No one decides at a single moment to ruin their life, quit their job, or even divorce the person they’ve been married to their whole life.
There is no moment when we think that today is the day when all of this changes, or is highly likely to change.
And yet we all do this all the time. But of course, not necessarily in a catastrophic moment of madness, but through hundreds of small decisions made over time, none of which, individually, seemed to matter that much.
This concept originally comes from the field of economics. Alfred Kahn, the economist, calls this situation the “Tyranny of Small Decisions”. And this is where each of the decisions made, on their own, seems to have no obvious or noticeable effect.
If, for example, I don’t feel like going to the gym one day, that doesn’t mean my physical fitness is irreparably compromised. We stay late at work, or we check our phones for an email notification instead of continuing to look at the person right in front of us—who might be our spouse or partner. None of these actions or decisions, taken almost automatically, seems to be the problem. However, if we add them up over a certain period of time—weeks, months, and even years—they end up creating a “life” you never wanted to choose.
Originally, as I mentioned, this concept was applied by the economist to the financial sector, where individual consumer decisions can lead to the destruction of entire industries, established business models, or even communities—even when no one intended for that to happen.
This can be illustrated, for example, when instead of going to the neighborhood grocery store as usual on a given day, we go to the supermarket and do our shopping there because there was a special promotion on a certain item that day. Let’s imagine that the vast majority of a neighborhood made the same (small) decision that day: because of a promotion on a certain item, instead of shopping at the small store, they went to the hypermarket. And that the same thing happened the following week, and the week after that. It would have been just three shopping trips that each person in that small neighborhood had made to the hypermarket instead of the grocery store they usually went to. What that would mean for the grocery store would be the sum of all those small decisions. It would be left with unsold fruit at the end of the week, wouldn’t have the same revenue as the previous week, or the previous month, which could lead, over the course of a few months of these small decisions, to its closure due to not having enough customers to ensure its viability.
This principle turns out to be universal. A relationship doesn’t end after a single act of betrayal; it ends after hundreds of acts of neglect. Health doesn’t deteriorate overnight, but rather with every cigarette we choose to smoke over the course of several years.
The tyranny of small decisions leads us to see how these little things can grow and develop into something much bigger—and often with no possible resolution. Every decision matters, and every choice we make ultimately defines the life we will live. Our decisions, even the small ones, are like the little bricks that will eventually build the house we’ll live in.
As the lyrics of one of the songs by one of my favorite bands go, everything counts...
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