---
title: "New article on Simplifying Complexity: Reduction, layering, and distillation as a strategy for simplicity"
date: 2018-03-28
description: "In the previous article on Simplifying Complexity, Ensuring information harmony in the larger documentation landscape, I argued for the importance of integrating new information into a larger documentation landscape...."
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2018/03/28/reduction-and-distillation-as-form-of-simplicity/index.html
---

> For AI agents: a documentation index is available at https://idratherbewriting.com/llms.txt. Markdown versions of all pages are available by appending .md to any page URL.

# New article on Simplifying Complexity: Reduction, layering, and distillation as a strategy for simplicity

> I published a new article on Simplifying Complexity called [Reduction, layering, and distillation as a strategy for simplicity](https://idratherbewriting.com/simplifying-complexity/reduction-layering-distillation.html). It's all about how reduction and distillation of information helps reduce complexity for users.

In the previous article on Simplifying Complexity, [Ensuring information harmony in the larger documentation landscape](https://idratherbewriting.com/simplifying-complexity/ensuring-information-harmony-in-the-larger-documentation-landscape.html), I argued for the importance of integrating new information into a larger documentation landscape. I explained that it’s easy to create a new article and publish it to a documentation site but much harder to assess whether the new information harmoniously fits in with all the other information on a site (not just harmony with other docs, but with existing forum posts, blog posts, and other information assets). Integrating a small piece of information into a larger body of information requires wide reading and information analysis to determine information fit and harmony.

Conversely, the opposite activity — taking an existing body of information and distilling its essence down into a smaller information unit (whether that smaller unit is a title, overview, heading, topic sentence, quick reference guide, or some other compressed form of information) also requires cognitive prowess. Crystalizing large information into a brief distillation that captures the main point in as little a space as possible can be a difficult skill that rivals a poet’s astuteness with language and articulation. Despite the difficulty, this distillation is worth it because this content can go a long way towards simplifying a complex system.

Read more here: [Reduction, layering, and distillation as a strategy for simplicity](https://idratherbewriting.com/simplifying-complexity/reduction-layering-distillation.html).