Keeping it simple not so stupid in real life

We've all been given the same advice at some point or another during moments when we are worked up, overthinking a matter or complicating things more than we need to: keep it simple, stupid.

It might seem a bit of an insult, but lately it seems the smartest people are doing exactly that.

While the verdict in the Scott Guy murder case was perhaps predictable to those who closely followed the trial, in an age when it seems there is the science to solve even the most complicated crime, it does seem a little bewildering that one so inherently straightforward looks set to remain a mystery.

But perhaps therein lies the perfect crime ... and, indeed, a lesson for all aspects of our lives. Often it is the simple and expected process that takes us over the line first - not so much a tortoise-and-hare scenario, but a Homer Simpson and Stephen Hawking one.

If you were asked to plot the perfect crime - a murder that would be untraceable and unsolvable- would you ever in a million years suggest grabbing a gun, walking to the home of the victim and shooting him at close range beside a public road, within easy earshot of his family?

You don't need to be well fed criminal lawyer to conclude this is about as simple and as stupid as simple and stupid gets.

And yet in New Zealand, two of the most high-profile unsolved murders in recent years employed that exact methodology. First the killing of Hawke's Bay farmer Jack Nicholas in 2004 and then Scott Guy six years later, in a chillingly familiar fashion.

In both cases men were put in the dock and then walked away from it not guilty.

Perhaps it is I that am the guilty one - guilty of watching too many reruns of C.S.I. and being numbed into believing that, despite sometimes mind-bending complexity, every case has its watertight, one-hour solution.

The reality police prosecutors face is, unfortunately, not so neat and tidy.

However, this week's verdict does teach us all something about the value of keeping things simple ... and not just when we have criminal intent.

Jamie Oliver does it in the kitchen, Steve Jobs did it with the iPhone, Coco Chanel with her little black dress and Alexander Fleming by leaving the Petrie dish on the bench while he went on holiday.

Either by accident or design, the best things in life are often the ones all of us could have thought of - except we didn't, dammit.

When it comes to telling white lies, I have always held with the theory that the more detailed the deception, the more I would convince the inquisition of my innocence.

It never occurred to me that if I simply said "I didn't do it" often enough, eventually people might believe me.

I am not alone in thinking that in recent years, life has simply become too complicated. We are moving too fast, expecting too much and thinking too often about too many things.

Life in the fast lane might come with all the trappings of the modern world but are we any happier than our grandparents were when they lived their simple lives?

What would happen if we turned up at work in the cold light of dawn, did the bare minimum of what was expected of us and not one tiny bit more and then left again, with the gun still smoking?

Would it be a crime in the eyes of those around us? Or would we, too, be found not guilty?