The Threat of Abundance Atrophy: When “More” Makes Us Less

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There’s been an idea rattling around in my brain lately. It’s not new. In fact, I’ve talked about variations of it before, and I know that I’ve had many conversations about it in real life while complaining about Northern Virginia traffic. Several years ago, I brought up the idea of Tactical Minimalism. My intent was showcasing the benefits of focusing on fewer things executed really well. That could be practicing only a handful of marksmanship positions to the point of near mastery, picking one physical capability to prioritize at a time, or focusing only on few “big hitter” weapon manipulation techniques. In short, the goal was minimizing multitasking.

In the years since that post, I lived a bit more life, made a few more observations, and taken away a few more hard lessons. It’s led me to a conclusion that most people are really struggling to make progress on their goals because they are saddled with too many options.

Starting With Traffic, Ending with Brain Rot

This starts with an observation I made several years ago, in private, that I believed the skill of the average driver on the road was steadily decreasing. Sure, I’ll accept that the widespread saturation of devices and phones that constantly distract drivers is a problem. That actually fits right into what I think about having too many options of things to do- but that wasn’t the point. It seems to me that decreasing skill and safety habits declined right alongside the number of cars equipped with all sorts of drive assistance features.

Things like automatic braking, lane departure detection, lane centering, automatic parking, traffic detection, self-driving modes, and more. Each one of these advancements is incredible in their own right, and should make the roads safer overall. The problem is that all of these features were supposed to work in conjunction with a capable driver. Paired together, a good driver backed up with great safety capabilities makes an even better driver. Instead, we saw drivers decide that they didn’t need to worry about it anymore.

Rather than using technology as an assistant, they use it as a crutch. Think of how many people no longer visually check their blind spots before backing out of a spot or changing lanes, relying on the car to let them know if something was in the way. It even affects memory, as people no longer build mental maps of the cities and neighborhoods they live in, and rely on GPS navigation to get them around.

Let’s look at a similar issue that arose during the transition from revolvers to semi-auto pistols in police departments.

On Marksmanship Training

Another example here is what happened to military marksmanship training. As optics like ACOGs and red dot sights grew in popularity, designed to enhance good marksmanship practices for even better results, the time and money spent on actual marksmanship practice dropped. The net result was the “average” performance stayed about the same.

Here’s another one, for you. In the early 1990s, the NYPD released a short report about the adoption of semi-automatic pistols to replace their classic .38 revolvers. One of the findings was that in the first year after issuing semi-automatic pistols, the average number of shots fired by an officer went from below 4 to 10.7 shots per incident.

What’s notable is that the actual hit rate didn’t significantly change with it. A 2008 RAND study highlighted that NYPD hit rates between 1998 and 2006 hovered between 15% and 30%, depending on whether the suspect fired back or not. Compare that to another data set from the NYPD showing that the hit rate between 1976 and 1988 was around 27% to 30%.

Doing back-of-the-napkin math on that, a hit rate of 15% on an average shots fired of 10.9 means that 1.6 shots hit the target. Comparing that to the revolver era, 30% hits out of 4 shots is 1.2 shots on target. So, in effect, they didn’t actually hit the target any more frequently- but definitely did put a lot more shots into the surrounding area and potential bystanders (9.2 vs 2.8).

Darryl Bolke mentioned this phenomenon in several podcasts. Prior to the widespread adoption of semi-automatic pistols, police officers had a higher standard of training and performance expectations precisely because they knew they had fewer rounds available and reloads were slow. The switch to semi-automatic pistols coincided with a decrease in marksmanship standard because officers could allow themselves to miss more shots.

Physical Training, Too

Another area I see this playing out is when it comes to fitness. We’re so inundated with options that it’s become more and more difficult to simply get started doing anything. There’s an entire world out there of fitness influencers and coaches selling you on whatever approach they favor. The barbell-focused guys from the Starting Strength school get in arguments with the machine-based bodybuilding clan. Meanwhile, the “hybrid athletes” and kettlebell crew watch from the sidelines and declare their own superiority.

The awkward truth is that getting stronger and more physically capable is not some great mystery. Humans have done it for literally thousands of years following the same basic principles that underlie it today.

So what changed? We have more options. When our ancestors did it, they only had stones, heavy sacks of whatever, and wrestling with their peers. There’s only so many things you can do with that, so they focused on getting as capable as possible with the minimal tools that they had.

Today, the options for equipment and programming styles are practically infinite. So many options makes people worry about choosing the “wrong” option, and fearful that they’re going to miss out on some mythical path to progress that they could have had if only they made a different decision.

But they are wrong.

Options are Not Shortcuts

So here’s what I think has really happened, even if it’s not the “polite” thing to say: people are lazy. The availability of so many options makes us believe deep down that if we only pick the right combination of them, then we can shortcut the long plod to proficiency. How many other places have you seen this kind of behavior? It is literally everywhere.

Forums and social media are full of beginners trying to buy the latest “best” piece of gear, hoping that it will help them accelerate through or even avoid the grind of practice and making mistakes. I’m certainly guilty of this as well from time to time. It’s a big slice of humble pie to realize, eventually, that the only way you’re really going to make significant progress is to dial back the complexity of what you’re doing and focus on a few core fundamentals to the point of mastery, and then those things are what carries you forward.

The hard part to accept is that those basics could have been done with any reliable tool. Everything else is essentially fanning your ego.

The Execution Bell Curve

When I interviewed Paul Horn about strength training, he shared a story about being a session drummer for music recordings when he lived in Los Angeles. He shared an insight that my wife (also a professional musician) used to talk about with her students as well.

Imagine a bell curve where beginners start on the far left. They practice the basics because that’s all they know how to do. Doing the same basic things over and over again, like practicing scales in the case of music, is boring. They aren’t all that motivated by it, so as soon as they are able to move on to do more “interesting” things, they do.

The middle of the curve is the intermediates. They overcomplicate everything. This allows them to “show off” what they know and can do in order to separate themselves from beginners. With music, this is the people who want to break into solos and complex finger techniques at way too fast of a pace. With fitness, it’s the desire to try every variation of exercise to find the “optimal” method to make progress. In shooting, it’s the guys who buy ever more expensive gear and experiment with niche cartridges while putting on range theatrics.

Many people will stay forever intermediates, never really making progress on anything but happily adding more tricks to their repertoire in order to feel like they’re getting better.

Then, on the right side of the curve, you have the true masters. This group no longer feels a need to prove themselves, and instead focus on executing the basics to such a degree that the world recognizes their mastery. Think of musicians who can play basic scales with such precision and musicality that it would bring tears to your eyes. When I attended small unit tactics training at MVT, I distinctly remember Max talking about the way the Special Forces guys trained at the facility. They did the exact drills that we were doing as “beginners,” but they executed them with expert swift coordination and aggression honed from years of practicing those same drills together as a team.

When he showed us video of them training, one of the other students said, “That’s it? We could do that!”

Max looked at the student and said, “But you didn’t, that’s the difference.”

On Equipment Selection

Way back in 2019, one of my first interviews for the podcast was with Justin from the Revolver Guy. During that talk, he discussed a similar kind of bell curve idea first discussed by Caleb Giddings. Revolvers, as he saw it, had a strange utility curve where they were appealing to shooters at the beginning and end of the curve. Beginners were served well by a weapon that required only that they pull the trigger. Revolvers do not suffer many of the shooter mechanics issues that might affect auto loaders. Think of issues like a wrist that isn’t firm enough, or shooting from confined spaces that might prevent a slide from operating properly. They’re less useful for intermediate shooters who want to compete, shoot a lot, and engage in the gear race.

Then, at the right end of the curve, they become useful again for the masters who put more emphasis on good marksmanship and avoiding bad situations in the first place. To mention Darryl Bolke again, “It’s a get out of trouble gun, not a going into trouble gun.”

Putting it Together

Let’s wrap this up. The message here is the same one that I’ve been saying for a long time. The vast majority of readers and listeners to The Everyday Marksman are not professional shooters who live and breathe this stuff every day. We do not have the benefit of time, training, and ammunition paid for by other people’s money. As such, every commitment of time and money should mean something and push our capability in some meaningful way.

To get the absolute best bang for our commitments, we should focus on doing fewer things extraordinarily well. I’m all for buying things for fun, don’t get me wrong, but meaningful progress comes from excellent execution of the basics. All we really need is a reliable tool and method to support our goals. Everything else begins dipping into edge cases and personal preferences (at best), or engaging in social media ego fluffing (at worst).

It makes no sense to invest thousands upon thousands of dollars to build the “perfect” precision rifle when you are unable to consistently hit an 8 MOA target out to 600 yards. Furthermore, it makes little sense to focus on that 600 yard range when you never actually get to shoot at anything beyond 100-200 yards due to lack of facilities or sight lines.

So here it is, I’m telling you to stay disciplined with your commitments. Spend 80% of your time and money focused on perfectly executing the basics of your chosen task- be it shooting, fitness, music, radio skill, or whatever. Have a simple system for progressing those basics, and hold yourself to consistent practice a few times per week or more. This is every bit as much of a mental challenge to be satisfied with “boring,” but I promise that it pays off in the end.