Wait until you’re dead, then you can be successful

One reason so many people just surrender to the status quo and do nothing is because they’re tired.

Not physically tired, like when you need sleep, finish a marathon or work two double shifts back to back.

Rather, they’re tired because of decision fatigue. They’ve been making too many choices. They haven’t figured out how to simply their daily lives by deferring, delegating or deleting the work inside their heads.

Lebowski was a master at this practice. His manifesto urges us not to fall victim to the mindset that those who choose to simplify their lives and stop competing so aggressively invariably find themselves at increased risk of being left behind.

Our culture has conditioned us to believe that story and sip the sugary cocktail of capitalism, greed and status. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Most of our decisions don’t actually need to be made.

Each of us can find small but significant ways to simplify our lives and gradually freed ourselves from the more complex and caustic aspects of civilization.

The misconception about this practice is, it won’t make us smarter, more successful or enlightened. We’ll just appear that way because our bandwidth will be better allocated.

Thanks to the lifetime accumulation of a lack of decision fatigue, we can open up space for the natural order to emerge and make the status quaint relic of the past.

Adams, my top cartoonist and political pundit, tells the story of the smartest decision he ever made. After being trapped in a blizzard as a college student, he convinced himself to sell his car and move to the west coast and never see another snowflake again for the rest of his life.

Fast forward to today, when people complain to him about living in a flood plane or some other toxic environment, his advice to them is simple.

Do you want to know why my life is good today? It’s because I once lived in a place with no opportunity and many disadvantages but I cleverly fixed that problem by moving somewhere else. And so, move somewhere better, you idiot. I know your family lives here and your job is here, but just move. Stop making it someone else’s problem.

Remember, every day we already have to make thousands of decisions in this impossibly complex reality. And so, get in the habit asking yourself, will this course of action simplify or complicate my life?

If it’s the latter, move on. To quote my father, the reason you don’t sweat the small stuff is not because it’s all small stuff, but because as you get older, there’s more big stuff, and you need to conserve your energy. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How much decision fatigue are you accumulating?