Reductionism, part one

I have tried recently to make my life, as I perceive it, simpler. This is not the same as making my life simpler. For instance, I could stop going to work, but I would hardly perceive my life to be simpler three months later. Quite the contrary. At its best, work disciplines my mind and challenges me. I am almost embarrassed to admit that I mostly like it and am actually enthralled by it sometimes. I am in a position that requires creativity that is not trivial in the business world, and that is an exceedingly rare thing. I can integrate things I learn from other disciplines into my work: statistics, risk management, cognitive bias. Somewhat paradoxically, Munger's "latticework of mental models" is a way of simplifying the world, because we train ourselves to react to events in more effective ways. Although it often goes unnoticed, we choose to make our thought processes as complex as they are, a choice that is fine until it is not fine, by which time it is a habit. Cluttered thought begets stress, which begets too many unfortunate things to mention. Stress and fructose are too often our killers.