for.

So I’ve been reflecting on whether marketing was never the problem and perhaps we have just made it complicated.

Difficult doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong

This is something I think is important to say.  If something feels difficult, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to find a better way of doing it. Sometimes difficult is just difficult. Starting something new can be difficult as you don’t know yet what you’re doing.  Learning something new can be difficult as there’s a learning curve!  Changing something you’ve been doing for years can be difficult because the mind doesn’t like change, and being visible can be difficult when you’re used to staying small.  Having a difficult conversation can be difficult, because let’s face it, who likes conflict?  Making a decision when you don’t know what the outcome will be can be difficult, because we like to feel in control of what will happen.

But, you don’t necessarily need another framework to fix that any of that!  You just need to do the difficult thing And I think that’s where we can get ourselves into trouble because we don’t like difficult, so we look for ways to avoid it but, sometimes, in trying to make things easier, we actually make them more complicated.

Think about learning to ride a bike

Learning to ride a bike isn’t complicated.  You need a bike, a place to ride and you need to learn to balance….and you need to fall off a few times. It can feel difficult, but we don’t need a 47-page strategy document explaining how to ride a bike.  We don’t need a course on the science of balancing.  We don’t need to create a six-month content plan for our cycling journey.  We just need to get on the bike and practise.

Business isn’t quite as simple as riding a bike, obviously, but I think the principle still applies.

Sometimes the thing we’re trying to do is difficult, but instead of accepting that and doing the work, we convince ourselves that we’re missing something.  So we go looking for more information, more knowledge, more certainty, more answers, but all we end up doing is finding ourselves further away from the thing we actually need to do.

Ask yourself a different question

The next time you’re stuck, instead of asking:

“How can I make this easier?”

Try asking:

“Have I made this more complicated than it needs to be?”

There’s a subtle difference.

“How can I make this easier?” can imply that something is wrong.

“Have I made this more complicated than it needs to be?” invites you to look at what you’ve added and then you can look at what can be removed.

What don’t you actually need?  What are you doing because someone told you that you should?  What are you trying to understand that you don’t actually need to understand yet?  What would happen if you stopped trying to find the perfect way and simply did the next obvious thing?

Maybe clarity isn’t about finding more answers

This is why I keep coming back to clarity.  We often think clarity comes from finding the right answer. More thinking, more knowledge, more research, more information, more options.

But I believe it comes from less.  Removing the noise, the unnecessary, the ‘shoulds,’ the pressure to have it all figured out….until what remains is just what remains!

And perhaps that’s the real difference between complicated and difficult.

Difficult asks something of you.

Complicated asks you to navigate everything you’ve added around it.

You may not be able to remove the difficult thing, but you might be able to remove some of the complication around it and that can change everything.

So, is it difficult or is it complicated?

Maybe that’s a question worth asking more often.  When you’re struggling with your marketing, when you’re procrastinating over your next piece of content, when you’re endlessly tweaking your website, when you can’t decide what to offer, when you’re trying to work out what to say..when you’re wondering whether you need another course, another strategy or another tool…

Stop for a moment, take a breath and ask yourself:

Is this actually difficult?

Or have I made it complicated?

Because if it’s difficult, perhaps you simply need to do the difficult thing.

And if it’s complicated?

Perhaps you don’t need another answer and you just need to remove something.

Clearly, life is simple.

Not always easy.

But perhaps we don’t need to make it harder than it already is.