A few days back, I accompanied my parents to a furniture showroom for what I assumed to be a fairly mundane task — selecting a new bed. I was disinterested to say the least. We reached our destination and after narrowly avoiding breaking a lamp, I sat down gingerly on a plush sofa — an apt throne to facilitate my decision making.
I browsed through the catalog of beds, halting at every other page to see if there was potential for a long-lasting bond. One bed caught my attention — yes, I could picture myself sleeping my life away on this beauty. I excitedly showed my parents the bed I had set my heart on, the one I wanted to spend my life with. They looked at the picture rather disappointed. “There isn’t enough storage, it would be a nuisance to sweep the floor, isn’t it a little too low?” Oh, I can be so naive at times. I forget that a bed is supposed to double as a transformer. Well, it’s no matter… as an Indian kid I am equipped to handle my parents disapproval. I persevered. Found yet another bed that I was sure would not meet my parent’s expectations so I did the one thing I should have just done the first time around — by passed them altogether. I passed furtive glances at the store manager willing him to come my way. I pointed at Page 65 — I had made my choice. I rose from the sofa, my afternoon nap beckoned. “Madam we do not have this bed but we can make something similar”. I stared at him blankly. Of course, since when were catalogs supposed to show you things that you could get, that would just be too easy. My naivety knows no bounds.
“Imagine the same bed on Page 65 with the headboard on Page 62 and foot board of page 13”, he added nonchalantly. I tried to maintain a calm demeanor while my inner world crumbled. Somewhere between page 62 and 13, my imagination had simply given up.
“Okay”, I mumbled, unsure. At this point, any hope that I had of getting a bed of my choice had all but vanished. Little did I know that the test on my mental stamina had just begun. Over the course of the next half hour, I was bombarded with fabric catalogs, my visualization skills challenged with design patterns, my critical thinking tested to check bed spatial specifications. Lastly, it was my memory that took the biggest jolt. For it not only had to remember a string of decisions taken over the past half hour, but decisions that it would have much rather forgotten.
This experience brought to my attention a series of similar debilitating experiences. For starters, all the times at the ice cream parlor where I not only had to choose from an array of 50+ ice creams but also gauge it’s compatibility with arbitrary toppings.
An epiphany! Life is a series of relentless decision making. And if we’re being honest, most of these decisions are too trivial to justify the mental trauma. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I believe the key is to simplify, simplify and simplify! Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg made the tough call of wearing black t-shirts and forsaking fashion to create mental bandwidth and create business empires. Imagine what we could do if we didn’t have to choose every topping, every garnish, every adornment. We could free up so much energy, tap into our true potential and focus on making a thread of alternate futile, poor decisions. Life must go on.
