2-43: Reclaiming Your Attention
The Price of Peace-of-Mind
Sometimes you pay to eliminate or reduce FOMO. Sometimes you’re paying to free your mind from the burdens that come from not having something. The thing you buy is almost secondary to the peace-of-mind you’re really buying.
I own about a good amount of IBIT (the bitcoin holding company ETF). I own this bitcoin partly as a hedge against the dollar depreciating. A second, yet equally worthy reason is to significantly reduce the fear-of-missing-out (“FOMO”) that I felt when I didn’t own it. When I owned very little, I felt a bit of FOMO every time bitcoin was up 10% or 20%, sometimes in a single day. Now, I can completely ignore bitcoin in the news and all of the crypto market, simply because I have exposure. I have essentially “paid” to eliminate FOMO. By the time I retire, bitcoin will either be $1 million or $0, and it will not make a difference to my life or lifestyle either way. This is not a case to buy bitcoin, but a very clear example of how I paid to rid myself of a feeling.
A different example is when I bought a new (to me) car. For the past year, I’ve spent 20 to 30 minutes a day casually browsing Bring a Trailer, AutoTempest, and a few other sites, looking at all types of cars. I’m realizing, only after buying my new car, that I no longer have to spend that time. While I wasn’t always seriously looking during those times, a small part of me was always looking. Now, the act of looking at cars will be purely for enjoyment, as opposed to 90% for entertainment and 10% for practicality.
Lastly, any type of insurance is essentially paying to reduce the mental worry of something bad happening. Whether car insurance, life insurance, flood insurance, or any other type, you are paying to free your mind from the burdens that come from not having insurance. The decision to purchase insurance is heavily influenced by you not having to run the catastrophe scenarios in your head every time you leave the house.
In each case, the money spent is buying relief and the ability to stop thinking about what’s the worst thing that could happen. It is incredibly freeing to reclaim that mental capacity after thinking about something so often that it becomes second-nature. Of course, it is a balance of determining what is truly worthy of taking up your mental capacity along with removing the things worth removing, even if that means spending money to do so.