I was talking with clients today about "doing the right thing" and while it might sound like it at this point, it isn't about some moral position on right and wrong. Rather, it was about the personal right things that we should be doing for ourselves in order to have a good life, as we might define it. The discussion wasn't about what these things are and instead, about how little bandwidth and skill we have in order to make them happen in our daily lives. Even if we did "have the time" to do them, we don't have the mental bandwidth or knowledge to do them effectively.
The right thing should be easy.
This doesn't mean an easy life.
However, if you have a look at all the wrong things you do in your life, with wrong being the things you don't want to do or don't want to do as much of, the underlying theme of them is that it is pretty easy. There aren't a lot of barriers to start them, and they are hard to stop once going. It is like the mindless activity of thumbing through the endless scroll of a media platform. The time just disappears in a daze.
But, the right things we want to do, take effort to actually do. They are not passive activities and require stopping something easy, and doing something less easy. Even if it is slightly more difficult, it can be enough to stop us doing it. There is a reason why things like spending money on useless things is made easy, while investing that same amount is made hard.
If we did "all the things we should" we would probably be in pretty good wellbeing shape, but it just isn't possible, because there are far too many things we would have to design, and we aren't the right people to do most of that work, let alone plan the implementation in ways that will facilitate our activities. Doing the right thing should be the default, the easiest option, the one that is a one-click and go activity. All of the money however is put into putting up barriers to overcome to do the right thing, and lowering them for the wrong. This sets up an even bigger hurdle, because it will take willpower to both stop doing the wrong thing, and start doing the right.
The right thing has to be automatic.
Out of sight, out of mind.
What I mean is that when we get on the bus and pay with proximity pay, or when we do an internet search, we aren't thinking about all of the infrastructure and planning that goes into it. Most of us don't even know what actually goes into it, other than some vague "computer code stuff". As long as it works, we don't care. Doing the right things should be the same, where the easy, blind option is the one that is going to take us down the path of improvement, not the one of degradation. Doing the right thing shouldn't be hard.
Again, this isn't some moral right and wrong, but the personal one, where we might want to eat well, but we aren't good at planning, preparing, or holding back our sweet tooth. We might want to exercise, but we can't seem to make it consistent, and we rarely have the willpower to get off the couch.
Willpower will always fail eventually.
The path of least resistance should take us to health and wealth, not illness and destitution. We are made to do the easiest thing, especially when we are tired or unsure about what we should do, and this system has been hijacked for profit and control. We have made our lives so complicated to live, that we just don't have the bandwidth to spend on simplification. As was said,
if you can't say it simply enough, you don't know it well enough.
We might know a bit about some of what we should do for the right thing, but there are just so many factors involved now, so much complexity, so many competing factors, that we can't know it all well enough. So, we focus on what we do know, and hope for the best on everything else. And, the more we break apart from our social network, the more reliant we have to become on or own capabilities, and they aren't very good.
KISS
Keep it simple stupid. It is a design concept that has been around for a long time already and I think it comes from the military, but how often do we apply it to our lives? Sure, we look for ways to save plenty of time with various machines and gadgets, but once we have that time, we spend it on more crap that doesn't benefit us. More crap that adds complication. We don't have to spend hours cooking each day anymore, or hours down at the lake washing clothes - but with all that extra time, we sit and scroll some crappy TikTok clips instead of doing something that we care about.
If we save mental and physical bandwidth, we need to ensure that we are utilizing what we save well, otherwise there is no point in saving it at all - the effort to save, is an expense. At least for me as someone who has a narrow mental gateway now, I am far more careful with how I spend my energy than I was before, and engage in far less mindless mental activity than I did, so I can shift it to what will take me closer to my goals. I am trying to simplify as much as I can, whilst keeping it interesting by targeting more of what I do care about it. It is slow progress though, and there are always complications that get in the way that need to be dealt with, but step by step, right?
The problem though and as I brought up with my clients today, is that what we really want takes time and effort to get, and what is easy gives us instant satisfaction. It is also why governments are useless, because they are unable or unwilling to plan for enough into the future to make the critical social changes we might need, and instead focus on short-term goals that trigger instant gratification feedback loops. The obesity epidemic, rising depression, growing substance abuse and increasing poverty aren't impossible problems to address, but they take generations to make significant impacts. And, they also take good design that make the right thing, the easy thing to do.
Another thing governments are terrible at.
But each of us sucks at it too.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
