Sometimes, I find myself in a dilemma – Should I buy this or not? (see – George Carlin Talks About “Stuff” – YouTube)
I generally find the answer by keeping asking – “Will I use this item on the long run?”. Or, in other terms: “Do I find myself keeping using the item, day after day?”.
It’s helpful to look at a possible item on those terms.
The solution to not stuffing your house with items you don’t need is asking yourself – “Will I enjoy the item as time passes? Day after day? Or will it be the tattoo that will be difficult to get rid of?”
Does the strategy work though? As someone who bought two treadmills and an elliptical bike, thankfully not all at the same time, I can assure you that every single time I was super sure I will most definitely use them 🙂🙂
This even though when I bought the second treadmill I already had the experience of having had the first treadmill lying around mostly unused for literal years! I believe there is a logical fallacy somewhere that explains this way of thinking, but the name eludes me now.
Alas, these are not the only examples of things I shouldn’t have bought but I did, firmly convinced I NEED them sorely, but these are the most egregious ones. I think I’m becoming somewhat more stingy as I age, so I am hoping this will keep me from throwing money away on even more pointless crap. But as of now I am definitely not stingy enough 🙂🙂
It’s a work in progress.
Does it work? Just yesterday I applied it and not buy for a first time an object I was unsure about how much I’d be using it.
Still – does it work? It depends, as I have numerous examples of when the strategy does not work. :) You might be right. :)
PS: I write blog posts myself as a conclusion (“I found out this thing, let me inform you about this”), but I also write them as a future reminder, to reinforce what I found. (“Oh, I found about this think; let me tell you more, so I’ll remember things in the future!”)
For example, I wanted at some point to buy a fitness tracker. I thought about rings like Oura, or expensive watches. In the end I bought
https://www.emag.ro/bratara-fitness-xiaomi-smart-band-9-midnight-black-bhr8337gl/pd/D6F514YBM/
, which is rather cheap, but has two big advantages:
a. It does the basics right;
b. It doesn’t need maintenance (I only charge it once a few weeks).
Also, since it’s not an expensive product, I don’t need to worry a lot about not breaking it.
I specifically bought the product to see how will I adjust to having a fitness tracker.
Ah, if we’re talking about fitness trackers specifically, this one is easy: I HAVE TO have a watch, I can’t live without one; which means I’ve been wearing trackers since they started existing. I currently wear an Apple Watch (with its downright amazing 18h battery life 🙂).
Before having Apple Watches I had four Fitbits, two Pebbles and also another watch I got off Kickstarter that was supposed to be charged by the hand movement, so you supposedly never had to plug it in & charge it. That last one only lived until my first flight with it, because it died when going through the security scanner :)))
But the others were great and I loved them all; I think there was a (thankfully brief) time when I was wearing two of them, one on each hand, because I loved more than one at a time so I had to wear two :)))
I never tried Garmin though, but if you will enjoy your tracker half as much as I (used to?) enjoy mine, then you’re in for a treat :)
PS This might make me sound sporty. I am not sporty (see the first comment with the unused treadmills, lol 🙂). But walking is something I really like, even though my knees are no longer what they used to be :)
And all the games that rely on step counts are my jam!
Thank you for the reply. :)