The Age of Choosing

Less but better.

Photo by Raspopova Marina on Unsplash

Trying something new today. You can listen to the post or read it below.

My grandmother used to love to go barefoot all summer long.

When she was young, she and her eight siblings received one pair of shoes each year. When the weather allowed, they went barefoot to save the precious shoes for school and church.

Growing up on a farm, she thought it was fun to be free to go without shoes. It was a habit my grandmother happily continued well into her last years.

Today I have three pairs of shoes just for running. Check that; I have a fourth pair for running in icy conditions.

Abundance and prosperity are spreading, which is a good thing in many ways. When I was a boy, 40% of the world lived in abject poverty. Today it's less than 10%. Still too high though a dramatic improvement.

That abundance is more than things like shoes. Knowledge is spreading. We can access data and information in seconds that would have taken years of research to pull together in the not-too-distant past.

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With so much information available, some good and some not so good, the era of knowledge might end, and the age of choice begin.

We won't just decide what we want to buy. We will determine what we fill our minds with, how we live, and how we impact the world.

‪What life do we want, and whom do we want to 'be' in it?

‪As designer Dieter Ram said, “We want to make things better. What we need is less, but better."

We need fewer things, and what we have, we need to be better.

There is a strong application of this principle in our Ikigai Journey.


✅ We need to work to make our world better.

✅ Less stuff and the stuff we have to be made better.

✅ Doing fewer things and doing them better.

✅ Fewer 'connections', better relationships.

✅ Better experiences, fewer things.

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Even the things we want or need, need to be better.

🌱 This promotes harmony in all we do.

🌀 Less but better.

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There are few things of value; focus on those things, grow those things, and make those things better.

The Ikigai Guy