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There are now several books and magazines devoted to what is called the “voluntary simplicity” movement. Its core idea is that we have too many choices, too many decisions, too little time to do what is really important.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure that people attracted to this movement think about “simplicity” in the same way I do. Recently I opened a magazine called Real Simple to find something of a simplicity credo. It said that “at the end of the day, we’re so caught up in doing, there’s no time to stop and think. Or to take care of our own wants and needs.” Real Simple, it is claimed, “offers actionable solutions to simplify your life, eliminate clutter, and help you focus on what you want to do, not what you have to do.” Taking care of our own “wants” and focusing on what we “want” to do does not strike me as a solution to the problem of too much choice. It is precisely so that we can, each of us, focus on our own wants that all of these choices emerged in the first place.