One of the smartest people I've ever heard of recently said one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. I was listening to a podcast with Sam Harris, who has a PhD in neuroscience and is a world-famous bestselling author, media personality, philosopher, and makes me reconsider my life philosophy almost every time I listen to him.
As a person concerned about the evolution, thriving, and well-being of the human race, he was answering the question from a listener "What will we look back on in 20 years with disbelief at how ignorant we were?". Harris said he thought the eating of animals would be a top contender. He said that he tried to address this by switching to a vegan diet for six months, but went to a doctor and had blood work done and a lot of measurements were out of whack due to his over-consumption of carbs. So he had to switch back for his own health.
If anyone wants to start some productive habit, such as reading more, working out more, they might start with the idea to spend 30-60 mins a day practicing this new habit. Obviously there's only 24 hours in a day, and the concept of opportunity cost tells us that there's no such thing as pure addition to one's day. You can't just add an hour of working out to your day. You are working out an hour a day instead of doing something else. In order to start this new habit, you also have to decide "What activity am I cutting by an hour to make room for this? Video games? Work? Sleep?"
From a financial standpoint, I find that opportunity cost is sadly often overlooked by young college students. You're not just paying tens of thousands of dollars to go to school, you're also sacrificing thousands of dollars that you would have earned working during the time spent at school. And of course countless hours of time spent in class and doing homework, that could've been spent at work or doing anything else.
On the flip side (way less obvious!), there's no such thing as pure subtraction from your day either. If you're going to cut something out, it must be replaced by something because 24 hours are still going to go by no matter how many activities you cut. Want to spend less time eating donuts? Hanging out with people you don't like? Practicing a hobby that no longer brings you any joy? Guess what, something else is going to fill that time whether you like it or not.
This is what bothers me about Harris's comment, and what is such a shame about many people I've known that have attempted and failed to keep a vegan diet. To be clear, I'm not advocating a vegan diet to anyone. I'm pointing out that if you cut something from your life, it has to be replaced by something, and if you don't consciously choose what that something is, life might pick something that works against your main objective.
Cutting animal products from your life won't help you at all unless you replace those items with something else that contains the B12 complex, fats, calcium, iron etc that you need to thrive. If you cut yogurt and chicken from your life and don't choose a replacement, life will choose potato chips and gummy bears. The same goes for any other "quit in the name of health" quest. If you want to cut your TV watching by one hour a day, you have to increase your reading time, workout time, or beer-making time by an hour, or else you'll just increase some other unhealthy habit by an hour to fill the void. Doesn't make sense to cut TV time by an hour just to increase video game time by an hour.
Decision making got harder once I realized this and that's probably never going to change. I've spent a lot of time doing things without weighing it out. Which is fun. But now every time I want to do something, I have to think about what activity I'm giving up in order to do x. Which can still be fun. Make the decision to do x, knowing that you're giving up y, and then make sure that sacrifice was worth it.
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