A Philosophy I Inherited
A Philosophy I Inherited:
My aunty has called me Daisy for as long as I can remember. I’ve always called her Daphne, and if there is one phrase that has echoed through our conversations over the years, it’s this:
“Less is best, Daisy.”
She would usually jump in halfway through one of my stories, long before I’d reached the point. I was busy giving every detail, every side note and every piece of context, while Daphne already had something she wanted to tell me.
“Less is best, Daisy.”
For years, I thought it was simply Daphne being Daphne.
The older I get, the more I wonder if she wasn’t just saying it to me. Perhaps she was saying it to herself too.
I’ve come to believe that we inherit little philosophies from the people who love us. They arrive disguised as family sayings, throwaway comments or the stories we hear over and over again. We don’t always recognise them at the time, but years later we realise they’ve quietly shaped the way we see the world.
Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to simplicity.
Not as a design principle or a productivity hack, but as a way of moving through the world.
It feels as though we often mistake complexity for progress, as though more ideas, more options, more words or more layers somehow mean we’ve thought more deeply. Yet the more I observe my own work and life, the more I’ve found the opposite to be true.
Complexity has a way of hiding what matters. Simplicity has a way of revealing it.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve always found myself drawn to design. My work isn’t really about making something beautiful, although I do appreciate beautiful things. It’s about removing what distracts so that what truly matters can finally be seen. Every website I design, every resource I create and every system I help build begins with the same quiet question:
What can be removed so that what remains becomes clearer?
Somewhere along the way, I realised I wasn’t just asking that question at work. I was asking it of my life.
As a young mum, my days are full in all the ways that matter. Family, work, relationships, school lunches, conversations around the dinner table and the beautiful unpredictability that comes with raising children all weave together into something wonderfully human. I’ve stopped chasing the idea of a perfectly balanced life because I don’t think such a thing exists. Instead, I find myself returning, again and again, to simplicity.
Not because life becomes simpler, but because simplicity creates clarity. It reminds me what deserves my attention. It helps me notice the things I would otherwise miss. It creates space to do meaningful work with care, to be fully present with the people I love and to resist the temptation to fill every quiet moment simply because I can.
Working alongside law firm owners, I see this every day. Businesses don’t become complicated overnight. Complexity arrives one well-intentioned decision at a time until, eventually, it becomes difficult to see what made the business remarkable in the first place. I suspect life works much the same way.
Perhaps simplicity isn’t something we stumble across.
Perhaps it is something we practise.
A quiet willingness to remove what no longer serves us, trusting that what truly matters will become easier to see.
Daphne probably never imagined that three little words would stay with me for so many years.
But here I am, still hearing her voice every now and then.
“Less is best, Daisy.”
And with every passing year, I understand a little more of what she meant.
From philosophy to practice...
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