a tendency the other way

I don't so much have a tendency to over-complicate things so much as a tendency to overcomplicate things by trying to make sure things are sufficiently simplified, though as that often requires lots of small steps and long explanations the overall effect can be one of complication whereas it's really just showing the working, something stressed as extremely important by maths and physics teachers throughout secondary school, never forgotten and never far from my mind when dealing with things which look like equations or functions. Other teachings included exhortations to "clean up as you go" which I listened to and bear in mind but generally never act on, preferring to clean up at the end unless I run out of space, saucepans or letters depending on the discipline involved. The main problem I have with cleaning up as go is that it periodically halts further progression, especially after successful progression has recently been proceeded with and can easily slow down trains of thought, or at least slow down the laying of the tracks. I was attempting to compromise today and was not only annotating (which I always do anyway) but also cleaning up and simplifying successfully-completed steps and also not cleaning up or simplifying where doing so would leave the equivalent of a tightly-tied knot with the ends of the bits of string snipped off far too close to easily untie.