We Don’t Need Choices
A few years ago, I worked with a man named Alan. He was a perfectly nice man. But when I first met him, I thought he was a little strange. Every morning, he seemed to arrive wearing almost the same thing: navy trousers, a white shirt, and a jacket that changed from day to day. His lunch seemed remarkably predictable too. And, as I eventually discovered, he usually took the same route to and from work. Same clothes. Same lunch. Same route. I assumed there was some story behind it. At a company picnic, I finally asked him. Why? He looked at me as though I had asked a very ordinary question. Then he said something I have remembered ever since: “My brain has a finite capacity. I have to use it carefully. So I standardize the things that aren't important enough to spend my brain energy on. That way, I have more left for the things that matter.” Of course, he added, he didn't do this on weekends. That made me laugh. But the idea stayed with me. Because I began noticing something slightly uncomfortable about my own life. I could spend ten minutes wondering what to wear. Twenty minutes deciding which airline to take. Fifteen minutes comparing two restaurants that were, for all practical purposes, exactly the same. I could stare at the menu full of choices and somehow emerge from the experience feeling as though I had accomplished something. Except I hadn't. And perhaps that's the curious thing about modern life. We have more choices than almost any generation before us. And we have somehow turned choosing into a full-time occupation. Which of the seventeen nearly identical photographs should I keep? Small decisions don't announce themselves as exhausting. That's probably why we don't notice them. If we keep spending time on inconsequential decisions, Then, when we do, we arrive at something that actually matters, a difficult conversation, an important piece of work or a moment that requires patience, we may discover that our attention has already been scattered across a hundred things that probably didn't deserve it and are unable to focus on what matters. There is a reason some of the most famously recognizable people have been associated with remarkably repetitive routines. But the mystery remains. Why would someone deliberately make part of life boring? Perhaps, Alan wasn't telling me how to live. He was simply showing me that we all have a limited amount of ourselves to spend each day. And that where we spend it is, in itself, a kind of choice. Since then, I sometimes catch myself agonizing over some completely unimportant decisions. And I hear Alan's voice. Is this really worth using your brain for? Sometimes the answer is yes. Often, rather surprisingly, it isn't. Do you consider some of your decisions inconsequential? Why are they important to you? Until tomorrow, Bob
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