Sep 15th, 2022 Thursday Cloudy
I am about to share one of the biggest life hacks I have found with you: the random number generator.
It is basically an upgraded version of coin toss – a coin toss only has two possible outcomes, head versus tail, so it is useful for two options, but what if I have more?
Sure, you can use dice, and there are variations of regular six-sided dice that, when used in a clever way, serve a similar function (e.g. if you toss a ten-sided die twice, and use the first number as the tens, and the second number as the digits, you can get a random number between 1 and 100). But what if you do not want to carry a box of dice with you everywhere, or you want to decide between, say, 13 options?
Random number generator comes to the rescue. You can simply type “random number generator” on a web browser, and choose the range of numbers you want to use (e.g. from 3 to 51), and boom! You get an answer right away.
How is this a life hack??
Well, children often envy adults because adults get to make all the choices, but the reality is, adults not only CAN make all the choices, they also HAVE TO make all the choices, even in situations where the consequences of any of the options are uncertain. For someone trained to think as rationally as possible as me, it is painfully difficult to make A choice and ascertain that is THE right choice so as to justify my decision, when all the options have their pros and cons and the overall calculated “value” is hard to compare. Sometimes the choice to be made does not make much of a difference regardless of which way I go for, so even if I can figure out a way to compute a “score” for each option, the scores would be very similar. Yet I have to make a decision to move forward.
Yes, “moving forward” is critical, and in most of the scenarios that I have used the random number generator for, moving forward quickly is way more important than spending all the time pondering over the options to reach the optimal conclusion, if such an optimal result even objectively exists.
For example, where should we go for dinner tonight? Neither my husband nor I have any strong inclination, but we want to eat out, so a location must be determined. I simply make a list of all the restaurants we usually patronize, cross any that is not open or we are not in the mood for today, and randomly pick one from the remaining using the random number generator. My husband hates this approach, but unless he comes up with a better idea or voice his preference, I will stick with it 😛
Another example is time management for work or housework. Usually I have a long list of “to-do” tasks at the beginning of the day, that are equally important or equally trivial but need to be done nevertheless. If I try hard to “prioritize” them in the most meaningful order, I would be sitting in my chair for two hours without getting ANY of them done. Instead, I give each of them a number, and use the random number generator to create an order for them, then start from number one without further wondering whether some other task is more urgent, with the confidence that in due time, I will get all of them done 🙂
See how this tool is magic? It helps me to handle the choice overloads that every adult must face in daily life without consuming any mental energy, so I can focus on living in the moment, rather than contemplating how to “best” live in the moment.
Curiously, my kitty Lyn does not seem to have this trouble at all. ? She goes anywhere she wants, sleeps anywhere she enjoys and eats and plays whenever she feels like it. However, sometimes her behavior is so puzzling that I suspect she actually has a random number generator in her head that every now and then spits out a command telling her what to do, like “now play with tap water”, “now run around the floor”, or “now follow mommy and rub her”. ?
I guess I will never find out the truth, but as long as she looks happy, I do not mind her “randomness” at all ?