November 26, 2022
There is a saying in China called "Those who achieve great things do not worry about trivial matters." When we look at those remarkable figures, many of them have an air of magnanimity, indifference to small matters. Faced with trivial matters in life, their catchphrases are "It doesn't matter," "It's not important," "It doesn't matter," "I can do it," "Whatever," with an indifferent attitude. You can easily understand this. If a person is always thinking about what to eat for the next meal, how can they have time to consider important matters? Just as there is a saying, perhaps said by Zhang Juzheng, "A gentleman focuses on important matters and does not bother with trivial matters."
But if we think about it carefully, even important people have to do small things. The secretary of the provincial party committee also has to eat every meal, and the CEO occasionally watches a TV drama. You can't really avoid the mundane aspects of life. In fact, many small things should not only be done well, but also be done with a sense of ceremony. Enjoying a meal with dedication, watching a drama attentively, greatly improves the quality of your life. Even if you spend an hour on TikTok or stare at a lake for an hour, if you truly experience an hour of happiness, it is worth it. Isn't there a saying? "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."
So the question is, what kind of time is considered "wasted time"? What does it mean to "not worry about trivial matters" and "not bother with small things"?
I recently came across a study that describes a true waste of time.
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Researchers from the University of Zurich, Ohio State University, and Princeton University conducted a series of experiments and found that when people spend time making decisions, there is an irrational tendency.
In theory, if a decision is important to you and choosing the wrong option will have serious consequences, you should spend more time on that decision. You should conduct careful research and consider it seriously. Conversely, if a decision is not that important and the results of choosing one option or the other are similar, then you should spend less time and just choose one. Makes sense, right?
However, most people don't do that. We spend too much time on unimportant small decisions.
One experiment went like this: Each participant was given 30 Swiss francs to buy snacks. The snacks were prepared in advance by the researchers and each was worth 0.25 Swiss francs. The entire purchasing activity was conducted on a screen.
The purchasing method was to give you a total of 150 seconds to answer 100 multiple-choice questions, with an average of 1.5 seconds of thinking time per question. The questions were straightforward: Two food items were displayed on the screen, and you had to choose your favorite. Press the left arrow key if you like the one on the left, and the right arrow key if you like the one on the right. Once you made a selection, it counted as a purchase. The experiment stipulated that if the 150 seconds were up and you hadn't finished choosing, the remaining questions would be randomly assigned answers by the system. After the experiment, each participant actually spent 25 Swiss francs and bought 100 snacks.
Sometimes, one of the two food items on the screen is something you like and the other is something you don't like. This situation is simple, you just choose the one you like without thinking. But please note that even in this situation, it is important and you need to treat it seriously because if you choose the wrong one, you will end up buying something you don't like for no reason.
And sometimes, both food items on the screen are ones you like or ones you don't like. What should you do in this situation? This situation may seem difficult, but please note that it is actually unimportant because no matter which one you choose, the result is similar for you.
And don't forget, you are under time pressure. You want to finish all 100 questions within 150 seconds to avoid being assigned something you don't like by the system.
So the rational approach is to choose carefully in important situations and not waste time in unimportant situations; choose one quickly and move on. This way, you won't spend too much time on each question.
However, in actual practice, the participants didn't do that.
People clearly spent more time on unimportant choices where they liked both options or disliked both options.
They fell into the "choice dilemma." Pork and cabbage dumplings or pork and celery dumplings? You like both, but you can't decide which one you like more in a moment, so you sit there thinking for a full 5 seconds. Because you wasted too much time on this question, you didn't have a chance to choose between "braised sea cucumber with scallions" or "tomato and scrambled eggs," and the system randomly assigned you "tomato and scrambled eggs."
Faced with unimportant situations where you could simply say "I'm fine with either," you got stuck. You wanted to find a more precise answer, not realizing that the answer to this kind of question doesn't really matter to you. This is a true waste of time.
In another experiment, participants were shown two piles of "flashing stars" on the screen, one on the left and one on the right, and asked which side had more stars.
Each correct answer earned one point, and there were no deductions for wrong answers. The higher your score within the specified time, the higher your final bonus.
Similarly, in this experiment, the simple but important situation was when one side clearly had more stars than the other, and the difficult but unimportant situation was when both sides looked almost the same. The rational approach is to choose carefully in important situations and quickly choose one in unimportant situations to maximize the number of correct answers.
Yet the results of the experiment still showed that people spent more time considering the situations where the two sides of stars looked similar.
If you count the stars on each side one by one, you are just too cute.
The researchers' conclusion was that people generally spend too much time on low-return problems, which is an incorrect time allocation strategy.
Let's think about it, isn't this how daily life is?
To decide what to wear to work tomorrow, you may spend an hour comparing several outfits, but at the end of the day, no one even notices what you're wearing. There are two movies playing at the cinema and you don't know which one to watch, so you read reviews and study ratings before making a decision, when you could have watched both movies with that time. For an item worth a few dollars, you compare prices at three different stores and collect coupons; but when it comes to buying stocks, you make a decision in a snap.
The problem is not what you choose, but the fact that you shouldn't spend so much time choosing in the first place: because in those situations, the results are similar no matter which option you choose.
Yes, maybe one outfit is slightly better looking than the other. If you spend enough time choosing, you can indeed make a more accurate selection. But the key point is that in many cases, "more accurate" is unnecessary.
Our goal is not to ensure that every choice is accurate, but to ensure that our choices in important matters are accurate. We should leave our precious time and energy for more important issues.
"Being serious" consumes energy and time, so you have to consider whether it's worth it. You should know that the ultimate purpose of making judgments is not to find the correct answer - we make judgments to maximize utility.
That's the key to "not worrying about trivial matters." It's not about not doing small things, it's about "not worrying." I also eat, I also watch movies - but I don't spend time making choices about these small things, I don't fuss, I don't argue with you, I don't care. Because they are "small" things: whether I choose this way or that way, the result doesn't have much impact on me. I'm fine with either.
The key is that "the result doesn't matter." We can extend this principle to say that for matters where the result doesn't matter, we shouldn't spend time on them. We should spend our time on the following three activities:
The first is when your choices and actions have a significant impact on the outcome. This may be important matters or urgent matters where making a mistake or not taking action will have serious consequences, so you should do them well. Things like applying for university, changing jobs, choosing a major - you should consider the pros and cons of various options before making a decision.
The second is reading and learning, which can change your cognition and improve your skills.
The third is doing activities we enjoy. Taking a walk with your parents, playing with your children, gathering with friends and chatting - these things are not a waste of time, they are part of life. Maybe this online novel won't bring you any new knowledge, but if you enjoy reading it, that's fine, you should read it. These activities may not bring you any other results, but the activity itself is the result. Maybe some people just enjoy trying on various clothes, that's fine too, it's part of their life.
And we shouldn't spend time on things we don't like and that don't have a significant impact on the outcome.
When asked what you want to eat at a class reunion in the evening, you want to attend the gathering but you don't like researching "popular reviews," so you just say "I'm fine with either." Rest assured, someone will definitely find a place that is at least not too bad. When someone insists on arguing about a question that has no value, just set aside the controversy and change the topic. If a book is full of trivial and useless knowledge and you're not interested in those details, your rational choice is to give up.
Don't listen to people saying "No detail is too small," because no small matter is a big deal.
Those who are overly controlling, who have to make every decision themselves, who are always engaged in "micro-operations," especially those who always have to prove themselves right, are not the ones who can accomplish great things.
Being able to prioritize and let go is a broad-mindedness, it's not about being polite, careless, tolerant, compromising, or catering to others' emotions - it's truly not caring, not wanting to spend effort on such small matters. I have a big heart, no need to ask me, thank you.
So what should a person with a narrow mindset do, someone who always fusses over small things? The study I mentioned earlier provides a hint. The researchers conducted a variation of the snack selection experiment, where the screen prompts only allowed 0.5 seconds of thinking time per question, and if you exceeded the time, the system would randomly select an answer for you. The participants' performance improved as a result.
The point is, if you have too many things to do and too little time, you won't be able to avoid neglecting small things, and your broad-mindedness will be forced out.
But in my opinion, a better and more proactive approach is to strive to broaden your horizons. When you have witnessed major events, experienced truly good things, and even regularly think from a cosmic perspective, the ordinary things in your eyes become almost the same, and you will have much less hesitation.
I suspect this is why many young people have become "Buddhist" now.
They kill countless people in games, spend money freely in TV dramas, hold power in novels, and laugh at the world on social media. Their original plan was to become famous before the age of 25.
But now if you ask them whether they prefer a slightly busier job with a monthly salary of 6,000 or a more relaxed job with a monthly salary of 4,500, their answer would be "I'm fine with either."