It is the question every person may ask himself/herself every time he/she wants to add something new. It may be a new gadget, new activity or hobby, or new project requirements. Let us check how to deal with all these new things properly.

Change Is Good

In many cases, new things and related changes are good. New tools may help to do the job better and faster. New activities may switch context and so bring excitement or decrease level stress. Changes in project requirements often indicate new features that may help a customer in some situations.

All these things are good because they are signs of progress or improvement. Progress is great just because it brings new ideas that improve the quality of life and make it easier. Improvements are good when they can simplify some existing activities or processes, so they can be done faster and with less effort.

So, is change always good?

But Not Always

There are many other situations when people introduce new things only to have new things. For example, a person can buy a new mobile phone to have a new phone without any specific use in mind. Or a company may introduce a new ticketing system that behaves exactly like the old one in every possible way. In both these cases, change introduces neither improvement nor harm — everything exactly is as it was before.

However, there are situations when a change leads to improvement in one area at the cost of degradation in other areas. For example, a person may buy the new faster laptop to speed up routine activities, but at the same time, the new laptop is bulkier and has a worse screen, which compromises the improvement. Or a company may install new software to simplify the communication between the departments, but it has a very inconvenient user interface, and it is easier to write an email.

What Should I Do?

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said: Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. This phrase is pretty much is the essence of the KISS principle — keep things small and simple, avoid over-complicated solutions, and do not introduce stuff you do not need.

Let us not concentrate on why new things are appearing in life — they are going to happen anyway. Instead, we should understand which of these new things we need and use them. At the same time, we should avoid new stuff that does not bring us any benefit or have too many issues. Such an approach is very convenient in many situations, can decrease complexity if it is not required, and make your life easier in general.