Make It Easier For Yourself
Over time, we grow more experienced, but we also grow in accumulating responsibilities.
It's understandable to prefer the way we've always done things: the costs -- time, money, or otherwise --, risks and results are well-known and familiar.
However, the way it made sense to do things in one context may not hold up in the new context you find yourself in.
Maybe earlier in life you had lots of free time and no money. In that context it made sense to spend a lot of your time (cheap) to do research and looking around to then find the best good deal for some product (expensive).
Or maybe it made sense to spend huge chunks of your time (cheap) troubleshooting technology instead of calling a technician or buying a higher-end model (expensive).
Over time, the balance shifts. You find that you'd rather do anything else than have to deal with unreliable pieces of tech. You settle for one or two hours of research to buy a “good enough” product with a “good enough deal”.
I emphasize that there's no right or wrong: every decision is a trade off between the resources you have available, and how much you value each of them relative to each other.
With all this in mind, there's one thing that I find always makes sense in every context: making things simple for yourself.
If some process can be made with fewer steps, more reliably and with less dedicated attention and resources, go for it.
(Note: the examples I'm going to use to illustrate this work for me in my context, although they may seem wacky and probably not applicable to you.)
- All my t-shirts are dark colored. This means I can always wash them in a single cycle without taking out the white ones.
- All my socks are the exact same model. This means I never have to find a matching pair: any of them is a match for the other.
- I own a single pair of Nike shoes. I own a single impermeable cold-weather jacket.
- My wallet carries everything I'd ever need while out and about, and nothing more than that: my ID, one credit card, one meal voucher card, and two baking cards, and “emergency” cash (in case the cards don't work).
- My keyring only has the keys of that I actually use (two, at this moment).
These decisions stem from the fact I realize that in all of those areas above it barely makes a difference what I end up doing:
- I work from home, often with the webcam off. Even when I went to the office, programmers don't dress up. Were I in a management, consultancy or sales position, I might need to. Currently I don't, so I don't.
- While outside of home, there was never a situation where I needed more than my ID and a card for payment. (maybe the health insurance card -- which I do have to print out because their app is poorly made).
- If I don't remember what a key in my keyring is for, I probably don't need it, so it's not missed when I take it off.
I reinforce that my point is not that you have to follow the specific advice above. For example, I've decided to learn woodworking, so I bought a drill, then bought bits for the drill, then learned about different types of drill bits -- I'm not minimalist for minimalism sake.
From the areas I either extract enjoyment from or I improve the market-value of my own labor, I'm all in favor for extracting every bit of enjoyment or value, even if it requires additional complexity.
But, for anything else other than those two areas, realize that there's a non-zero cost to added complexity. Maybe you'd achieve the same just putting in the minimum effort possible to get a “passing grade”. Making things simple for yourself is how you keep maintenance and overhead low, and free up yourself up to tackle the more important things.