You’re wasting your time. You’re wasting your life. It’s happening to so many of us. We’re spending hours and hours agonizing over frivolous things that we won’t even notice or care about in a few weeks anyway - likely even sooner. We’re spending hours looking for the perfect laptop, the perfect smartphone, the perfect audio system. The one better than the rest. The one with the highest specs and the best features, at a lower price than anyone else. With better “something” than anything else.

So much time wasted, and for nothing much at all. Nothing that matters. You aren’t going to find the ‘perfect’ anything. Neither of us are. Every brand assures you that their product is the perfect product for your needs. Every consumer will swear up and down that their choice is the best choice and that you should make it as well. You might as well just pick one that you like that also offers the features that you like. You’ll be doing that eventually anyway, so you might as well save yourself the time and frustration.

It’s understandable why people, and technology enthusiasts in particular, act this way; they want the best they can possibly get for the pricepoint they are able to afford. Not only that, but they want the satisfaction of knowing that they spent the time and the energy and got something far better than anything else on the market at that price they paid. Buying something for a reasonable price isn’t good enough. They must have the best - the best laptop, the best smartphone, that can be had for the money. Something far outside what the mainstream consumer could hope to find. The unicorn.

It’s enticing, but it won’t happen. Ask yourself why a smartphone company would produce a handset that could sell for the $1,000 range, but only charge $600 for it? If you’ve found one then guess again. It’s an ‘enthusiast’ brand right now, sure, but do you think it’ll stay that way forever? Your people are a fickle bunch. You demand not only the very best in features and performance, but at the lowest possible price. An expensive combination for a manufacturer. Any company catering to that market won’t be doing so for long. On again with the search you’ll go then. Scouring forums and backroom cyber-alleys, looking for that elusive golden unicorn.

Why are you putting yourself through this? Whatever it is you’re looking for - a monitor, a smartphone, a TV, a motherboard, whatever - you’ll never find ‘the best one’. Even if you want to be pedantic and insufferable, you won’t even find ‘the best one for you’. Don’t kid yourself. Whatever you do find, whatever you deem good enough to be ‘the best’ of something won’t be that much better than the mainstream option. That obscure laptop brand that you only found after trading a bump of coke for the name of a guy who’s brother tried a few laptops recently? How much, really, is it better than a Lenovo or a Surface Book laptop? How much better is that foreign-branded monitor that they don’t even sell in your country, than a Samsung monitor? Will you even notice the 1% difference in that one frankly unimportant metric? Will you even remember that there is a difference after a few days? Likely not.

So don’t do it. Don’t devote your life to looking for something that barely exists, and that you won’t even be able to appreciate quickly after using anyway. Need a laptop? Need a monitor? Need a smartphone? Need a keyboard? Look at the mainstream options in your pricepoint, and pick something. Unless you’re looking for something specific, then they’re all pretty much the same when accounting for price. You aren’t better or smarter than anyone else for paying slightly less money for slightly more performance that you won’t even notice. '

In fact, one could argue that the smarter person is the one who respects themselves and their time, merely purchases the thing that will help them achieve their goals, then gets on with their life.