Everything should be made as simple as possible but not more simple.

Albert Einstein, German physicist

In order to communicate effectively you first need something to impart to others that is, within your shared context, important, relevant or interesting. That is only an indicative list. In some contexts, for example, you can add instructive or entertaining.

What you have to say in a given field of knowledge – think of musicology, pure mathematics or subatomic physics – may be so complex, so couched in a special sublanguage of symbols, that only a fellow professional at your level will be able to understand what you are talking about. But even in these contexts the instinct of the born communicator – like the great composer, mathematician or physicist – is always to aim for the maximum simplicity that the situation allows. We have Einstein as our authority here.

Simple stresses singleness of character and is distinguished from what is compound or complex. It suggests that something cannot be analyzed or reduced further. Einstein, however, warns us against being oversimple or simplistic. For simple as applied to abstractions or conceptions often suggests a false or artificial freedom from complexity. Oversimplification implies that certain essential factors may have been eliminated, which in turn undermines the message.

In Greek legend Procrustes was a robber of Attica, who placed all who fell into his hands on an iron bed. If they were longer than the bed he cut off the overhanging parts, if shorter he stretched them until they fitted it. Hence any attempt to reduce people to one standard, one way of thinking or one way of acting, is called ‘placing them on Procrustes’ bed’.

True simplicity is achieved by the best minds in any field after they have immersed themselves in the complexities of their subject, not before. It never compromises on those essential factors. That is why simplicity is the brother or sister of truth.