Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.

Most disputes and most confusion sit in the packaging rather than in the thing itself. Strip a proposal or a rule down to what it actually requires and what it is for, and it usually becomes either obviously sensible or obviously not. The elaborate version is frequently there to stop you doing exactly that.

With the next complicated thing in front of you, write the core of it in one sentence a child could follow. If you cannot, you have not understood it yet, or someone is relying on you not to. Both are worth knowing before you agree.