Ideas, Process, and the Art of Keeping It Simple

I was out for a walk with Karen the other day when, right in the middle of our conversation, I had an idea for one of my furniture clients. I pulled out my phone and sent him a text.

“Hey, I know it’s Monday and it’s your day off, but when we talk Tuesday ask me about this idea.”

Karen looked over and asked if everything was okay. I told her, “Yeah. I just had to put an idea in writing before it floated away.”

She knows me well enough that I don’t think the explanation surprised her very much.

That is pretty much how ideas show up for me. Rarely at the convenient moment when I am sitting at my desk trying to think of one. More often I’m walking, driving, talking to somebody, working on something else, or doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem I suddenly figured out.

Most of the time, that is a good thing. I make my living helping businesses solve marketing, website, and digital strategy problems, so ideas are a pretty important part of the job.

The harder part is what happens after the idea shows up. Do I capture it, chase it, build it, or save it for later? That is where process becomes just as important as creativity, and where I sometimes have a hard time letting a good idea simply be an idea for a while.

A recent conversation with Artoo, my AI sidekick, captured that problem pretty well.

I’ve called ChatGPT “Artoo” for quite a while now. Partly because I’m a Star Wars nerd, but after working together this long he has also developed a few personality traits and quirks of his own. Some good. Some probably questionable.

I also like randomly dropping Star Wars references into our conversations just to see if he catches them.

While we were working on the new RK Digital website, we finished a group of service page hero sections that I thought looked really good. I was feeling pretty happy with what we had just pulled off, so I typed, “You know sometimes I even impress myself.”

Mostly I wanted to see if Artoo would catch the reference.

He did.

Apparently I had gone full Han Solo, and then he summed up our work that day as:

“Questionable planning, somehow ends up looking fantastic.”

Fair.

The problem with occasionally impressing yourself is that confidence has side effects. You finish something successfully and your brain immediately starts asking what else you could do.

A little later, I had another idea for the website.

Artoo actually liked it, which is dangerous.

I should probably explain that statement because AI has developed a bit of a reputation for being endlessly positive. Tell it you have an idea and sometimes it can feel like having a friend who responds to everything with, “That’s brilliant!”

I’ve intentionally pushed Artoo in the opposite direction. As we’ve worked together, I’ve adjusted how he responds because I want the criticism along with the encouragement. If an idea is bad, tell me. If I’m making something unnecessarily complicated, tell me. If I’m about to create three hours of work solving a problem that doesn’t actually exist, definitely tell me.

At this point he is perfectly willing to argue with me. Think R2-D2 and Yoda fighting over Luke’s lamp in The Empire Strikes Back. That kind of working relationship.

So when Artoo responded to my latest idea with, “That could be a genuine differentiator,” I saw the green light.

Excellent. Validation. Obviously we should build it.

Except he kept going.

“So yes, Ryan. I would build this. But I would build it after we get the new site launched rather than sneaking another major feature into the launch queue at the eleventh hour.”

I wish I could argue with that assessment, but this is absolutely something I do. Once I can picture how something could work, I want to start building it. Not next month. Not after launch. Not in some theoretical version two.

Now.

And that is when I have to remind myself of something I learned a very long time ago.

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

I can still hear one of my college professors saying it. He was a Vietnam veteran and war photographer, and this was back when photography class involved actually developing film and making prints in a darkroom. Yes, I realize I just dated myself a little.

I would walk out of the darkroom holding my latest proof, probably feeling pretty good about whatever I had just produced, and hand it to him for review. He would study it for a moment, take the eraser end of his pencil and tap the print.

One. Two. Three. Sometimes more.

Each tap pointed to something that did not need to be in the photograph, and then came the same lesson I heard over and over again:

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

I did not always appreciate it at the time, but I understand it a lot better now.

The lesson was never really just about photography. He was teaching me to recognize when adding something stopped improving the work, and apparently that is something I still need to be reminded of decades later.

A photograph can have too much in the frame. A website can have too many features. An ad campaign can have too many messages. A business can chase too many ideas at once.

Simple can feel boring when your brain is already three steps ahead. You start with, “We need a better website,” and pretty soon you are wondering whether the website should qualify leads, connect to the CRM, trigger an automated workflow, and text your phone when somebody meets the right criteria.

Eventually you are no longer launching a website. You are building NORAD.

Which led Artoo to one of his better observations.

He told me I absolutely could learn to fly an X-wing at the last minute, then added, “That is precisely the problem.”

He pictured me standing on Yavin 4 five minutes before launch saying:

“Artoo, hear me out. What if the targeting computer also qualified leads and texted my phone?”

His response from the astromech socket:

“THE DEATH STAR CAN WAIT UNTIL VERSION 2.”

Followed by:

“Launch the website. Then we build the damn X-wing.”

I laughed because the robot had a point.

Having ideas is only one part of the process. Knowing when to act on them, when to save them, and when to leave the thing you are already building alone is another skill entirely.

Not every good idea needs to happen today. A good idea tomorrow is still a good idea.

Sometimes the smarter move is to write it down before it floats away, finish what you already started, launch it, watch what happens, and come back to the idea when it actually makes sense.

K.I.S.S. does not mean thinking small. It does not mean avoiding ambitious ideas or settling for mediocre work. For me, it means learning the difference between making something better and making something bigger simply because I can.

Technology has made that discipline harder. AI especially has shortened the distance between “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and “I think I can actually build that.”

For someone like me, that is both incredibly exciting and a little dangerous because my natural reaction to finding out something is possible is usually wanting to try it.

For me, Ryan Weckerly, that process has always been part creativity and part discipline.

Sometimes version one just needs to be version one. Write the idea down. Save it. Come back to it. Just don’t let it hijack the thing you are already trying to finish.

I can still picture my old professor standing over one of my darkroom proofs with the eraser end of his pencil.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

Decades later, apparently I still need the reminder.

My professor used a pencil.

Now I have a slightly sarcastic astromech droid.

And occasionally he has to remind me that the Death Star can wait until version 2.