Character

I don't remember where – Covey, maybe? – but I once read that it's much less cognitive effort to be idealistic than pragmatic. For example, if your answer to the question "is lying ever the right thing to do?" is "sometimes", then every time a situation comes up where you might lie you have to think about it. Is this time the time I should lie? What about now? Do I have enough information to be sure? Whereas if your answer is "no, never", then it becomes very simple. Should I lie in this situation? No, because I never lie.

Obviously, it comes at the cost of inflexibility; if you never lie, you do actually lose out on opportunities where lying could be advantageous. Maybe for some things that's worth it, and I'm not sure if lying is one of them. I've personally noticed, though, that every degree of freedom I give myself is an extra bit of cognitive load that I have to endure in order to get the right result. Sometimes, like when designing something new it can pay off, but with habits I've found inflexibility has serious benefits. But, still, how do you know which is best?

Covey (probably)'s answer is that that's what you call character: the things you're willing to give up being able to change situationally, where you'd be happy to say "I will never lie", or "I will never steal". Perhaps there aren't that many of those things, and that seems fine; each one is a fairly significant sacrifice. But there is also a benefit, in that each one also frees you from a class of things you need to consider in a situation. In essence, the more character you have, the easier your decisions will be, and the fewer situations in which you will be able to achieve an optimal result.

I think, to an extent, everyone has things they think of as character traits; if you were asked "what's your character", I'm sure you could come up with something. But I wonder how many of us would be happy being pinned to a specific character, or would be willing to say that we act in-character all of the time. And if there are some qualities that you admire, some things that you would be proud to have as a character, how hard would it be to commit to them? And would it make your life easier to do so?