Chapter 03

Varieties

I’ve increasingly been noticing the varieties that exist in the world around me.

• It’s in the food we eat.
• It’s in the clothes we wear.
• It’s in the type of dogs we have.
• It’s in the cars we drive.
• It’s in the phones we use.

The variety that is available to us now in 2023 would be mind boggling to many 20 years ago. Yet with that level of choice, we are also confronted with the burden of selection. We have to wade through a mountain of options to find what best suits our own needs.

This is partially why I have been hunting over the last 10 years for sensible defaults¹. It is something that I have been very passionate about mainly because it’s one less thing to think about. In the aggregate, when you don’t have to make the same decision again and again means that you are able to spend more time on other things. Life’s low hanging fruit.

The Spice of Life

Life can be like a massive shopping carts. We fill it with experiences, products, people, memories, food, drink, laughter and sorrow. These items in our carts sometimes are easy to find and sometimes are hidden deep underneath a bunch of other crap we either didn’t need in the first place or that we used and have no need for. And this works across three dimensions. Physical, mind and digital. Managing this cart can either make our lives easier or more difficult. To make things easier we look for sensible defaults. These are knowing traits that address our current, immediate needs. Finding our sensible defaults means that we are not overwhelmed or distracted. Our cart is lighter.

At the start of our journey, our tastes are immature. We’ve not really had the time to sample things to see what we like and what we definitely don’t like. There is a period of exploration that precedes settling on the thing that makes the most sense, most of the time, for the time. Life doesn’t need to be heavily spiced. Equally when it does not have enough spice, it becomes bland. Sensible defaults let you reach a sweet spot of balance.

A sensible default is a the steady state we reach after experimentation. As we grow older, we begin to settle into place. Our go to wine. Our favourite type of slipper. The optimal notebook. Sensible defaults allow us to spend less time feeling cheated by something that is not meant for us.