Meaningful Advantage or Not?

A thought while walking around the other day:

When it comes to life decisions, consider — Does this give me a meaningful advantage in life or not?

For example, perhaps with cars — they give you some sort of meaningful advantage if your purpose is to use your car to signal your success, wealth, or perhaps hope to pick up an attractive partner. Or if you’re a race car racer, and you want to win the race, of course you spend exorbitant amounts of money to upgrade your car, and buy the most expensive chassis and model.

Will buying, owning and driving a Tesla give me a meaningful advantage in life?

Then I start thinking about consumer goods, devices, and things:

Do these things we desire really give us some sort of meaningful advantage in life?

For example, is there a meaningful advantage in owning a Tesla car … if your purpose is to get from point A to point B, pick up groceries, or occasionally drive to the mountains or go on a hike?

What is a “meaningful advantage” in life?

It seems on a base level we all desire to “improve” our lives, and the “quality” of our lives. For the basic American this means:

Living matters: Buying a bigger home, upgrading your home, moving into a more “desirable” neighborhood, or just buying a home. And once you’ve bought a home, (finally) paying off the mortgage.
The desire for freedom: Being “financially independent”, retiring, and no longer needing to work for a living, or no longer needing to show up to the office (whether in person or virtual).

But once we’ve achieved these things, then what?

Physiological thriving

I think on a base level, we desire physiological thriving. This means:

It doesn’t matter how many luxury cars we own, how fancy our home is, etc … if we do not sleep well, feel physically vigorous, or feel physiological strength … none of it is worth it.

Thus the first meaningful advantage is regarding sleep, physical strength, physiological strength.

A meaningful entrepreneurial advantage

Then when it comes to our artistic and entrepreneurial matters, best for us to consider whether this thing will give us a meaningful advantage. Will it help you be more productive? More inspired? To have a larger impact? More control?

For example a very basic thing: having your own website and web domain. This is a very meaningful advantage, as you have storage space, a way to better brand and differentiate yourself, and better indexing via Google SEO.

Health advantages

What are the best health advantages you can gain?

Supremely great sleep
Peace and quiet
Absence of superfluous stress and anxiety
Sunlight
Warmth
Cleanliness (absence of allergic matters in your home)
Mental cleanliness (absence of negative people and influences in your life). Mental hygiene.
Absence of gastro-intensional issues (good digestion is king)