A Curated Life

In last week’s post Less is More, I lightly referenced the problem of being bombarded with choices. Author Steve Rosenbaum, in a recent blog post, describes the challenge:

And yet — this abundance of connectivity has created a conundrum. It’s what author and psychologist Barry Schwartz calls the paradox of choice. Simply put — when we have too many options, too much input — we find ourselves overwhelmed with abundance. Young people called it FOMO, fear of missing out. And that fear leaves us often frozen in a blizzard of choice, unable to manage the volume of unfiltered input.

His solution? Living a curated life. Rosenbaum offers a five-pronged approach that is particularly useful in addressing the abundance of technology options and how to sift and winnow to a manageable number:

1. Take a personal ‘rhythm’ inventory
2. Right size your tools to your life
3. Filter your friends
4. Get offline and explore real world experiences
5. You are what you Tweet and eat

The goal is to, “…not let devices or content drive how you live your life.”

Item two on the list gives me pause. I would hardly know where to begin itemizing all of the technology tools, websites, and apps that I touch every day. Rosenbaum suggests, “But if we’re going to curate our life, the first place to start is with our devices. Open your phone, look at each and every app you have — and delete 2/3’s of them.”

It’s so easy to be seduced by the many choices in the marketplace. Look at all of the choices we have as consumers.  Interestingly, there are companies that are leveraging this idea of curation.  Examples include: Canoe, Snow Peak, and Trunk Club.

What’s that saying about the first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem? Yikes.