Last year, I wanted to change my 5 year old phone to a better and more sleeker one. I carefully researched the functionalities of the one I had my eyes on, not only because I was genuinely interested in how my palm computer can make my work and life better, but because I was about to drop significant bar on a vanity item and my colleague Dare was already giving me side-eye so I had to justify the big spend to myself and my savings.

It’s been a year since I got the phone — fantastic phone, but to be honest, I have probably used up to 30% of the functionalities. It’s fast, neater and makes my life easier, but am I milking it for all my money’s worth? No.

We’ve all heard the popular myth that states that we humans really only use 10% of our brain. I know Hollywood had a hand in spreading this myth because of pseudo-scientific flicks Lucy and Limitless — but think about it, the same logic can be applied to the astronomical growth in the thousands of features that are being offered by our annually released phones.

As at 2017, the App Store had over 2 million apps, check your phone right now, how many apps are downloaded? How many do you use regularly? Exactly.

People subscribe monthly to music apps with over 45 million songs in their database but only about 200 songs have been on a loop on their personal accounts for months now.

Mandem can’t even Netflix and Chill again in peace because by the time you plow through all the delicious looking series, movies and documentaries — trying to choose which would suit the mood, you’ve both pretty much lost the appetite to ‘chill’.

Why do you think people have personal shoppers, or have lists on Twitter? Why do you think Mark Zuckerberg only wears grey or Ayeni The Great only wears white?

It’s because having to make a choice when you are being bombarded by millions of options can either make you want to scream or it can make you want to ‘fight’ the wave by carefully curating your own own little world of fixed choices.

Going by the noise pollution in Lagos, we can assume a lot of people are doing the former.