Happy Saturday!
I hope you're enjoying your morning coffee (or the drink of your choice) while reading this. Today, we will look into ourselves again —coffee and introspection, what an excellent way to start the day.
(Music-matching!) —Warning: I cannot get it out of my head, listen at your own risk.
Deciding is difficult —if it's not the case for you, congratulations. Now you can decide whether continue reading or not. We make a lot of choices daily (maybe even you get paid to make good ones). From trivial decisions to deeper ones.
Among all, there is one that we all make and probably without giving the importance that it deserves: time allocation. Time allocation is perhaps the most critical decision we all make daily. Time is the most valuable thing in life, and the way we choose to spend invest it, defines our future.
I know it all sounds very stale. A Mr. Wonderful kind of statement —'Time is the most precious gift in life, don't waste it being unhappy'. God, please.— I feel it is essential, though, to step back for a moment and truly interiorize these (apparently) trivial takes, cause they are the foundations. This time-investing issue is one example of opportunity cost, a super powerful concept (or mental model, like they enjoy calling) that is probably my main driver when deciding.
Every decision has an associated cost, and weighting and budgeting those costs will lead you to more rational choices. So, opportunity costs are all of the potential benefits or choices you're declining when you decide —the tradeoffs.
Some tradeoffs are not that obvious. Here is where a second-order (or third, or fourth, or N...) mindset might come in handy. These are basically related to the effects of some action. The first order refers to the immediate response, and the second-order would be the effects caused by that response (and so on).
In his book 'The Most Important Thing', Howard Marks says:
First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone can do it (a bad sign for anything involving an attempt at superiority). All the first-level thinker needs is an opinion about the future, as in "The outlook for the company is favorable, meaning the stock will go up." Second-level thinking is deep, complex, and convoluted.
Naval Ravikant differentiates three big decisions that all of us make at some point in our lives —generally in our early life— Where we live, who we are with, and what we do (job). We usually spend so much time living the consequences of those three choices, but we tend to spend so little time deciding which city, job, or people like us the most.
A good chunk of my job is around making decisions. It became my routine, and I got used to it. Things change when decisions directly affect me (or the people I love). It is hard for me to take important decisions like the Naval ones— and this decision-making topic is taking a significant part of my time lately. We can explore it further sometime —it is insanely vast, and there is a lot of theory written— but I want to leave a couple of easy approaches.
The first one is by Jeff Bezos. He divides the choices into two groups: the ones that do not have a substantial effect and you can easily revert (like the canned tomato brand you're up to buy), and the ones that have a huge impact and you cannot revert easily (like quitting your job). The key here is to classify the choice candidate into one of the two groups. If it is in the first one, make it as soon as possible (test quickly. Correct if needed). If it is in the second one, take your time and budget the consequences wisely.
If you're already tired of trying to behave like a robot, you will like this one. It is as easy as: if you're thinking —or overthinking— too much, it is definitely a NO. Or looking the other way, if it is not a brave YES that comes from inside, don't waste your time; it is a no.
Reaching this point, if you decide to leave the reason aside and follow your inner guts, or your heart, or your instinct, or the Universe, or whatever you want. Congratulations in advance! If it works, you won. If it doesn't and you fail, you will learn a lesson that will lead you to a better version of yourself. We're all humans.
Thank you for reading! As always, if you want to drop me a line, just reply to this mail or leave a comment on the web version.
Hasta la semana que viene!