When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?”
— Oliver Burkeman, Oliver Burkeman’s last column: the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life (The Guardian, Sept 4, 2020)
Notes:
Plaid or stripes? Flats or heels? Tall or grande? Latte or drip? Soy milk? Almond milk? Rice milk? Before you’ve taken your first sip of coffee, the decisions have started. By some estimates, the average American adult makes 35,000 decisions a day. No wonder you’re tired. Soul-weary. Sucked dry. The kind of tired 10 hours of sleep can’t fix.
You are suffering from decision fatigue. And there’s only one cure: Stop being the decider of everything. Sounds easy. But it’s not. We are—all of us—always one Google search away from dozens of potentially meaningless decisions.
Last month, I decided it was time to seal my deck. Once, I might have bought whatever deck stain the local hardware store carried. Now there is no local hardware store, so I found myself reading 45 reviews of deck stains, from semitransparent to solid. I compared the ultraviolet-blocking power in latex stains and weighed that against the volatile-organic-compound vapors of oil-based counterparts. I turned one decision into an entire decision tree of trade-offs and comparisons. When I was done, I may or may not have made a better choice, but this was certain: I was too tired to seal my deck. Good thing I didn’t have any stain around.
That’s decision fatigue. […]
Why are we doing this to ourselves? Because we overvalue two things that have become abundantly available: data and choices. When everything is measurable, everything seems knowable. […]
Having data feels like power. Having choices feels like freedom. Sometimes having both is having neither.
~ Jim Sollisch, excerpts from The Cure For Decision Fatigue
Image:”Red in white by Dmitriy Pokrovskiy” via Aberrant Beauty
The light beyond my eyes flashflashflashes
with a hundred futures for me.
Doctor.
Ship’s captain.
Forest ranger.
Librarian.
Beloved of that man or that women or those children or those people who voted for me or who painted my picture.
Poet.
Acrobat.
Engineer.
Friend.
Guardian.
Avenging whirlwind.
A million futures –
not all pretty,
not all long,
but all of them mine.
I do have a choice.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
Notes:
Joan of Arc was not stuck at a crossroads…
she chose a path,
and went down it like a thunderbolt.
~ G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Notes:
Live & Learn 