I Just Wanted a Brownie Recipe (And Got Someone's Spiritual Journey)

Why We Complicate Everything

Remember when recipes were simply a list of ingredients and instructions? Now they come with novellas about spiritual journeys and ancestral wisdom.

I experienced this when I recently searched for a brownie recipe online. This got me thinking about why we complicate everything.

The Recipe Problem

What should be a simple list has become performance art.

Before you can learn how much flour to use, you have to read about someone's childhood in rural Montana, their grandmother's secret ingredient philosophy, and how baking transformed their relationship with gluten.

The recipe is buried somewhere between paragraph twelve and the advertisement for their cookbook.

This happens because simple doesn't sell. "Mix these ingredients, bake for 30 minutes" doesn't generate ad revenue or build personal brands.

The story does.

But somewhere along the way, we started believing that complexity equals value.

The Complexity Trap

We do this to ourselves in every area of life.

Simple exercise becomes elaborate workout regimens with seventeen different phases.

Basic budgeting becomes complex financial planning systems with color-coded spreadsheets.

Reading becomes productivity hacks involving speed-reading techniques and note-taking frameworks.

We convince ourselves that if things seem too simple, we must be missing something important.

The Noise Machine

The internet rewards complexity because complexity keeps people scrolling.

A blog post titled "How to Be Happy" gets ignored. A post titled "The 47-Step Framework for Optimizing Your Happiness Using Ancient Wisdom and Modern Neuroscience" gets clicks.

Content creators have learned that packaging simple ideas in complicated frameworks makes them seem more valuable.

But most of the time, the simple version works just as well (if not better) than the complicated one.

Epidemic of Overthinking

We’re training ourselves to believe that every decision requires extensive research and analysis.

Choosing a restaurant becomes reading 47 reviews, comparing menus, and checking Instagram for food photos.

Even buying toothpaste becomes a deep dive into ingredient lists and dental studies.

More information makes decisions harder, not easier. Whatever happened to the days when you could want something and just buy it (assuming you could afford it)?

Most problems have simple solutions that work for most people most of the time.

Exercise regularly.

Eat mostly real food.

Spend less than you earn.

Be kind to people.

Get enough sleep.

Do work that matters to you.

These basics work better than any complicated system you can buy or download.

But simple feels too easy.

We think for something to work, it should be harder to understand.

Permission Problem

You're allowed to follow a basic recipe without understanding the cultural significance of every ingredient.

You can exercise by walking without optimizing your heart rate zones. And you can be productive without a seventeen-step morning routine.

Simple doesn't mean lazy or uncommitted.

Simple means you understand what actually matters to you.

Focus Test

Here's a helpful question: Does this complexity serve the goal, or does it serve the complexity?

If you want to bake brownies, does learning about fair-trade cocoa philosophy help you bake better brownies? If you want to get fit, does researching optimal protein timing help you exercise consistently?

Sometimes yes. Usually no.

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The most valuable skill you can develop is the ability to separate what matters from what's just noise.

Good recipes teach you to bake. Everything else is just entertainment disguised as education.

Focus on the ingredients and instructions. Skip the backstory about spiritual awakenings in rustic villages.

Your brownies will taste just as good, and you'll have more time to enjoy them.