A deliberate life: work + wander

Take the road less traveled. Find your True North. Think differently. They may all be cliche, but together they form the seed of a crazy idea that grew legs and took us somewhere we wouldn’t have dreamed of, even just months before we started.

We are a family of four just getting started on a new adventure: downsizing from a quiet house in a wonderful, walkable neighborhood in Atlanta and packing our work-remote, toddler-boys life into 200 square feet on wheels, wandering West from Rapid City, South Dakota.

So, why left? (Warning: Daniel is a huge nerd) Do you ever find yourself stuck in a routine, or looking back at a series of choices, not even knowing why you made them? Turns out it’s pretty common, and it’s the reason that $1.99 pricing does much better than $2. Our brains are wired to use heuristics in most of the thousands of little decisions we make each day, and it works out okay most of the time. Coming back to the roads that diverged in the wood, there was likely a mental heuristic at play in the road more traveled. Known as lateral bias, researchers have long noticed an asymmetry in the directional choices we make when presented with left vs. right: the vast majority turn right, all else equal (Farnsworth 1933, Scharine and McBeath, 2002).

So next time you find yourself at a crossroads, turn left and see where it takes you.