We very much live in a 25 brands of Ketchup world, even if that particular decision is easy enough for most.
I sometimes feel like getting rid of 95% of the stuff I own and living “lighter”. But my mind would not really change, and I would soon enough start accumulating stuff, which in my case is mostly books and cooking tools of various sorts. I can feel that. I am an American, and we buy things. That’s what we do. That’s who we are. We are all a bit absurd, but not really different from any wealthy elite in any bygone era. Columbus sailed West to find a better route for the stuff the rich of his day wanted.
It seems to me that the smartest route to simplicity is to treat every decision you make as standing in for ALL OTHER POSSIBLE DECISIONS. If you go on vacation to X, it stands in for every other option you considered. Every emotion is possible. All the pleasure is already there, if you can just seek it out by going through the feelings.
If you have ten things to do, you do EACH ONE OF THEM every time you do one of them. If you can’t focus on the first, logically, then you can’t focus on the second. This means they all get short changed.
But if your whole world is the first, then your whole world will also be the second, and some part of you in the back of your brain will record and notice this.
It is in some respects rational to feel anxiety. Most of us are forgetting something most of the time, and complex problems often benefit from rumination. I am not saying to forego all that. It has value. Within the OODA loop, that would still be orienting.
But I think all people capable of achieving tranquility let all that go when they make their decision. Yes, by all means assess the outcomes, but in the meantime let that decision stand in for the other possible decision. It is everything. There is nothing else. Do one thing, then the next thing.
This is common sense, in some respects, of course. I am, to use a now dated term, a bit neurotic, for reasons I have overshared often, so this is good information for me too.
It’s so easy to get distracted by trivialities. I do it daily, and so most likely do you.