34 - A Treatise on Spectrums
It's a strange time of the coronavirus - I have a few posts that I want to write that will need a bit more thinking about, so I'm going to keep on with regularly scheduled content for now while I develop them!
Hope you're staying safe, washing your hands, and staying home. We're all counting on you!
How do you make decisions?
This is a common thread in a few of my posts - motivation and labels to name a few - but I wanted to lay out another way I've recently been thinking about bigger decisions in my life.
It has to do with spectrums.
Every decision has a trade-off - a spectrum - that is the key thing to identify. Though we often view our choices as discrete (either this or that), there are often a multitude of grays between the black and white. I've linked it before, but Rory Sutherland's talk is always interesting to me because of the creativity of solutions - they aren't things that you'd normally think about, but they also solve the problem, just from another lens.
In a negotiation summer class I took for my Law degree, the same thing was alluded to - if you're asking to get something from someone, what else is there that you can potentially use as a lever? What are you actually looking for, and how can you make sure you're not leaving anything on the table? If you're negotiating for a salary raise, what could you get instead? More holidays? Better working conditions? It's not just more money or less money - there's a lot more value still on the table.
Which brings me to one of the first spectrums - money vs work-life balance. I feel that a lot of people, when choosing their jobs early in their careers, may choose money over work-life balance. I'm sure plenty of you would have thought "If I spend my time working really hard for a year (less work life balance) then I'll be able to get more money!", because I've definitely thought about that too.
Money is pretty important to achieving some level of comfort and happiness and milestones in life (as we've talked about in adulting posts). And look, honestly, that is a genuinely fine position to take. Money's fucking great. I've taken a job where I don't make as much money as I might like (though we always want more!), and that means I have to sacrifice things that I might want. But as an alternative, I get a great opportunity to explore what I want to do career-wise for the future. I have fun in my job and I'm relatively flexible in how I work.
See? What else is on the table?
I have friends who are making 3x what I'm making, and as much as I love my job, I can't help but think "would I sacrifice a year of my time and my life so that I could have 3 years of more leisurely life?". The amount of freedom that you would unlock with that money is incredibly enticing. We all crave that free time and ability to determine your own hours and work...I mean, why else do we love holidays? (less relevant in a time of coronavirus but you get the idea :D)
The extreme example of this is a start-up, where you might not take a salary for 5 years, but you're set for life if you get a good exit. You might land in a job at the company that's acquired you, or you get a big lump sum pay-out that unlocks time to explore the next venture, or maybe even just the freedom that comes from the knowledge you're set for life.
Here, your additional spectrum is on risk vs reward, but more specifically, it's again about the monetary value you might gain, versus the amount of work you're putting into it. How much time and effort are you willing to spend to get there? And are you willing for that time and effort to be for naught? After all, it's a high risk play - sacrificing your time, energy and effort for something that might not come to be...
When it's reduced to a key spectrum, and framed in this way, it makes the decision clearer (at least, for me). How much effort are you willing to put in? What other things in your life might also require that effort? It brings your thinking to a higher level about your life, and forces you to think about the decision more broadly and assess what your priorities are, and where you're trying to go in life.
These spectrums are specific to yourself, and often speak to the values you hold dear in your life. If you try your best to identify them, you might learn a bit more about yourself!
I've gone long enough, and might cover a few more things in a later post, but for now I'll leave you with this - what other spectrums do you apply when you make decisions?
Any questions/comments/concerns about yet another Vince framework?
(Exercise for the reader: what's the spectrum for COVID-19 preppers that were buying as much toilet paper as possible? Bonus: without using 'stupidity' or 'irrationality' as one of the sides of the spectrum)
Chat soon :)
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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Go for a walk! - this is a repeat recommendation from last week, but in terms of moving around and getting your exercise, walking is one of the easier ways to do so. Get out while you can, when it's not raining and blustery as autumn can so often quickly change to. I'm also trying to keep up some bodyweight fitness things at home (pushups, situps, wallsits, L-sits etc.) so that I don't waste away at home :D Let me know what you're doing for fitness?
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Jackbox Party Packs - these have been instrumental in keeping my friend groups together and doing something social online! You've likely seen them but all you need is one person who has the game, and everyone else have access to the internet, and you can play some really fun social games. I recommend Jackbox Party Pack 3 if you only want one to try - it has the best mix of good games :)
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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The Story of Us - Tim is doing a massive piece on how people make decisions and how it's affected by our monkey brains. Long LONG LONG read but very worth it - as most of his posts are. You got time, right?
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Mental models from space - Chris Hadfield breaks down the key mental models that are used in space. One of the key beliefs I have is that reading widely across many domains and attempting to understand how people view the world helps you to think better overall. Combining things that are not usually combined is how you can improve your creativity, intelligence and overall conversational material :D
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Results of Basic Income experiment - when making decisions on things like Universal Basic Income, the key benefits are often the externalities that flow from having a healthier, more financially secure population. If you only do a small experiment, is it really going to show the benefits that you want? Sometimes you just gotta be like John Howard and implement the GST, y'know?
🌱 The Calathea Corner
Fig 1. Broody Feleafcia looking out at the wide beautiful world, and staying inside due to quarantine. You go Feleafcia, you beautiful calathea you ❤️
