Imagine an encounter like this:
- I wish I had more time this week.
- Why don't you get rid of these clothes from your wardrobe?
Funny, but they might be related.
Your surface area is everything you interact with
As a general rule, the larger your surface area, the more energy you need to expend to maintain it. When we think of surface area, we typically think of the area of a rectangle or the amount of grass we need to mow. However, there is also a surface area of life that we often fail to recognize, and it can consume a lot of our time and energy.
For instance, if you own one house, your surface area to maintain is relatively small, depending on the size and age of it. But if you buy another house, your surface area expands and doesn't increase linearly. It grows slightly above that, so you must put in extra effort to maintain it.
In the same way, friends are another form of surface area. You have a limited amount of time to spend with your friends before you die. The more friends you have, the less time you can spend with each one individually.
Wealth is yet another form of surface area. The more money you have, the more complicated it becomes to keep track of the different types of assets and investments you have.
When your surface area expands too much, you need to hire people to help you scale. They can be assistants, property managers, family offices, and so on. However, this only masks the rapidly expanding surface area by abstracting it, increasing both the surface area and your responsibility.
Beliefs are also a part of surface area; the more you have, the more you need to defend and maintain. The larger your surface area, the more you become burdened mentally and physically.
If you think about surface area, it's easy to see why we are so anxious, stressed, and constantly behind. We need more time but crave more focus on important things. What we need is a smaller surface area.
The surface area can become a part of your identity. For example, she's the "busy person" with her hand in every project, and he's the "guy with four houses." Competition can drive expansion; most people want a bigger house to compete with a nicer one. We are animals, after all. On a group level, this can have excellent benefits, but on an individual level, it can cause unhappiness.
Most of the happiest people I know have a relatively small surface area. I know billionaires with only two houses, and most of my close friends only have 4 to 5 close friends; everyone else is a friend in the loose sense of the word. The most productive people I know at work focus on one or two things, not five.
Maximizing your enjoyment in life is all about keeping your surface area small. It's a lot of work, but if the happiest people I know are any indication, it's a lot less work to keep it small than to maintain it when it's significant.
