My 3rd principle after survival and adaptation is: Decide upstream.
All too often, we are focused on optimizing micro decisions. Questions like:
How to improve work productivity this week?
How to have better relationships with my colleagues, friends and partner?
But most decisions are downstream. And we wouldn’t have to even deal with them if we make a very few upstream decisions well to begin with.
Three major decisions
These three decisions can make or break the outcome, be it in startups or in life.
Where to be based
Who to be with
What to do
And I used to think that this is because these three directly shape our identities.
But lately, I’m starting to think that major decisions on where, who and what are all different angles of the same space - the default social environment.
These three decisions set our default social interactions and expectations, that then shape our identity and pre-determine subsequent decisions.
Decide on deciding
Even if our guts know the importance of these decisions, all too often, we avoid making decisions or go for an easier, safer, good enough option.
The more important the decisions are, the harder it is to decide.
And the longer we wait, the easier it becomes to not decide.
But in startups, indecision or wrong decision can mean early death, and metaphorically in life as well. After all, “not living a life true to self” is the biggest regret of the dying.
To avoid this, we must pre-decide. Make decisions on decision making in advance.
The decision threshold can be time-bound, like “If the relationship doesn’t improve and deteriorates over the next two years, I will leave.”
Or numerical: “If the industry is not growing at >2% per year, then I will switch to a faster-growing industry.”
Or, perhaps best for our own selves, gut-based: “If my gut is still telling me to leave this place after one year, I will leave.”
Whatever it is, this should help us make the final call on the difficult yet important decision.
And it is very important that we fully commit to this, and not be trapped in the indecision inertia: “It’s not working for the past four years, but let me give another year to reconsider.”
Upgrading our defaults
Our social, digital and physical environments dictate how we feel, think and act.
Even our decisions themselves are impacted by our environments, which in turn are determined by our three major decisions.
Hence, once we make major decisions, we shall curate our environments to curate ourselves. Design it when we’re in good mood, for us to follow when we’re in bad mood.
Remove junks and kill distractions. Avoid where the default state is what we don’t want.
Place ourselves in high-energy places with people and be where our desired growth is the default.
Upgrade our defaults.
Let us ask ourselves:
Which upstream decisions am I avoiding making?
With Love,
Koshu