I've often thought along similar lines. I've found that indecision is almost always worse than a bad one. Very few choices are so decisive that you can't course-correct later.
That mindset has served me well both personally and professionally.
Great concept. Culturally, I think we are better at understanding this than ever before.
In the last 15–20 years, many people have been forced into an uncomfortable moment due to job loss (Great Recession, COVID, AI etc). They have learned to recover. Could this be why we see more entrepreneurs than ever before now?
A big driver in increasing entrepreneurs in the US has been DEI and H1-B driven racism against white men. For example in 2021 only 6% of all the people hired by major US companies were white. An entire generation was locked out of traditional corporate career paths, and turned to startups and crypto.
The main difference being the time it takes to recover/reverse the decision.
Second point is: You don't need to reverse the decision you took, instead you may find a way to fix the impact but not the root-cause.
It's like when one fucks up the MySQL replication and the data consistency is corrupted. One can manually (and slowly) fix the inconsistency with downtime. Or, spin up a whole new cluster from an existing well-known node/state. Some entities may be missing, but you could gradually add them back later.
Not a reversible, but recoverable decision.
Amazon goes by with one-way vs two-way door decisions internally. Sometimes adding much bureaucracy to the equation. Just-do-it/Bias-for-action aspect usually don't go as far as the recovery period prolongs.
Yes - when reading what large entities do and don't, one should always reality check when applying for your situation: do I have a billion dollars earmarked for recovery?
I guess this is just a riff of marcus aurelius flavour stoicism
but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own.
I've found that what is more important than making a good/bad decision, is sticking with the decision I make, with the possibility of mitigation measures, if it turns out to have been a bad decision. Sometimes, I can pre-plan mitigation measures, or I research them quickly, when it becomes clear that I made a mistake.
Jamming on the parking brake, when going 90, down the highway, is a bad idea.
I sometimes miss a turn, or don't plan well enough to be in the correct lane, when I arrive at the intersection.
What I do, is go "D'oh!", continue to the next intersection, then either make a U-turn (if legal), or turn onto a side street, with the intention of recovering my intended direction.
What I often see people in the same situation do, is jam on the accelerator, swerve across six lanes of traffic, and screech into their turn.
That may get them where they are going, but it also has a very real chance of earning them a ticket or a stay in hospital.
My way takes a bit longer, but no ticket, no accident.
This is a slightly lower stakes version of aircraft "V1": the speed at which it is no longer possible to abort a takeoff. Engine on fire? Doesn't matter, you've got to get in the air because stopping is no longer an option.
A decision is always an irrevocable commitment of resources: time, effort, cost, reputation, relationship capital, opportunity cost, etc. The trick is understanding the size of the commitment and having a plan for what you will do if things don't go as planned.
Day to day Decisions are overrated. Like the pivoting betwern product decisions. The only decisions worth scrutiny are investments into capabilities. A product may fizzle out, a capability stays with you and makes you permanently valuable. I may manifest as a product, as a service leased to other companies.
Nearly all decisions are recoverable. Most things are rather low risk, and when there is significant risk there's typically a way to hedge that risk, like through insurance or contingencies. You'll make countless decisions in life and at most 1 might kill you.
In nearly all circumstances where you're actually fretting over the decision, you're choosing between two reasonable options. It's unlikely one option will be substantially more recoverable than the other, and if you're still considering it anyways you likely have a good reason.
I think the better way of evaluating tough decisions is to think about which choice leaves you in a better position to make the next choice. The real dilemma in almost every decision is the uncertainty, and typically you'll learn a lot more from trying one thing than the other. Oftentimes also choosing a particular order to try different options leaves more options open later on.
Further, I notice that a lot of people see dilemmas where they don't exist. Practically every week I'm in a meeting where there is a heated discussion of whether to do A or B when we have to do A regardless of whether or not we do B and almost invariably the question of whether or not to do B will be answered by doing A.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 45.9 ms ] threadVideo of Bezos talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxsdOQa_QkM.
IMO it’s a useful decision making strategy at times, mostly to not overthink the easily reversible.
That mindset has served me well both personally and professionally.
(Also works well with LLMs, for risk assessments)
Great Clips or Weldon Barber, are you feeling lucky?
In the last 15–20 years, many people have been forced into an uncomfortable moment due to job loss (Great Recession, COVID, AI etc). They have learned to recover. Could this be why we see more entrepreneurs than ever before now?
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/major-us-companies-g...
Second point is: You don't need to reverse the decision you took, instead you may find a way to fix the impact but not the root-cause.
It's like when one fucks up the MySQL replication and the data consistency is corrupted. One can manually (and slowly) fix the inconsistency with downtime. Or, spin up a whole new cluster from an existing well-known node/state. Some entities may be missing, but you could gradually add them back later.
Not a reversible, but recoverable decision.
Amazon goes by with one-way vs two-way door decisions internally. Sometimes adding much bureaucracy to the equation. Just-do-it/Bias-for-action aspect usually don't go as far as the recovery period prolongs.
but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own.
Jamming on the parking brake, when going 90, down the highway, is a bad idea.
I sometimes miss a turn, or don't plan well enough to be in the correct lane, when I arrive at the intersection.
What I do, is go "D'oh!", continue to the next intersection, then either make a U-turn (if legal), or turn onto a side street, with the intention of recovering my intended direction.
What I often see people in the same situation do, is jam on the accelerator, swerve across six lanes of traffic, and screech into their turn.
That may get them where they are going, but it also has a very real chance of earning them a ticket or a stay in hospital.
My way takes a bit longer, but no ticket, no accident.
In nearly all circumstances where you're actually fretting over the decision, you're choosing between two reasonable options. It's unlikely one option will be substantially more recoverable than the other, and if you're still considering it anyways you likely have a good reason.
I think the better way of evaluating tough decisions is to think about which choice leaves you in a better position to make the next choice. The real dilemma in almost every decision is the uncertainty, and typically you'll learn a lot more from trying one thing than the other. Oftentimes also choosing a particular order to try different options leaves more options open later on.
Further, I notice that a lot of people see dilemmas where they don't exist. Practically every week I'm in a meeting where there is a heated discussion of whether to do A or B when we have to do A regardless of whether or not we do B and almost invariably the question of whether or not to do B will be answered by doing A.