Quantifying the Value of Indulgences

Sometimes, indulgences are ways to blow off steam, other times they are detrimental. A simple “utilitarian” principle might help us separate one from the other.

We all have indulgences and self-indulgences. In moderation, these indulgences help us feel better or push through some moments that may otherwise be overwhelming (looking at you chocolate cake). But at some point, if they turn into patterns we fall back to, they have a habit of becoming harmful, even turning into addictions.

Being human, we are never going to be completely efficient and calculated. To be honest, I think we absolutely mustn’t. Interesting and wonderful things happen when people make happy mistakes that open up whole new ways of doing things. That isn’t to say we should be completely chaotic either.

There is a fine balance between planning and experiencing.

When it comes to indulgences, I would like to keep the ones that improve my general well-being and remove (or reduce) the indulgences that are detrimental. Obviously, what is good and what is not is different for everyone. Personally, I wanted to pseudo-quantify the utility I got from all my indulgences.

Now is probably a good time to define what I mean by indulgence. I consider everything that I either enjoy or spend time on, that is not intended to contribute to my development as a human being (or is fundamentally a part of life) to be an indulgence. For instance, ice cream is an indulgence, a book is a necessity.

I can group my indulgences in 3 big buckets: Food & Drinks, Shopping and Social Media. As I was trying to reduce my indulgences, I came up with a simple rule:

If the utility I get from that action justifies the cost of doing it at the time, I do it.

Snacks & Drinks: Battling Gluttony

I love snacks. I simply love nibbling on food. But when you love snacks as much as I do, it is mostly the case where you just eat something and it is just… underwhelming. So, in basic utilitarian fashion I outlined above, I decided to evaluate all consumption with the following way of thinking: Am I going to enjoy this food enough to justify the calories I am consuming from it?

Keep in mind, this is about snacks and not about nutrition, I keep a healthy well rounded diet and consume enough calories. This refers to anything on top of my daily nutrition. An indulgence.

The answer to this question changes from snack to snack, or even for the time of the day for the exact same snack. In most cases, my answer is no, because most stuff is underwhelming. But sometimes, you just need that glass of wine or that piece of chocolate. So, then the condition is satisfied. Every additional unit of snack brings diminishing returns so there is a tipping point. Once I feel the scales tip I stop. I have been practicing this for about 8 months now, and I don’t have guilt or regrets about having a snack anymore. Worked wonders.

Same philosophy compelled me to stop eating meat. I love a good steak, or a beef carpaccio. However, there came a point in my life where I could no longer justify the personal cost (i.e. guilt mostly) attached to eating meat. This was 6 months ago, give or take. Everyone will have a different definition of utility and cost, and that is ok. I think this can still help though.

Shopping: Battling Greed

Another thing I love is shiny new toys. Mostly these are clothes, shoes and electronics. As I was moving apartments, I cleared my wardrobe and donated a lot of the stuff that was basically brand new because I had never worn them. I also have a tendency to buy the newest gadgets. So during the apartment change, I decided that I will not buy anything that I am absolutely not going to use.

This is arguably the most quantifiable case of indulgence, it literally comes with a price tag. The utility definition still is very person dependent. For instance, I recently replaced my vacuum cleaner because the old one was basically dead. The new one I bought would have been excessive in most circumstances, however, given how bad I am at cleaning and the fact that I have 3 cats, I decided to make the investment. On the flip side, I did not buy so many things, because I knew I was not going to use it therefore get no benefit from it.

Social Media: Battling Vanity

This revelation came very recently. I use social media quite a bit. And to be honest, I get a lot out of it too, mostly in form of memes and interesting takes (good or bad). However, it has come to a point where I started feeling like different platforms provided different levels of utility.

In this case, I measure the utility of a social media platform as the ability to facilitate meaningful human interactions. Arguably, social media platforms are not the best places to do that, even though all of them have some implicit claim to be designed to do just that. But I have experienced numerous cases where I had meaningful interactions with people I didn’t know over these platforms.

Based on this criterion, Twitter tops my list of social media platforms that facilitate meaningful interactions despite allowing for only short messages. If you can ignore the trolls and the bitter people, you can actually find a lot of people with very interesting ideas on Twitter and directly interact with them in a non-pretentious way.

On the other hand, despite being explicitly designed to facilitate meaningful professional interactions, LinkedIn leaves me with mixed feelings. While I get a lot out of it in terms of knowledge and opportunities, the interactions have a sense of pretence that takes a lot away from the experience. Still provides positive utility though.

Finally, Instagram. This is where the revelation happened. I get (or got) absolutely nothing out of this platform. There is no meaningful interaction on this platform whatsoever because it is not designed to facilitate interaction, but to facilitate broadcasting. I don’t have much to broadcast in terms of visuals, aside from cat pics and the occasional bad photography. It is also not what I am looking for in terms of utility, so I decided I have been using this platform incorrectly for my own purposes. For now, it didn’t pass my threshold of providing positive utility.

This is not meant as an advice or anything, it is mainly a brain-dump of a simple principle that I use to make better decisions on superficial things. For more important things, it is probably good idea to consider multiple angles than calculate a simple pseudo-utility but for most daily decisions, I think this is fairly applicable. Enjoy.