Day 860 - Reducing optionality makes us happier - https://golifelog.com/posts/reducing-optionality-makes-us-happier-1683682958000
The latest issue of the [Small Bets newsletter](https://open.substack.com/pub/cattlenotpets/p/use-optionality-dont-hoard-it
) struck a chord.
Tl;dr – Counterintuitive but true - reducing optionality actually makes us happy, or happier.
It made me think about all the time when I hoarded. It could be anything - money, time, online articles, artefacts. The more I hoarded, the more optionality I had. But in itself, optionality just sits there. You need to use it, act on it, in order to truly enjoy the fruits of your optionality.
And that's the whole point of the newsletter article – after building up optionality, you got to reduce it to enjoy it, to let it make us happy. And the most important decisions in life is when you act on the optionality and reduce it, *intentionally*. So many ways to say this:
- Money can buy happiness, but up to a point. Beyond that, more money doesn't make you any happier. You got to use it.
- Having more choices is nice, but too many choices we get paralysed. If you have too many brands to choose from, it actually gets *harder* to choose.
- Having constraints is helpful for creativity and decision-making. You'd think being creative requires unbounded space, but actually that makes it harder.
- Less is more for contentment and life satisfaction. Why does living life simply make us happier? Reducing optionality.
The caveat the author pointed out in the comments is this:
> Optionality isn't bad, it's a focus on unnecessary optionality AND not recognizing the costs of gaining the optionality that's bad. Small bets addresses both of these points because you listen to your own motivations and the bets you place are small, therefore have lower costs in time and opportunity cost. And as your small bets succeed, you gain skills which do give you more optionality. But the gaining of that optionality is something you would have done anyway. The Small Bets philosophy brings means and ends closer together in my head.
In and of itself, building up and hoarding some optionality isn't a bad or un-virtuous thing. The question is: "At what cost?"
That made me think deeply about how—even though I prefer building a lot of products as small bets to mitigate platform risk—beyond a threshold point, the extra optionality is costly in terms of mental bandwidth, time and energy. So reducing some optionality—be it timeboxing the effort, or scoping the feature set down, killing dead projects—is actually helpful. (The other side of the coin is when you just focus on 1 bet, you have no optionality, which is not ideal either)
So to be happy or happier, build some optionality so that you can get to reduce it.
) struck a chord.
Tl;dr – Counterintuitive but true - reducing optionality actually makes us happy, or happier.
It made me think about all the time when I hoarded. It could be anything - money, time, online articles, artefacts. The more I hoarded, the more optionality I had. But in itself, optionality just sits there. You need to use it, act on it, in order to truly enjoy the fruits of your optionality.
And that's the whole point of the newsletter article – after building up optionality, you got to reduce it to enjoy it, to let it make us happy. And the most important decisions in life is when you act on the optionality and reduce it, *intentionally*. So many ways to say this:
- Money can buy happiness, but up to a point. Beyond that, more money doesn't make you any happier. You got to use it.
- Having more choices is nice, but too many choices we get paralysed. If you have too many brands to choose from, it actually gets *harder* to choose.
- Having constraints is helpful for creativity and decision-making. You'd think being creative requires unbounded space, but actually that makes it harder.
- Less is more for contentment and life satisfaction. Why does living life simply make us happier? Reducing optionality.
The caveat the author pointed out in the comments is this:
> Optionality isn't bad, it's a focus on unnecessary optionality AND not recognizing the costs of gaining the optionality that's bad. Small bets addresses both of these points because you listen to your own motivations and the bets you place are small, therefore have lower costs in time and opportunity cost. And as your small bets succeed, you gain skills which do give you more optionality. But the gaining of that optionality is something you would have done anyway. The Small Bets philosophy brings means and ends closer together in my head.
In and of itself, building up and hoarding some optionality isn't a bad or un-virtuous thing. The question is: "At what cost?"
That made me think deeply about how—even though I prefer building a lot of products as small bets to mitigate platform risk—beyond a threshold point, the extra optionality is costly in terms of mental bandwidth, time and energy. So reducing some optionality—be it timeboxing the effort, or scoping the feature set down, killing dead projects—is actually helpful. (The other side of the coin is when you just focus on 1 bet, you have no optionality, which is not ideal either)
So to be happy or happier, build some optionality so that you can get to reduce it.
Jason Leow
Author
Great point @imjohnkoo - too much optionality creates overthinking, overthinking creates more desire for optionality, thus viscious loop.
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