case for buying good stuff

  • once you buy good stuff, there is no upgrade path. you have purchased the best thing, now what. the quest is over. you need to get on with your life.
  • there is fewer stuff to buy. you do not need to buy all the accessories, or the slight improvement thing, or the other tool. you have what you need, now get on with your life.
  • you do not have to spend time researching better things, that means, no more researching new brands, no more keeping track of coupons or yearly sales
  • ideally this translates into no more lusting after new products. this one is huge. all the gear lust, well, you have the best that satisfies all your needs. something could satisfy your needs better? if that is the case, then you made an incorrect purchase, or you have not figured out your actual needs.

the importance of mental state

in order to buy good stuff, you need to actually understand yourself and know how to put yourself in a good mental state. a good product is visual, a good mental state is mental, and so you need a different skill to rate it.

feel bad, fancy car. still feel bad, so people get another car, a level up fancier car. when really, what you need in a car is reliability. a car is a tool.

if there are mental state things off, they are still mental state things that are off. self awareness.

tools or a luxury good

a luxury good conveys some sort of status or purchasing power
a tool completes a job

for some reason, people make tools that are really, really good, and then when they can't make them any better, they make them worse functionally and into luxury goods

a tool should be a tool, and buy a luxury good if that is the right 'tool' for the job.

tool need or a luxury need

a tool need is something like a screwdriver, you do not need screwdriver with a wooden handle with inlaid gold. that seems ridiculous.

there are a few things which are actually just being urbane. fitting in in society.

in an office environment, if you work in one, you need a pair of leather shoes. why? because in most office environments, it will hold you back if you're wearing hiking boots all the time. exceptions apply. however, do you need handmade ferragamo shoes? no. a pair of black and a pair of brown dress shoes would be fine. two nice pairs can be had for $250 each. $50 each if you know how to shop used and then maybe you do not even need to have them resoled. a pair of luxury loafers might cost $500 and, well, it is not getting you closer to solving any problems. that said, there also exist $1500 boots that look like hiking boots.

in a hiking environment, there are $400 boots, but you could do fine with $150 boots, $100 if you get them on sale. you could lots of hikes in less gear. but i would avoid doing a winter backpacking trip in flip flops or vans, for example. but i might do a summer backpacking trip in sneakers. as they say in the backpacking community, there is light and there is stupid light. there is expensive and there is stupid expensive.

a watch for example. i think you get a $100 watch like any of the casio g shocks, or timex, or seikos, or you save up and get a $2500 watch, but frankly, you should just save up and get a $5000 watch. however, if you never wear a watch of do not care about it, then do not. why? i've worn those watches. they feel nice, but no one ever notices. when i was thinking about watches, i thought, i am going to be the kind of person that makes a watch cool, not wearing a watch because a cool person wore it.

all games internal.

qualities of good stuff

they fit the function
they have form
they do not have much extra things
they do have a lot of extra things in things that add to function

they do multiple things - example a kitchenaid can do multiple things, but there are tons of single-use kitchen tools that are useless
they fulfill a real need - a beautiful product that does not solve a problem that you have, is not good stuff.

they are a tool

cautions

  • buying beautiful things that are unnecessary - one example is i purchased probably the most beautifully engineered, elegantly designed board shorts, made for surfers, and i mean, who cares. that is not my current lifestyle. so it was a poor purchase. would be better if i spent it on a great pair of jiu jitsu shorts.

difficulties of buying good stuff
well as outlined in the previous, it could be that, well, you do not know what good stuff is
limited availability of good stuff - limited does not mean good, necessarily though. there are people selling limited edition hydroflask water bottles, but a normal hydroflask will do fantastically

if you are an insecure person, that feels like you need to prove yourself to someone, then you can get all kinds of luxury goods. no need to prove yourself with stories. reacting with stories.

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