It’s wild how good we’ve gotten at making life harder than it needs to be.
We live on a treadmill of choices. Just as we finish one, another pops up, waving its hand for attention—some practical, some strategic, and some that just drain our energy with their endless what-ifs and choices. And while there’s value in exploring our options, sometimes we need to just pause and ask ourselves: What’s the easy option here?
Now, I know what you might be thinking—taking the easy way out sounds lazy. But I’d argue the opposite. Sometimes the “easy button” is the smartest, most efficient move you can make. It frees up your mental bandwidth, gets you unstuck, and lets you focus on doing the actual work instead of endlessly deciding how to do it.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
Example 1: Project Management Meets Bureaucracy
Several years ago, I was leading a team of project managers at a Fortune 500 company. We had team members on five continents, and while the organization had an almost overwhelming array of tools and technologies, we didn’t have a good solution for managing the kind of projects we were focused on. Wild, right?
By that point, I’d spent nearly 15 years in the operational excellence space and had worked with a number of really solid project management platforms. One in particular stood out. It was cost-effective, easy to implement, and—most importantly—it worked. I knew it would be a great fit for our team.
So, I kicked off the implementation.
Cue the brakes screeching on our fast-moving vehicle.
An email dropped into my inbox from our Chief Information Officer. “Hold up,” it said (I’m paraphrasing). “We need to go through our formal vendor selection process.”
And I get it. Governance matters. Scalability matters. Security matters. But this wasn’t some unknown startup—we were talking about a proven platform that checked all the boxes. Still, I hit pause, followed the formal process… and guess what?
Three months later, we selected the exact same tool I’d proposed from the beginning.
That, my friends, was a textbook case of ignoring the easy button. We lost time, momentum, and focus—not because the solution wasn’t clear, but because we overcomplicated the process. The easy answer was sitting there the whole time, patiently waiting while we tangled ourselves in bureaucracy.
Example 2: Strength Training Meets App Simplicity
Let’s pivot to a personal story. A few years ago, I committed to strength training as part of my health journey. I was excited, motivated—and promptly fell headfirst into the fitness advice rabbit hole.
YouTube, podcasts, blogs, online threads—everyone had a different opinion. Free weights or machines? Full body or splits? Five reps or fifteen? Soon, I was spending more time researching workouts than actually doing them.
Then one day, I remembered something obvious: I already had a subscription to Apple Fitness. It had a feature that let you build a personalized plan in under a minute. No extra cost. No extra apps. No extra overthinking. So I gave it a shot.
Sixty seconds later, I had a plan tailored to my goals. All I had to do was show up and press play.
Was it perfect? Maybe not. But it got me moving. I stopped spinning my wheels and started lifting weights. Over time, I tweaked the plan to suit my needs better—but the important part is, I started.
That was the easy button in action. And it’s still working for me a few years later.
Why We Resist the Easy Option
So why do we so often make things harder than they need to be?
Sometimes it’s pride—we want to build the solution ourselves. Sometimes it’s fear—what if the easy choice isn’t the best choice? And sometimes, we’re just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options and paralyzed by analysis.
But here’s the thing: progress matters more than perfection. The “easy button” isn’t about cutting corners—it’s about cutting through the clutter.
There’s always going to be complexity in life. Some decisions do require deep thought and planning. But not all of them. And the sooner we can learn to tell the difference, the better.
What Hitting the Easy Button Really Means
Hitting the easy button means:
- Trusting your experience and intuition (especially when you’ve been around the block a few times).
- Using tools and solutions already at your fingertips.
- Recognizing when the path forward is clear—and just taking it.
- Saving your energy for the challenges that actually demand it.
And hey, if the easy option turns out to be the wrong one? You can adjust. Most decisions aren’t permanent. What matters is taking action, not staying stuck.
So next time you’re caught in decision fatigue, take a breath and ask yourself:
What’s the easy button here?
And then—go ahead and hit it.
See you next week,
Brent, your Rivr Guide
