“Focusing on essentials means concentrating on what is truly important and valuable, while minimizing distractions and non-essential activities. This can involve identifying core priorities, saying no to unnecessary commitments, and cultivating the discipline to prioritize impactful tasks.”
What you read above is actually a pretty good quote from Google AI Overviews.
Most people I know are not able to follow the principles therein. They simply lack the self-discipline and mental clarity. Thus they live in a chaotic fashion, mixing reason with emotions in their decision making process, often complicating what is essentially simple and easy.
Why this
No particular reason, just a casual observation. And a recurrent topic when I’m enjoying wine and cheese with my wife. We enjoy sharing our experiences dealing with different types of people in our daily routines.
Talking of which, I have this theory that when there is a fire there are two types of people: the ones who panic, stay put and yell “OMG, there’s fire! We are all gonna die! OMG!”. And the ones who, while aware of the life-threatening situation, will try to find a way out.
A good number people I see nowadays belong to the first type.
Related to this. Yesterday I had to go with my wife to an extremely busy area downtown, a place where supposedly it’s impossible to park your car. Yet I parked mine in an adjacent cul-de-sac not many people know about and my wife was like “oh, this is actually a smart place to park in this area.”
I smiled. Feeling amused, she kept going on this topic, maintaining that I have this special gift to find a car parking space in the most congested areas.
My reply was simple – and arrogant, I admit:
“The majority of people won’t find a parking space here because they keep going to the same places where they know in advance they will NOT find a parking space. But for some reason they keep doing the same, perhaps because they need to demonstrate that they are right NOT to find a parking space here.”
This pretty much sums up what I see in a lot of people nowadays.
* Photos above from my Epson R-D1x with Leica 35mm Summicron lens. As pure as possible, just focusing on the essentials with no useless technology getting in the way.