When you keep life simple, it’s easy to find yourself in a good spot.
Gary Vee
The digital age has given birth to an endless array of choices, and the internet has certainly improved our access to them. Some say we should be grateful for the never-ending variety of options at our fingertips (or thumbs). However, for me, the magnitude of choices (both as a consumer and choice of profession) was more of a burden than a gift until I finally did something about it.
The onslaught of options – and thus, decisions – I faced on a daily basis caused overthinking/indecision, stress, wasted time, regret/remorse, depression, and inaction. I know—first-world problems, am I right?
Despite the conventional wisdom that more choices equate to higher satisfaction, the opposite is generally true for several reasons. This applies to both career choices and everyday decisions you makes as a consumer.
The more you minimize the material, trivial things – and as a byproduct, the choices – that clutter your space and mind, the more you are able to maximize your spiritual needs and build a skillset. Another technique is just to start optimizing your time to do what your soul needs, and the fickle decisions in life will be minimized (satisficed) as a result.
Defining Satisficing and Maximizing
More than likely, you’ve heard of minimalism. This ideology, which began first as an art movement post-WW II, is about embracing the practice of decluttering, à la “less is more.” Practitioners are adamant about ridding themselves of life’s excesses. The process offers several benefits, such as peace of mind and the ability to focus on the truly important things.
Maximizing, then, is the flip side—the aesthetic of excess, the philosophy of “more is more.” However, in terms of lifestyle, it is a bit different. Maximizing isn’t synonymous with hoarding, though the former can lead to the latter. Someone who is a maximizer does practice excess, but it’s usually regarding decisions—endlessly weighting the opportunity cost of various choices against the other alternatives.
In the words of psychologist Barry Schwartz, who has written a great deal on the subject:
Worry over future regret is a major reason that individuals become
maximizers—the only way to be sure you will not regret a decision is by making the best possible one.If you’re a maximizer, every option has the potential to snare you into endless tangles of anxiety, regret, and second-guessing.
Barry Schwartz, The Tyranny of Choice
Another term Schwartz uses often is “satisficer,” which he borrows from late Nobel
Prize–winning psychologist and economist Herbert A. Simon. It is a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice. Thus, the term is in reference to a person closer to the minimalist end of the spectrum.
A satisficer is willing to compromise when they find an option that meets all of their criteria. They are willing to settle, saying “good enough,” and let go of the fact that there is likely something better.
For example, a satisficer is able to quickly decide on a menu offering while out to dinner once they find something that checks all the boxes they came in with. For example, a seafood dish that’s not fried, even if the sides aren’t their absolute favorite.
On the other hand, a maximizer would spend all the time up until they order swaying back and forth between two or three dishes. Still undecided when the server arrives and they are put on the hot seat, they would ask if they could create their own main course, combining the best entree with sides served as part of several other dishes. And then when the meal comes, they’re likely to covet others’ meals, regretting their own selection.
Streamlining Daily Choices
Having the internet at our fingertips is a blessing and a curse. It provides a window to the world, or maybe more accurately, a window for the world to view you. You can use it to learn skills or to bring value to others by way of those skills (once you’ve cultivated them) that wasn’t possible just 20 years ago.
However, this extreme accessibility also comes in the form of consumer choices. These days, you can have pretty much any groceries you desire delivered to your doorstep, or listen for free to nearly any music in existence—one thing in particular that became my downfall.
While living alone in Mexico, I battled daily with what album on YouTube or mix on Soundcloud I would listen to while working, reading, or cooking food. I wanted to select the perfect fit for the occasion.
For example, instrumental music was best for retaining focus if I were writing or blog editing, and music with vocals would be ideal if I were to just be reflecting or doing a fairly mindless activity, like cooking. And I was ok with either while skateboarding, as long as the music wasn’t be too downtempo.
Though I didn’t experience much regret because I would change a mix or album midway through if it were inducing anxiety or didn’t gel with what I was doing, the wasted time and decision fatigue were real.
Besides music, the things that I maximized most were time (scheduling), diet/exercise, attire, and like most people, money. I would spend endless hours crafting lists of songs for DJ mixes, researching and taking notes on the health impacts of specific types of food, waiting for a stock to drop 50 cents more so I could pull the trigger, or trying to get the best price on a kilogram of limes, even if that only meant saving 25 cents in the end.
I thought that when I moved back into my parents house, living in a shared space would give me less individual freedom (space, and thus time) to waste away my days jumping back and forth between how I would schedule them or on these other inconsequential decisions.
However, the truth was that I had way more options for food and daily attire than I had while in Mexico, neither of which helped to lessen my maximizing ways.
Strategically, my living arrangement and lifestyle had been structured in a way that I had few options for what I would wear or eat that day, and at that time, not having to make those considerations resulted in at least a few less things to think about.
But that changed suddenly when I found myself in a new circumstance with an overabundance of food choices, many of which didn’t align with my (self-imposed) dietary restrictions. And the fact that I had little will power over shoveling them into my piehole only added to the time I spent thinking—in this case, typically regretting my conduct after the act.
Because I was calculating out and tailoring everything to meet the ideal characteristics I had romanticized for every scenario in my life, I was missing the awe that comes with just being present and open to the unexpected particulars of the experience.
I was spending my life searching for the perfect soundtrack to accompany it and the perfect food to indulge with—thinking about the experience and craving more of it after, instead of just having the experience, enjoying it, and letting go when it had passed.
Ironically, I think I tended to cling because I wasn’t fully there spiritually and mentally during the majority of the days and hours of my life. As a result, I felt like I had missed something or simply had wasted precious time I couldn’t recoup.
I felt remorse for allowing myself to spend time and energy on frivilous things instead of working towards my sense of purpose.
Maximizing All of Life
Long before I became a maximizer in terms of material things, I was one regarding the roles that defined the persona I had created—what I would make my life’s work.
I think it had a lot to do with the fact I was interested in it all. All my life I had been a generalist rather than a specialist. I wanted to maximize life, and as a result, didn’t want to commit to one particular discipline.
I’d always go back and forth with what I wanted to do with my time on Earth. I didn’t want to give up one discipline for the sake of another, and therefore was constantly weighing my opportunity costs.
Maybe, like with the music, it was a bit of FOMO. I didn’t want to come to terms with the fact there was something else out there – not necessarily better, but just something enchanting – that I would never get to experience.
However, mastering a variety of skills is extremely difficult given that time and attention are finite. As much as I would’ve loved to have endless time to cultivate a diverse skillset that included artful social commenter (blogger, podcaster, musician and comedian), holistic medicine man/healer, and physical and emotional therapist, that just wasn’t realistic or feasible.
I romanticized these identities, but since I didn’t really spend adequate time developing the abilities and getting over the learner’s curve hump, I never tested them enough to know how they actually made me feel on a spiritual level.
I would dabble in each of them, but never put forth enough effort to really excel at any one in particular—even though I certainly had sufficient time at my disposal to invest.
The more I thought about it, the more I believed the root of the issue was that I had too much time on my hands to begin with, and thus too much freedom to choose how I would spend it, or merely endlessly weigh options between negligible choices.
With so much unstructured time, I think I felt a lessened sense of urgency to act, and that freedom ultimately may have allowed the trivial things to gain prominence.
I wasn’t forced to make quick decisions out of necessity, like a mother of three who holds down two semi-full-time jobs. With no other options but to work to support the children, there is little time for pondering fickle decisions, and even less for questioning what may have been.
As a result, individuals in these types of scenarios often tend to be more grateful and fulfilled than those with the luxury of countless obligation-free hours. Doing the honest work that’s in front of them is enough, and there’s no use in (or time for) wondering what else lay out there.
‘Lack of Direction, Not Lack of Time, Is the Problem’
I had so much unstructured time that I failed to get started—try making sense of that one. I was always thinking, never doing. And the longer I was quiescent and prolonged taking action, the more I had to ruminate on.
Since I wasn’t working full time, my mind wasn’t forced to be occupied the majority of the day. At first, I was able to mostly fill it with daily character-building tasks, mainly ones that tied in with my self-identity—things like writing, qigong, practicing an instrument, or doing a few Spanish lessons on my phone.
However, the longer I went without structure, the more I let myself slip. After a while, the time I had spent on these constructive outputs was replaced by contemplation of inconsequential decisions or ruminating on detrimental thoughts.
And as many of you may know, what you feed with your attention will continue to grow in importance. If left unchecked, things you never used to bat an eye at can become the focus of your entire existence. Enter the “to have a bagel or not have a bagel, and if so, what to top it with?” debacle.
It’s truly embarrassing how much time and energy I devoted to fickle deliberation. The more depressed I became, the more I used escapism, in the form of both daydreaming and entertainment. And the more I escaped, the more depressed I got—it was a self-perpetuating cycle.
Each additional story I had for myself furthered delusions or grandeur (a disconnect between my true self and ideal self) and created insecurity, because I was no longer working towards earning those titles.
After much self-reflection, at a certain point I had the realization that the only thing to do to rid myself of the mundane preoccupations, and the stress those decisions caused, was to finally get back to building the skills and the life my soul wanted full-time—reverse engineering Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if you will.
Each day I would try to build on the one before, but as long as I committed a little time each 24 hours to the things I felt composed by identity, or the one I was trying to foster, I was content—I called those things my “non-negotiables,” the constants in an ever-changing world.
The list was composed of activities that would bring solace if everything else during the day – or in my life in general – was in disarray. Little things, like morning qigong sessions, creative writing, self-taught voice lessons, some form of afternoon cardio exercise, a few Duolingo lessons, and reading at least a few pages of a novel at night.
However, the list needed to be refined from the initial iteration.
Because of its expansiveness and my tendency to procrastinate, eventually I began to satisfice. I would say “good enough,” calling it quits after a few minutes without much, if any, progress being made. Since there were so many other tasks I needed to make it through, I also felt rushed and distracted during each, which also deterred my progress. Becoming complacent, I was essentially just going through the motions and not really building on anything.
For example, I wasn’t completing more than two five-minute Spanish lessons, adding any new steps in the tai chi sequence I had been learning, or seeing a blog post through to completion—I was ok satisficing if I’d only added two paragraphs.
Even the things I used to see as a “meditation,” like skateboarding or my qigong routine, I really only stuck with because of the physical and mental benefits I knew they brought. I wasn’t carving out enough time anymore to improve, and was too distracted to even enter the flow state, anyway.
Doing (a Few) Things to the Best of Your Abilities
Settling deadlines is something that is certainly beneficial. Just makes sure you are being real with yourself when laying them out.
Part of my issue was I wasn’t setting deadlines for milestones. The other reason for my complacency was that I had too many undertakings, many of which I wasn’t truly compelled to put in the effort for. I was going for quantity over quality.
The more ventures you have, the less likely it is that you will hit lofty expectations—or at least feel that the quality of the endeavor’s end product is satisfactory. And if it’s a pursuit you care about and you don’t feel you did it to the best of your abilities, it will continue to cause you anguish.
Putting forth 100% effort in all of your undertakings will prevent remorse and pondering what could have been. On the flip side, it will also prevent you from fretting over possible outcomes in the future.
I think it’s possible to always give everything your best effort. The key is limiting your undertakings and the other considerations you must make day-in, day-out, and tempering your expectations.
As I somewhat alluded to earlier, I (foolishly) reasoned with myself that the first day of a new month or moving to a new environment would be the basis for a fresh start—as if I would cross a miraculous threshold and all of my undesirable tendencies would be gone.
This didn’t go according to plan, leaving me feeling frustrated and inadequate.
Even with respect to daily tasks, I typically bit off more than I could chew. I had a laundry list of exploits I told myself I would tackle, but things almost never shook out how I envisioned—either because of the constraints of reality or my own lolly-gaging (but really, mostly the latter).
Again, the breadth of my optimism was the culprit for the disconnect.
This is how I learned to only take on three major tasks (separate from the non-negotiables) each day. It makes things less overwhelming, and thus you are less likely to spin your gears, looking up to the clock to realize its 4 P.M. and you still haven’t checked off any boxes.
Beyond just making it easier to get down to business, with less on your mind you’re better able to give your full attention to the crucial tasks because there aren’t other unresolved things on the periphery of your awareness.
When I started going after these things that satisfied my soul, instead of covering up the yearning with derivative pleasures, I became okay satisficing the temporal aspects of life.
Eventually, I finally went to work towards my sense of purpose, and discovered that the trivial material choices I had devoted so much attention and time to became insignificant. I stopped obsessing about things on a superficial level, like protein timing, or penny-pinching, because I was gratified on a deeper (higher) level, pushing towards self-actualization.
I also let go of the tendency to dwell and beat myself up when things didn’t go according to plan, as long as I had made the best of each circumstance. Even if something had sidetracked my routine, I still felt internally-validated as long as I put forth some genuine effort to optimize that lost time.
Given any particular constraints, I was okay settling for less than perfect and moving on because I was actually taking strides in the right direction, strengthening my resolve, and most importantly, feeling in harmony with the cosmos.
Every attachment (“need” or identity) you have is just one more thing to account for, another layer of complexity for your mind that makes staying present difficult.
Even if we’re guarding our time to do the things that are most important to us, we can spend all of that time regretting the past, or anxiously expecting the future, and just bouncing between past and future in our thinking about ourselves and our lives, and basically just dancing over the present and never making contact with it.
I think what we want is a circumstance where attention can be located in the present in a way that’s truly fulfilling.
Sam Harris on The Huberman Lab Podcast
Limiting the information you take in will help keep your focus in the present. But contentment in the present moment is achieved by picking your battles wisely, choosing only the games that are winnable—or those you have the drive to win.
It becomes easy to shed the derivative, trivial ones when you’ve pinpointed what tickles your soul and makes you effulgent.
The adage, “do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life” will always hold significance. But, that’s not to say your ventures will be effortless—it’s finding the thing that for which the effort will (usually) be enjoyable.
Deciding What to Optimize For
The truth of the matter is that we don’t have the time or energy to nit-pick over and perfect every aspect of our lives. So, how should you decide what facet to toil over?
I think if you have fun optimizing, then it’s worth it. Maximizing, that is, if the process is fun to you, I think that should be the parameter.
Derek Sivers on The Tim Ferriss Show
Enjoyment is an excellent metric. As I touched on earlier, another benchmark I like to apply is whether the process generates energy in you or bleed you of it.
I told myself that I wanted to be this or that type of person, but I never really took stock of how those activities actually made me feel on an energetic basis during the experience, apart from the runner’s high that would accompany them after.
I realized crafting a lot of the identities I mentioned at the start really felt more like a chore than an enjoyable past time when I evaluated how I felt during them, instead of merely after the fact—but I think that had more to do with lack of skill and the production/release process than the creative one.
For example, filming and posting TikToks in which I told a joke tended to stress me out majorly. I needed the perfect facial expressions (appearance) and delivery, which always took several attempts to get right. However, I would get a massive dopamine boost (and to my ego) after a given posts would get close to 100 likes.
You hear Gary Vee and others always saying, “every day you don’t post, the more irrelevant you’re becoming,” and that gets in your head. I got caught in the web of posting content to “stay relevant,” instead of just creating and improving my craft. Again, quantity over quality. Instead of spending time developing my voice, I was trying to keep up with the Joneses, focusing on volume and production value.
I’ve thought maybe lack of sustained effort was an indication these identities didn’t arise from my true self. My reason for pursuing them was more egotistical or material than fulfilling my sense of purpose—namely, notoriety or financial gain.
To some degree, I was allured by the glamour of celebrity. It’s hard not to be with all the impressions that are thrown at us in pop culture and on social media.
But my attraction was much more than superficial. I really did value the disciplines I aligned myself with—they provided an outlet for my emotions, and I enjoyed resonating with people through comedy and music.
So for the most part, I wasn’t deriving these roles from social media, e.g., wanting to be an influencer. But I was using digital tools and channels as a vehicle for my creative output, which, more often than not, left me frustrated.
Due to my perfectionist tendencies, lack of ability also created substantial frustration when starting out—almost all things that require skill are challenging at first, no matter how much you were born to do them.
Abandoning Perfectionism and Becoming a Finisher
When writing rhymes, I was always trying to craft the perfect cadence using the least number of syllables, but still use enough to convey the idea of the line. I also felt compelled to write at least eight lines that ended with the same set of rhyming words, instead of just moving on to a new group after two lines if it felt forced.
When it came to recording vocals, again, everything had to be perfect—the enunciation, cadence, and mic level. I would do many takes until I had a (near) perfect one, in which I didn’t “pop my Ps.” For a podcast or song I would piece together several lines from different takes to create the most polished product. And though I said I didn’t evaluate how I felt during these activities, I do recall my head spinning faster and body tensing up with each additional take.
Finally, after thorough self-evaluation, I concluded that what I enjoyed perfecting was the syntax—it was refining the content and improving the production value that caused tension, instead of the creative process itself. I think not coincidentally, those processes involved staring at a device screen.
However, the more I used these digital tools to reach an audience and the more skillful at the endeavors I became, the better I was able to subdue the irritation. Also, the more I practiced and the more techniques I tried in both writing and recording, the more comfortable I felt branching out from traditional structure, and appreciative of rawness and authenticity over a polished, superficial end product.
Once I put in enough time to become proficient at the craft and the editing process, it was (usually) a joy instead of a burden, unless for whatever reason I just didn’t have the ingenuity for imaginative thought at that moment. Eventually I was able to be present enough to have my first peak experience when recording vocals.
The aftereffects of the peak experience leave the individual to see himself and the world in a new way. He views himself more positively, he views life as worthwhile and meaningful, and most importantly, he seeks to repeat the experience.
Abraham Maslow, Toward a psychology of being
After my encounter with this state, all I wanted was to get back there. Many consider a peak experience to be synonymous with the flow state, in which the individual “becomes one” with the task, firing effortlessly on all cylinders without strain, often losing track of time and space. But the former is so much more than just being “in the flow.”
In addition to total immersion in the activity (mindfulness) that is characteristic of flow theory, a peak experience is accompanied by many other positive states of mind, including:
- Spontaneity, expressiveness, and naturally flowing behavior that is not constrained by conformity
- Feeling completely responsible for perceptions and behavior. Use of self-determination to becoming stronger, more single-minded, and fully volitional
- The feeling of being one whole and harmonious self, free of dissociation or inner-conflict
- A physical feeling of warmth, along with a sensation of pleasant vibrations emanating from the heart area outward into the limbs
- Being without inhibition, fear, doubt, and self-criticism
The last two conditions are the driving factors that compelled me to continue on. I had experienced the flow state before, typically while skating or practicing qigong—but I really only saw “flow” as a mindfulness meditation. It didn’t compare to how I felt when making music, recording the soul that I’d poured out onto a piece of paper.
This bliss state was a vacation from all the suffering that had been growing stronger in me—the overthinking, the negative self-talk, the depression.
Kurt Cobain singing is an exemplary instance of this phenomenon. A tortured soul, the late Nirvana singer was able to rise above all his inner-turmoil when recording, rehearsing, or on stage. Uninhibited, he was able to channel all his pain and truly embody (become) the music. Up until his suicide, he made the most effective use of his anguish, creating a source of value and a beacon of light for millions.
Spiritual Contentment in the Face of Distraction
To me, optimizing is doing the best you can with what you’ve got. Given all constraints of time, resources, and ability, you are willing and able to put together a genuine effort you are proud of because it fills you with light, despite the limitations.
One-pointed focus is the withdrawal of the senses. It’s not being distracted, not following the monkey mind. I have one-pointed attention not because I’m forcing myself to look at nothing else, but because it engulfs me.
David Dorian Ross
With the music (or writing in general) and with the skating in the past (before I took on too much), I didn’t have to force myself to stay centered.
Anything can be developed into an ability with enough practice, but most often the process creates psychological stress. The thing you want to maximize is what creates energy—what engulfs you and brings that peak experience.
And because we face so much stimulation and distraction these days, somewhere along the way you may lose touch with your inner spark. The internet can be used as a tool to discover who you are, but it can also confuse you about who you are.
It’s easy to be conditioned into valuing what’s trendy or get pigeonholed into a pursuit that grew your reach (social media following) in the past, and begin living for others instead of yourself.
It’s about keeping your eye of prize, and routinely taking stock and reflecting on how your pursuits are actually making you feel deep down, not just on an egotistical, social media reach-level. Again, are they multiplying your energy or depleting it?
And it’s difficult to optimize your time and stick with your plan when there is so much external noise surrounding you, vying for your time and attention. But if it’s something that you’ve found makes you feel complete, chances are you’ll be able to tune out the distractions and other impositions in your periphery, stick with your routine, and make it happen. Once you’ve put the wheels in motion, that is.
– CC
Conscious Consumption 