It seems that nowadays mental health, and the psychological facet of our being, is receiving more and more attention. The extent of the ravages inflicted by stress, sleep deprivation, and other environmental and behavioural factors are beginning to be recognized. For my part, I’ve come to recognize that peace of mind is one of the greatest luxuries that you can have. The Stoics after all built their philosophy around the attainment of spiritual equanimity. Appreciating psychological well-being and making it an explicit variable in the mental calculus of decision-making has been a major breakthrough for me.

When weighing the costs and benefits of different courses of action, it’s important not to overlook the psychological consequences of each. Often, a given option will appear fairly attractive on the face of it, but all the psychological baggage associated with it actually makes it not worth pursuing. In an article I read recently, the author gave what I thought was a brilliantly compact insight: The sooner you do something, the more of your life you get to spend with that thing being done. This advantage of taking action is often neglected, but the nagging of an “open loop” or unfinished task is no less real for it. Similarly, when evaluating, say, the costs and benefits of saving, you would be foolish to discount the stress that preoccupation with debt forces you to endure. So while in some ways saving money amounts to self-deprivation, it also affords you the wonderful luxury of freedom from debt-related worry. In a sense, this is what you are purchasing when you save.

Recently, I’ve come to make a point of considering these “hidden costs” and reformulating my choices in these terms. For example, I’ve started to try to be more mindful of what I eat. Sometimes, like everyone, I’m tempted to violate the dietary rules I’ve set for myself. Harnessing the insight above, however, I now think to myself: by foregoing this indulgence, I’m procuring freedom from the pangs of guilt that I would otherwise later experience. Indeed, applying this approach, I’ve found that many of the previously difficult decisions actually become much easier when conceived of in these terms. What was before a deprivation is now a positive gift to yourself.

This might seem like a needlessly intellectualized and complicated reframing of the obvious trade-off between long-term good and immediate gratification, but in my opinion it isn’t. The difference here is that the benefits aren’t pushed off to some vague, distant future self: they accrue continuously all the time in the form of a clear conscience and liberated mind. By focusing on this aspect of the consequences, you make the true stakes of the trade-off explicit and clarify the choice to be made. It’s amazing what practical ramifications a shift in mental models like this can have.