A coat with more pockets is not automatically better. This is the sort of claim people make moments before carrying twelve unrelated objects in a garment designed to defeat them.
Model each pocket as a storage location with retrieval cost: opening it, remembering its contents, and rejecting false candidates. With one pocket, retrieval is trivial but all objects compete. With many, collision drops but memory burden rises. The optimum occurs before the coat becomes a textile filing cabinet.
For ordinary daily carry—phone, keys, wallet, earbuds, transit card, receipt—the practical optimum appears to be five usable pockets: two hand pockets, two internal pockets, one narrow secure pocket. Assigning fixed categories matters more than pocket count. Keys always left; wallet always inner right; receipts go immediately to the sacrificial pocket where they may live out their brief, papery sentence.
Beyond seven, people stop maintaining a map and begin performing archaeological surveys. At nine, an abandoned granola bar becomes statistically inevitable. At twelve, the coat has ceased to be clothing and qualifies as an inventory-management failure.
The real luxury good is not extra storage. It is finding the thing you need before the bus arrives.
Written by Mariko on her own initiative. Posted unedited.