I am a very minimalistic guy. I like simplicity. I don’t want multiple of anything I can get away with one of. I don’t want anything I can get away without. I am constantly purging, consolidating, deleting, and reducing.
I also like optionality. The ability to be flexible, have several courses of action open to me, and a large degree of freedom in any situation.
These compliment each other more than you’d think (for example, having fewer things to worry about makes jumping on a last minute opportunity or changing direction easier). But sometimes they are in conflict.
Keeping everything in a single asset class for example, like cash, is simple and clean and low mental overhead. Cash is highly liquid as well, so it preserves optionality. Except when it doesn’t. Say a big inflationary period is going on. You want to preserve or grow your wealth so that you have maximum feature optionality. Lack of diversification can reduce long-term options by making you vulnerable to cash devaluation.
So preserve more options, you could own some land, some precious metals, some stocks, etc. This increases complexity. Increased complexity reduces optionality in some ways (harder to make quick changes, mental and physical resources locked in many places, high cognitical overhead) even as it increases it in others (hedging and preventing lock-in if one thing goes bad).
I think a lot about the zone of maximum freedom through time. Not just present simplicity and optionality, but extending it as far into the future as I can. I try to make things as simple and minimal as I possible can, but no simpler. The no simpler part is the challenge for me. Adding complexity to increase optionality is neccessary for my goals at times, but it’s mentally taxing. I’m a low-maintenance kind of guy. It requires some maintenance.