When you give people too many choices it makes them hesitate and not buy stuff.
GUY KAWASAKI
I have a list that I made recently called "ideas in storage." These were ideas that I was contemplating years ago and simply stopped thinking about them. Life happens, and you leave certain projects unfinished like an old car in the barn of your mind. I have decided to drag them out of that barn and get them done. I will begin with the easiest idea on the list--the Omnivore Option.
There is a channel on YouTube called Ham Radio 2.0, and the guy on that channel has a lot of "versus" videos. One of those videos was about ham radio vs. CB radio. The ham radio guy has a diplomatic and perhaps ingenious answer to the debate on radios. Why can't it be both? Why not use ham radios and CB radios? He applies the same answer to ham radio vs. GMRS. Just get both. Why choose when you don't have to? This strategy is the Omnivore Option.
I like the Ham Radio 2.0 guy, but I am opposed to the Omnivore Option. It is an easy option for a YouTuber who is probably given radios for free to review for his channel. The rest of the world lives on a budget. For other people, time is also a factor in addition to money. Fundamentally, you have to make choices in life and live with the consequences of those choices.
The Omnivore Option promises to help you escape the consequences of those choices. You can't make the wrong choice if it is ALL OF THE ABOVE. What the Omnivore Option fails to grasp is that choosing everything paralyzes you instead of liberating you. It's like sitting down at a restaurant and spending thirty minutes being hungry because there are too many choices on the menu. You could order everything, but you have merely postponed making your decision while accumulating a lot of food that will be wasted.
The Omnivore Option is a stupid strategy. This hit me as I began studying martial arts in my thirties. Not knowing anything, I decided the best option was to learn all of the styles that I could from Western boxing to tae kwon do to jiu jitsu. I was doing mixed martial arts which is the Omnivore Option applied to fighting. The result was that I would freeze up in a sparring match because I had too many options at my disposal. When I asked my teacher if he had ever been in a real fight in the street, he said he had. A drunk guy shoved him outside of a restaurant. I asked him what kung fu move he used to take the guy out. He told me that he hauled back and punched the guy out dropping him like a sack of cement. My teacher didn't realize it at that moment, but I had fired him. This is because I already knew how to punch somebody out. I didn't need instruction on that. This is when I decided that Krav Maga with its simplicity and brutality was what I needed instead of a triple black belt Ph.D. in mixed martial arts.
That episode from my past was transformative because I was running on the Omnivore Option in many areas of my life. Instead of making a To Do list, I was making procrastination lists. I wanted to do it all. Instead, I was doing nothing. I was choosing not to choose.
My antidote to the paralysis of the Omnivore Option was my Grand Unifying Theory or blue collar strategy of choosing simple and effective options. Some of these strategies are borrowed while others are created. I make the choices and accept the consequences of those choices.
Like it or not, I still have Omnivore Option tendencies. As I said, this was an idea in storage. Necessity made me move on, but I can now return to the Omnivore Option in order to pull it from the barn and haul it to the scrapyard. Where is the Omnivore Option in my life now?
I am a digital hoarder. I err on the side of excess. Nevermind the fact that there are not enough hours in a day to read, watch, or hear everything that is available on the interner. So, I accumulate this stuff. That accumulation is the Omnivore Option. I have not discovered or established a simple and effective strategy for dealing with this problem. Until then, I accumulate before declaring something like email bankruptcy where I batch delete and start over.
I have made some progress by limiting myself to the 150 feed limit on my Inoreader. I have had no problems living within that limit. That limitation forces me to choose. And that, Gentle Reader, is how you escape the Omnivore Option. You choose to choose.
With Krav Maga, I knew I needed a mixed martial arts option. Krav Maga is a mixed martial art, but it is a simplified mixed martial art. Now that I am old and damaged, Krav is my only hope of handling and escaping a violent encounter. I made the choice to choose.
Whenever you find yourself with the Omnivore Option in operation, find some way to make cuts and enforce limits. Do thought experiments. What if I only had one option instead of infinite options? That is how I settled on Krav Maga. The same strategy applies to how I cut cable TV. I limit myself to the channels available on over-the-air broadcasting and my dog ear antenna. I watch very little television, but I do it for free now.
If I had to give a name to this antidote to the Omnivore Option, I choose to call it the "Scarcity Option." This is what the minimalists and declutterers have discovered. Limited options gives you freedom. That limit could be a time limit or a money limit or an arbitrary number like 100 things. The answer is to find limits even if that scarcity is artificial.
It takes some effort and energy to implement the Scarcity Option, but it pays you back later. You realize how much you were wasting on indecision. Find your limits even if you have to create them. You will thank yourself when you do this.
