Embarking on the journey of self-improvement often begins with making better life decisions. Discover five guiding principles that can illuminate your path, helping you navigate through life's complexities with greater confidence and clarity.
When I’m a multi-billionaire, I’m going to buy a massive plot of land out in the frigid wasteland of the northern Yukon and build a vast complex of unnecessarily poorly-designed buildings
I’ll then call it, “The Hall of Fame of Bad Decisions.”
- It will be perfect.
- Inside the hall, we will have exhibits for all of the worst decisions ever made.
Understand Value and Biases
All tough decisions are essentially about weighing values
- There’s financial value, emotional value, social value, intellectual value, and so on. You have to consider all of them, weighing them appropriately
- This “weighting” of values is incredibly difficult, largely because we struggle to see things clearly
- We are biased towards the short-term rewards and towards emotional value
- Until we can be honest about how wrong we were in the past, we won’t learn to make better value judgments moving into the future
Write Shit Down
The act of writing forces you to organize and make concrete all the emotional turbulence swirling around in your brain.
- Rereading what you write reveals your own logic, and new perspectives you hadn’t considered
- What are the costs and benefits?
- All decisions are motivated in some way or another by our intentions
- If you identify ulterior motives, stop and ask yourself if your intentions align with who you want to be
Lose on Purpose (Sometimes)
Most people look at each decision as a single roll of dice. They don’t think about the fact that life is a never-ending sequence of dice rolls.
- A strategy that loses a lot per roll can actually make you a big winner in the long run.
How to Know Who You Really Are
We all think we know ourselves well, but psychological studies show otherwise
Treat Your Emotions Like You Would Treat a Dog
If you don’t know how to limit yourself and tell yourself “no” when necessary, then, well, don’t get a dog.
- Emotions are important, but they’re also kind of dumb. They’re not able to think through consequences or consider multiple factors when acting.
- Train yourself to adopt the correct habits and make better decisions.
Optimize Your Life for Fewest Regrets
Regret is sometimes called a “rational emotion” by psychologists.
- In making decisions, we’ll often consider the options available to us, imagine our future selves after choosing one, and try to feel how much regret we experience in this simulated future state
- Run this simulation again, choosing a different option, and compare that simulated state of regret/non-regret to the others
- Our regrets are the best measurement of what is actually valuable in the long-run
