The Paperclip Mindset: How to tame the complexity monster in IT

If you think simply for one hour and eliminate a three-week task, that’s a massive 120× return. Better still, what you leave out is always on time and never breaks.

Yet few projects take that hour. Show anyone a prototype and they ask for more: “Can it make coffee too?” We are wired for complexity, not simplicity. Features pile up, frustration grows, and deadlines slip.

Instead of telling you what to add, The Paperclip Mindset shows you what to delete, before the work even starts. It reveals how we sabotage our own projects: chasing perfection, piling on technology, fixing imaginary problems. And it backs this up with ten real cases that saved weeks or months.

For entrepreneurs, managers, and IT professionals, radical simplicity can mean the difference between profit and loss, and between joy and frustration.

Frank Karsten has spent over 25 years in startup and corporate IT, helping companies rescue stalled projects by cutting what they didn’t need.