Dog-Cat Tactics
Do you want to organize your life? Try it like this
© Cristina Conti / Adobe Stock
Sometimes life is quite confusing. You can read here what can help to create order and simplify things a bit.
Basically, most people are exceptionally well equipped to go about their lives feeling they have some knowledge of what they’re doing. How we feel, how we think and analyze, how we block out unimportant sensory input, how we learn and develop without realizing it – our brain is undoubtedly a powerful organ in the interest of our life and survival. Nevertheless, even with the superpowers of this organ, life does not automatically become problem-free and easy. In part, this is what makes it difficult here and there.
So we usually have to make an awful lot of decisions, organize and structure our lives without being able to use instructions or follow role models one-to-one. How do I want to earn my living? What kind of people do I want to be around and how do I imagine my relationship life? Which values and priorities do I want to orientate myself towards?
Lots of big, complicated and at the same time important questions that we have to clarify for ourselves again and again while we go through our daily program of getting up, doing something useful, relaxing, eating and sleeping – because if something doesn’t go well with life, it is it stand still. It is therefore understandable that under these conditions we sometimes feel confused and find it difficult to make decisions or establish clear relationships. What can help in such situations: simplify radically.
The beauty of the two options
As psychologist Kevin Dutton wrote in his book Black. White. Think! clearly explained, it is usually easiest for us to decide between just two options. And not only is it easy for us: we even like doing it. For example, it has been shown that cafés can motivate their visitors to tip more by setting up two cans, one of which they describe as “cat” and the other, for example, instead of one can labeled “tip”. with dog”. While many people ignore the one can and don’t throw anything in it at all, two cans to choose between tempt many more people to throw away some loose change – because they enjoy choosing between two options.
However, the more options there are, the less likely people are to choose one of them: after seven at the latest it becomes exhausting and overwhelming for most people.
We can use this knowledge, for which psychologists are now collecting evidence in various experiments, to create order in our lives and to make decisions: by breaking down open questions into simple two-option choices. With regard to our career, depending on the situation and needs, we could choose between directions such as: a lot of money or little stress, responsibility or freedom, self-employed or employed, a lot of human contact or little? We could organize our relationships by comparing people to each other: Who could I rather do without in my life at the moment, A or B?
In many areas of our lives, ways can be found to sort them using the “dog or cat method” and to organize them more clearly and concisely for us. And the more clarity and overview we have, the more comfortable we usually feel and the more authentic and confident we can often act.
Simplify with care
As much as we like to divide the world into cats and dogs and feel like queens in the land of two options, in the long run it will be to our advantage to remain aware of all our simplifications that we are making them or have made them. In reality, there are usually no clear boundaries, and so the ones we draw at any given time may later prove to be wrong.
The ability to simplify and put the world in order is a strength we inherit from our brains, but so is the ability to adapt and change. Both qualities have their meaning and justification – so it is certainly not wrong if we try to cultivate both in the same way.
Source used: Kevin Dutton, “Black. White. Thinking!: Why we tick, how we tick, and how evolution makes us manipulable”