What Is Ridugai?
“Ridugai” isn’t a term you’ll find in a dictionary. It’s slang, born out of frustration. Think of it as a catchall for the corporate fluff, bureaucratic loops, and filler content that slows everything down. It’s that slide deck with 58 transitions. The 10person Zoom call where three people talk. The customer service script that sounds like it was written by a robot channeling another robot.
Ridugai shows up wherever simplicity should live but doesn’t. You know it when you feel it.
Signs You Might Be Allergic to Ridugai
Being allergic to ridugai isn’t about being cranky or impatient—it’s about valuing time, clarity, and purpose. Let’s break down a few symptoms:
You shut down during vague meetings. When agendas aren’t clear and objectives move like fog, your brain checks out fast. You rewrite emails. The kind that are three paragraphs too long, packed with industry buzzwords. You prefer, “Here’s the update. Need feedback by Friday.” You diagnose process bloat instantly. If something that should take 10 minutes gets 3 hours and two approvals, red flags go up. You’re direct—as a default. Not rude, just done with dancing around the point.
It’s not that people who are allergic to ridugai lack patience. It’s that they know every extra layer is friction. It costs time, energy, and attention.
Why Simplicity Wins
Simplicity isn’t laziness. It’s discipline. Cutting through the fluff and hitting the point takes more effort, not less. The payoff? People actually get things done.
Leaders respect it. Audiences respond to it. Creators thrive in it.
For businesses, simplifying customer journeys leads to higher conversions. For teams, clear processes reduce miscommunication—and drama. For individuals, mentally cutting through noise leads to better decisions.
Being allergic to ridugai might just make you more effective. It sharpens your filter for what matters and speeds up your feedback loop.
How to Detox Ridugai From Your Life
There’s no magic pill, but there are moves you can make:
1. Stop Worshiping Complexity
Complexity has a weird status symbol aura around it. Like if something’s hard to understand, it must be smart. Nope. Real intelligence is about making things easier. More usable. More human.
2. Ditch Jargon
Unless everyone in the room speaks the same language (and not just technically), lose the acronyms and industry talk. Say exactly what you mean. “We need to fix onboarding” is way more useful than “We’re currently reevaluating our newuser flow dynamic at the behavioral inflection point.”
3. Simplify, Then Simplify Again
Your first draft of anything—presentation, process, product—shouldn’t be your last. But neither should your 25th version if it’s just making things longer. Instead, edit out what doesn’t serve clarity. Leave the essentials raw and useful.
4. Choose Velocity Over Volume
Tons of content won’t beat smart content. Do less, but make it mean something. Shorter meetings. Fewer slides. Clearer messages.
That’s productivity. Not busywork pretending to be important.
Workplaces Are Breeding Grounds
Ridugai multiplies in organizations that reward appearance over effectiveness. Want to know if your workplace’s infected?
Is more time spent on format than ideas? Do projects span months but accomplish little? Are internal tools harder to use than Excel in 1998?
That’s a signal. And if you’re allergic to ridugai, you’ll feel that itch daily.
Start small. Kill the 40slide deck. Reply all only when necessary. If you don’t know why a process exists, stop following it like gospel. Challenge it.
Communication Is Ground Zero
The biggest carrier of ridugai? Bad communication. Whether it’s a passiveaggressive Slack thread or a client pitch swollen with buzzwords, most of it could be summed up in three sentences max.
Study how effective communicators work. They speak plainly. They cut. They translate complexity into understanding, not status.
Be that person on your team. Start with your own messages.
Build AntiRidugai Habits
Want practical tactics? Try these:
End emails with a single question or ask. Use bullet points, not padded paragraphs. Decline or shorten meetings when you can. Verify if a tool or step is helping—or just tradition. Favor substance over form, always.
Repetition creates standards. Standards change culture.
Allies in Simplicity
If you’re allergic to ridugai, you’re not alone. Minimalists, agile thinkers, startup founders, lean ops experts—they’re all pushing back against useless friction. And for good reason.
Time is a nonrenewable currency. Attention is finite. Resolve to protect both.
Final Thought
Being allergic to ridugai is an edge. Treat it like one. Build workflows that reward clarity. Push your team to value depth over noise. And remind yourself: the easiest way to solve most problems is to stop creating new ones disguised as solutions.
Strip out what doesn’t need to be there. What’s left is what works.