Do We Overcomplicate Our Lives On Purpose? (Extended Distillation)

I can’t believe I made it through more than 2 years of writing a newsletter without talking about being somewhat of a minimalist. Mostly, I just want to rant about why saving $0.30 on your Egg McMuffin for using the McDonalds app isn’t gonna make you happier.

Culture is maximalist. A concept, where by you’re convinced that your life can get marginally better if you just do or say or have this one more thing.

Except… there are an infinite number of one more things.

Here’s two examples:

It’s not enough for every single store or restaurant to have a website, now everyone has an app. So in order to make sure you’re maximizing your sales and reward points you need to have 250 apps on your phone for every retail location you’ve ever spent money.

The result? You save $200 a year, but you spent $1400 more than you would have if you didn’t have a pocket full of apps sending you notifications about promotions each week.

There are over 30,000 results for “kitchen gadgets” on Amazon to make your cooking 1% more efficient instead of using a knife or measuring cup.

The result? You save 2 minutes each time you cook, but you spend 10 minutes cleaning oddly shaped gadgets after every meal.

Things that are sold to you with immediate benefits have a follow-up cost that exceeds the initial benefit.

The biggest cost you pay for trying to be a maximalist isn’t money, time or physical space (although you pay those too).

It’s mental space.

For a well illustrated example of this watch Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk on The Paradox of Choice.

As a maximalist you make far more decisions than a minimalist.

If you’re a minimalist looking for a winter coat, you want the one that will last a while, look okay with most of your wardrobe and keep you warm.

If you’re a maximalist looking for a winter coat, you need to know where you’re wearing the coat. Do you need one coat for skiing because it has a shoulder pocket for your RFID slope pass? What happens if you need another coat because that one is too warm? Or it’s not all that fashionable? What if you need to wait for boxing day sales so you can get a deal? What if the North Face app gives you 10% off for signing up for their mailing list? Turns out there was a company you didn’t even know about that was having a single day clearance sale at Dick’s Sporting Goods and you missed it. What about underarm vents for the one time you’re going to go on a winter backcountry trip next year? Does it need reflective portions because you walk the dog at night?

Making these extra choices leaves you feeling drained and miserable. Even if you made all the optimal choices! For a longer explainer of why check out this article I wrote from 2022.

The only way to escape the vicious cycle of “just one more thing” is to embrace the fact that your life improves more with one high quality item in each category than with 17 small ones.

A good Japanese chef knife will make your life a lot better than 12 specialized chopping gadgets.

The same case can be made in your digital life too.

Keeping an organized register of everything in Apple Notes where it is searchable in one place is better than having 7 specialized apps for journaling, book summaries, work lists, habit tracking, retail wishlists, recipes and quotes you wanted to remember.

There is another concept I want to fold in with minimalism that was reached independently by two of my favourite authors Tim Ferriss and Greg McKeown. And that’s, “What would this look like if it was easy?”

Over-complication.

To me, these ideas fit together seamlessly.

Ferriss and McKeown were talking about this concept in a work or productivity capacity but it fits minimalism because we tend to make things harder for ourselves when embracing maximalist ideas.

We consciously or unconsciously overcomplicate our own lives. We stack systems, processes and items on top of each other until we spend more time managing our stuff than managing ourselves.

A few more examples.

1. What if, instead of designing the perfectly balanced housework schedule, you just vacuumed every time you thought about it?

2. You wouldn’t need that awesome mailbox sorting system you found on YouTube for your work email if you just responded, unsubscribed or deleted everything as it came in.

3. It doesn’t take 7 meetings to launch a work project. Just get to work and ask for feedback.

4. How many of those god-forsaken kitchen gadgets have you bought and shoved in the back of a cupboard. Only to feel overwhelmed, not remember which gadgets you put where and not end up using any of them.

5. There is reward points company here in Canada that, in order to maximize your points, you have to have their credit card, you have to have a different physical rewards card, you have to have their grocery app, you have to open the app once a week to “load your offers”, you have to have the app that is associated with their preferred gas stations and you have to only shop at their locations. Insanity.

Here’s the tough self-reflection question.

How much over-complication do we implement in our lives to avoid confronting problems or to make ourselves feel productive?

“If I’m saving all this money by shopping on their app and only during sales I don’t really need to get my spending under control…”

“If I’m responding to my coworkers on Slack and answering every email within 5 minutes it’s totally fine that I didn’t make progress on revenue generating projects today right…”

“If I build this 22 step process on how my podcast gets researched, filmed, edited and published it’s okay that I skipped publishing an episode this week.”

Just as society glorifies having more stuff and having more space to house more stuff, it also glorifies a busy schedule. Many people look at a full calendar or long to do list as a badge of honour.

I’m as guilty as anyone of filling my calendar to feel productive and justify my own existence. However, when viewed in retrospect the weeks where I feel the most productive and the weeks where I am most productive (on projects that matter) rarely align.

How much mental clarity is waiting for you on the other side of, “What would this look like if it was easy?”

Your house would be less cluttered with toys and gadgets and clothing items you’ve worn once only to get thrown in a donate bin.

You’d save 30 seconds every time you open your phone not having to search through 8 pages of apps to find the one you were looking for.

You’ll move important projects forward at work. Putting you in line for better negotiation or promotions when the time comes.

Everything in your life is trying to convince you that you need one more thing…

I’m giving you permission to say fight back.

Words I Wish I Wrote:

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