Option Rot

The decay of infinite choice

Still life with rotting fruit and nuts on a stone ledge, Abraham Mignon, 1670

Imagine a tree. A great, sprawling fruit tree, its branches weighing heavy. Each fruit is a possibility, an option, a future you might one day grab. The tree is vast, its bounty endless. You stand beneath it, gazing up at the broad canopy, thinking: I am free. I am limitless.

But here’s the catch: the fruit is rotting.

Not all at once, not in a dramatic collapse, but slowly, quietly, almost imperceptibly. The options are still there, still dangling, but they’re softening, browning, losing their vitality. The illusion remains—until you reach up and realize the fruit is already past its prime.

This is option rot, the slow decay of potential that comes when we refuse to choose. When we refuse to pluck the fruit.

Nick Saban, that sage of Alabama football, once said something so simple it takes a second to realize the revelation:

“These guys, they all think they have this illusion of choice. Like I can do whatever I want to do. You have a younger generation now that doesn’t always get told no. They don’t get told this is exactly how you need to do it. So they have this illusion that they have all these choices. But the fact of the matter is, if you want to be good you don’t really have a lot of choices. It takes what it takes. You have to do what you have to do to be successful. You have to make the choices and decisions to have the discipline and the focus to the process of what you need to do to accomplish your goals.”

At first glance, it sounds like the kind of thing your father might mutter while tightening a bolt on the lawnmower. But Saban isn’t just talking about football players. He’s talking about life. Excellence has a price. About how greatness doesn’t slip away in a single moment, but erodes over time — because we refuse to commit. Because we refuse to close doors.

How we love our doors.

Our culture has become an endless hallway of doorways, each one leading to some idealized, hypothetical future.

Remote work means you can live anywhere, so why plant roots?

Streaming services offer endless entertainment, so why bother making friends?

Doordash delivers everything to your doorstep, so why get out into your community?

Dating apps mean you can swipe forever, so why choose one?

Even children—the ultimate commitment—are deferred indefinitely, because, well, none of my peers are doing it either.

This is the optionality trap. It whispers to us in the voice of reason: Keep your options open. Stay flexible. The world is changing too fast to commit. And so we float. We dabble. We optimize for a future that never arrives.

The internet’s voyeuristic lens has amplified this optionality mindset. We can peek into countless different lives and paths, living vicariously through them — all seemingly perfect and possibly within reach but never achieved. Echoes of “I could do that if I wanted to” ring in your head.

But here’s the thing: this is a mirage. Optionality promises freedom but delivers paralysis. It offers endless paths but leaves us stranded at the crossroads. The more doors we leave open, the less we walk through any of them. And slowly, imperceptibly, those doors close and the options begin to rot.

The Generalist’s Lament

This paralysis of choice isn’t just a personal phenomenon — it has a hold on entire industries and career paths. Nowhere is this optionality more visible than in the tech industry.

Software has been historically expensive and difficult to build — and few people have had the skills to do it (according to one measure, 0.5% of the world’s population knows how to code). Engineers and designers could therefore apply their skills to any number of problems, no experience necessary. But this flexibility, while appearing advantageous, often becomes a trap. It has become common for someone to move between categories and markets fluidly throughout their career — from consumer fintech, to healthcare, to crypto, to AI all within a single decade. Chase the hot thing. What would have once been seen as an erratic, or even impossible career path a generation ago has become the norm.

This is the optionality mindset in action: the belief that the future belongs to the generalist, the jack-of-all-trades, the eternal dabbler. But it’s a lie. The future doesn’t belong to the generalist. It belongs to the obsessed.

Take Palmer Luckey. Luckey didn’t succeed because he kept his options open. He succeeded because he committed — fully, recklessly, absurdly — to a single vision. He didn’t dabble in VR. He became VR. And then, for the next act, he became American Dynamism.

Or Patrick Collison and his brother, John, who launched Stripe when payment processing was considered boring infrastructure. While their peers chased consumer apps, the Collisons committed to solving the unsexy problem of online payments. They didn’t dabble in fintech. They became fintech.

Or consider Bryan Johnson and Blueprint. His body is his company. Is he a bit ridiculous? Yes. But what groundbreaking person isn’t? He has hard-committed to his thing — and if he is right, soon many others will follow.

And now? You don’t want to compete with these founders on their turf. Because when you commit to something with that level of intensity and obsession, you become unstoppable.

The Courage to Close Doors

The best things in life — love, skill, interest — compound over time. But they only compound if you let them. If you commit. As you go deeper you build your competence, your insight, your network, and your confidence in the decisions you make. You get to play your own game.

This isn’t to say that exploration is worthless. As a child, as a student, as a human being, you should dabble. You should wander. You should sample everything life has to offer. But at some point, you have to pick a piece of fruit. You have to grab it and dig in.

The difference between those who succeed and those who stagnate isn’t access to options — it’s the willingness to exercise agency over them. To say: “This matters enough that I’m willing to let other things go.” While the world obsesses over accumulating options, the impactful are busy eliminating them, channeling their finite energy toward the few things that compound over time.

So ask yourself: What are you obsessed with? What door are you afraid to close? And what might happen if you did?

Optionality is not freedom. It’s fear. And the only way to beat fear is to face it. To walk through the door and close it behind you.

While others allow their options to rot on the vine, the focused few pluck that fruit at its ripest.