Do We Choose Everything, Or Only a Few Things?
Some thoughts on choice architecture
Trajectories vs. Decision Trees
Many people view their lives as a set of decisions:
- What do I want for dinner?
- Do I want to work out?
- What should I be working on right now?
- What do I need from the store?
It’s easy to see these decisions as a set of points where our lives branch off, and we are simply the sum of those decisions. We’re simply the farthest points on a set of tree branches.
But I don’t think that’s how we live our lives. I think we’re in many ways simpler than a series of conscious decisions.
A more accurate summary of who we are is an arrow fired along a trajectory, following our path until we come to rest, then we find our next point and fire ourselves once again.
Why do I think this? A detour into psychology might help.
A Tale of Two Systems
In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky write about the two systems that govern our thinking.
They are, as the book suggests, a fast and a slow system, sometimes called “System One” and “System Two.”
The fast system (system one), as its name suggests, can act quickly and make decisions without creating a mental burden. It lets us navigate the world in an efficient, automatic way.
The slow system (system two), as the name suggests, can only act very slowly. It is the part of your brain you use to solve difficult, mentally taxing tasks. But it is also very costly for us to use, causing us to become fatigued if we stress it too much.
Think of driving a car. You probably use the slow system for difficult maneuvers, like moving through an unfamiliar parking lot, or avoiding a construction detour. But once you’re on a main road, or highway, the fast system can take the reins, turning the wheel, checking the mirror, adjusting the gas and brake.
Deciding Who We Are > Deciding What We Do
Making decisions about every thing that we must do is exhausting.
Instead of looking at every decision as a tree where we expend mental effort, a better way to live the lives we want is to live our lives as putting ourselves on paths that get us the results we want.
We do that by making decisions on who we are, not what we do. Let me give some examples, pulling from Ben Franklin’s“Early to bed and early to rise is healthy, wealthy and wise.” (I also got it from Tim Ferriss)
Healthy
I know plenty of people who live very healthy lives, and they do so by keeping their slow system usage to a minimum.
They start by apprenticing themselves to experts (coaches, trainers, other athletes), who show them how to train and how to do it right, an upfront usage of their slow system. Then, they only need to bring themselves to the task and execute.
The effort of learning how to be healthy is an upfront cost, but maintaining it is an effort of knocking and loosing an arrow.
- Putting on the workout shoes
- Making plans with a friend
- Scheduling time with a personal trainer
The mechanics work the same way for the kitchen (where abs are partly made).
Healthy folks know to make it easy to eat healthy snacks, and make it harder (but not impossible) to pig out. Once healthy folks know what to eat, they stock their homes with food on the edges of the grocery store, and leave the insides of the store on the shelf.
Wealthy
Wealth, maybe more than anything, is the story of trajectory over micromanaging choices. The best advice I’ve heard on wealth I’ve gotten from a combination of sources, namely a friend/coworker and lots of reading. I Will Teach You to Be Rich I think has the most concise summary. The steps to wealth are:
- Make as much money as you can (getting promoted/a better job, raises, more education if it’ll help)
- Making investment automatic, so that you’re taking your best income and
- Stashing it in tax advantaged/ decent yield accounts
The rules of wealth are not to make it big based on individual wins and losses, (that’s gambling), but to rely on compounding and on making your money pile big while guarding it ferociously.
Wise
Piggy backing off of wealth, The best way to make as much money as you can is to invest in yourself.
There are many ways to learn, but I’ve found for me the best way to learn is to give yourself a ladder to climb: a project, a certification, a test, a degree. These are the trajectories you put yourself on to become wise; a commitment greater than a minute long video.
I think the most dangerous form of learning I’ve come across is “edutainment”, watching documentaries or YouTube. It appears to make you wiser, but I wouldn’t equate wisdom with trivia.
True wisdom, I think, comes from knowing enough to be dangerous, and then some. You have to bury yourself in something, so that when you come up for air, you’ve got something to share that’s worth sharing.
Relationships
The most important choices we’ll make in our lives are our relationships. There are very few people we’ll be friends with, and even fewer that we’ll be in relationships or married to.
Who you decide to be with will be such a strong arbiter of your happiness , and it’s so much harder to end relationships, especially after you’ve invested so much time in them (like how it’s hard to deflect flying arrows).
Because you get so few shots, relationships really are more like shooting arrows than anything else. Picking the right person and making sure you do the right things are more important than any individual decision (love languages, falling in love again).
The trajectory of your relationship relies more on the habits you’ve built to keep it strong than a grand gesture like a car or a vacation. Too many missed marks will end a relationship, even if you do manage a few bullseyes.
How Do We Fire Arrows?
The arrows and trajectories they follow are the paths we put ourselves on, by committing to a vision of ourselves, instead of committing to individual acts along the way. Atomic Habits speaks to the fact that you “fall to the level of your habits”, meaning they are the default choices you make.
The habits we have are the result of choices we made about who we’re going to be, essentially the arrows we’ve nocked and fired.
- A healthy person, instead of a person who sometimes goes to the gym
- A wealthy person, instead of someone looking for the next payout
- A wise person, instead of someone searching for lifehacks
- A loving person, instead of someone looking for a grand gesture of love
Just as we fire arrows by envisioning where we want the arrow to land, we launch ourselves by envisioning where we want to land.
Thanks for reading!