The following is a modified excerpt from my new book
Choose Hard, Live Easy – The Art of War for Decision-Making
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(DEFCON: How Good/Bad Are Your Decisions?)
Back in 2014/2015, a strange transformation occurred: I turned into a political junkie.
I was consuming a steady stream of partisan red meat every day, for hours. The result? I became a person consumed by anxiety and anger. In other words, I became what I consumed. Worse, my marriage with my wife was dangling over a cliff because I was constantly short-tempered and bitter.
Decision Impotence: The Theater of Chaos
One day, I sat down and faced the reality. I was pissing away several hours a day on this garbage. That’s nearly 16 hours—two full, eight-hour workdays every single week—tossed away on shit happening hundreds of miles away, orchestrated by media-manipulators wouldn’t cross the street to piss on me if I were on fire. Worse, the aftermath (even when I wasn’t consuming the content) carried the tone of my day. In other words, 2 hours of outrage made me outraged for 16 hours.
In Choose Hard, Live Easy, I call this type of foolery the Theater of Chaos— decision ammunition completely wasted and squandered on uncontrollable, uninfluence-able matters.
On life’s battlefield, your decision-making ammunition is always targeted in the Theater of War, the landing zone of your decision power. The Theater of Power and Influence is the only place where your decisions matter and make an impact. This is where your life transforms and levels up.
Unfortunately, for the average culture-rotted citizen, most of their decisions are wasted in the Theater of Chaos. It’s where your decision-making power and your life are pissed away. In effect, you’ve been armed with a potent weapon, but choose to shoot blanks at things completely outside your sphere of influence.
Chaos:
- Politics and endless election-cycle hysteria.
- Mind-numbing TV dramas and reality TV trash.
- Pro sports (screaming at millionaires, crying over meaningless games)
- Celebrity nonsense, rapper feuds, and red-carpet parades.
- The latest viral outrage on X, TikTok, or whatever BS you’ve changed your Facebook profile to ineffectively support.
Examine the word “decision” itself. It stems from the Latin word decidere, which literally means “to cut off” or “to cut out.”
Sometimes the best decisions you will ever make in your life aren’t about what you need to do. They are about what you need to cut out. Instead of agonizing over what new habits to add to create positive change, figure out what’s guaranteeing a miserable one, and kill it. Delete it. Throw it away.
When I finally put down the political crack pipe and completely banished it from my existence, everything leveled up. My baseline happiness, my peace of mind, and my relationship with my wife all hit new highs. Now, I look around, and it makes me sick to see countless people wasting the prime of their lives arguing over BS they have zero control over, rotting away in the Theater of Chaos.
I see this play out every week inside the Fastlane Forum. Someone finally Chooses Hard—they ditch their social media accounts and unplug from the dopamine slot machine. The result? The brain fog lifts, the anxiety vanishes, mega-blocks of time are reclaimed, and their life is reinvented.
Addition by subtraction.
What can you SUBTRACT from your life right now that will profoundly ADD to it?
- Moving away from toxic, unsupportive friends who drag you down?
- Deleting Instagram, TikTok, or whatever algorithmic slot machine is frying your dopamine?
- Stopping the 6 hours of gaming where you’re the king in a fake digital world with the fake digital Lambo?
- Cutting out the 3 beers you used to numb out after work?
- Ending the degenerate Kalshi betting or endless crypto day-trading?
- Canceling the Netflix subscription that keeps you glued to the couch instead of building your empire?
Stop shooting blanks in the Theater of Chaos. Building the life you want often isn’t about what you need to do, but what you need to STOP doing. Make the hard choice and redirect your decision energy into battles that can be influenced, directed, and won.
Your move, your choice, your life.
MJ DeMarco, Author/Entrepreneur
PS: How good (or bad) of a decision-maker are you? Find out where you rate and take the DEFCON Decision Test — nearly 4,000 people have taken the test and the average person scores a dismal 68!