Decide More!
An interesting conversation at lunch gave me the following ingredient for your own personal recipe for success:
You Must Decide More
Life is loaded with decisions. Some of them are easy: regular or decaf, vinegarette or thousand islands, Underworld 2 or Brokeback Mountain. Others are a little more complex, as these decisions shape our lives a bit more. Related to the conversation on transformation and the conversation on how we need to see more third options and fewer time crunches.
Decisions position you for opportunity
The enemy of deciding on things is keeping your options open. People are TERRIFIED of losing options. But, there are times where keeping one’s options open ruin your chances for new opportunities. Say you’re a project manager by vocation. You get an email from a friend who’s a game designer and who wants you to join their company as a developer. You ALSO have a chance to get promoted at the new place. So, you tell your friend you’ll have to get back to him.
He gets the message that you’re not really interested, or that you can’t act. He gives the gig to another guy. Your promotion option vanishes. Where are you? You’re in the same seat, that’s where.
Here’s another example. You decide to build an account at LinkedIn. By doing this, you are putting your name out on the web. That’s a decision that positions you for opportunities. Same with creating a blog. Same with spreading yourself all over the web.
By my decisions, I’ve made it insanely easy for people who think of me to find me.
Decisions Hone Your Logic, Reasoning and Wisdom
Make good decisions, get good things. Make bad decisions, get bad things. It’s amazing how much of life we leave up to chance, but it’s even MORE impressive that by exercising our ability to choose and do so decisively, we CREATE LUCK. Or what we consider to be luck.
By making lots of decisions, you have more of a sample to reflect upon. The more times you try something new, the more of a wealth of experience you’ll build. It takes DOING to learn something new, right?
Decisions Free Up Head-RAM
Ben Franklin didn’t say, “Shit or get off the pot,” but I bet it’d fit his thought process. NOT deciding something takes up lots of space in our heads. If you are fretting over something, you’re not freed up to do more things. Being ready requires some space in your head to act upon the new thing.
Decide. Decide more. Decide often.
Tags:
learning
productivity
gtd
development
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Comments
Nice post, Chris. I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of deciding early on, and with … panache. Gleeson talks about it in his book “The personal efficiency program”. More later…
Hey Chris. It’s been a while but, as usual, you present terrific insight. Glad I decided to visit today.