Quality of your decisions determines the quality of your life. Effects of your decisions accumulate over time and add up really fast. Which can work for you or against you. So, in my opinion developing an algorithm for doing it, even somewhat effectively, is worth it.

Risk

You are overwhelmed by the choices and don’t know what to do next. You have been putting off an important decision because the unknowns of the decision is invoking anxiety in you. You have over analyzed the decision now you have too much information to make the choice.

This is indecision. I have done it, you have done it, your boss have done it, your parents have done it. It carries a massive cost. Your life stagnate. You’ll bear the burden of your unfulfilled potential.

That’s not okay.

Reversal

The amount of time you should spend on a decision should be directly proportional to cost of reversing it.

This is not my idea. Jeff Bezos implements it in Amazon. If the door you are about to walk into is a one-way door, you better understand the consequence of doing so. But most doors are two way door, you just need to figure out the cost of walking out of one. We will talk about how to do the cost analysis in a bit.

Big vectors

Imagine yourself as a point in the 2D plane. What you want to accomplish in your life is another point in that 2D plane. Your job is to make yourself move towards the direction of the goal. You have some vectors attach to you which are pulling you with different forces in different direction. The sum total of these vectors are where you’ll be moving towards. So your goal is to make sure these vectors pulls, at least, towards the general direction where you want to go.

In this framework of thinking you need to 1) Identify the goal 2) Identify the big forces on you before you can do any work.

Game of life

Health, The intimate relationship, Friends & Family, Finance, Career. These are the biggest 5 areas of your life(in that order of importance) that defines how well your life is going. These are big vectors pulling you in a certain way, if one of them really goes to hell it can seriously harm your well being. So you gotta write down two paragraph about each.

First, if you can have whatever you want how does your life look like in each of these areas. Then you write about is shit hits the fan in each of these areas, you give in to your worst habits and your impulses take over, how would it look like for you. This writing will clarify your long term goals vividly. (Although you gotta be realistic in your writing)

This, again, is not my idea. Dr. Jordan Peterson teaches this in his books and lectures. Goal of this exercise is to develop a vision for your life. This will set the overarching theme of your life. This is step 1 of the vector framework applied to your whole life.

Now that you have identified where you want go AND you also know how would it look like when you are going in the wrong direction. You have now acquired an internal compass inside you that you can consult while watching over your actions. Am I going towards where I want to go or am I walking the wrong path? Now you have the tools to measure and correct each of these vectors to pull in the direction you want to go in. Here the direction of the vectors are way more important than the magnitude at which they are pulling.

Analysis cost

Retardmaxx

When you are faced with a choice of doing something and you don’t know the best way to do it, you gotta bias yourself towards starting first and thinking later. Why? Because you will most likely suffer from indecision than wrong decision. Start the iteration cycle first. Anything that is worth doing takes longer than couple of hours. So start doing it first.

Scope of analysis:

When something goes wrong you have to stick to the narrowest possible theory of why it didn’t work, until you figure out the truth.

“I failed at doing X, means I must be a loser” , “She didtn’t reply to my text for 3 hours, she must not love me anymore”, “My car has stopped in the middle of the road, my engine must be broken”.

These are examples of you dropping to the widest possible reason for why something is not working. This is unproductive and gives you anxiety. These explanation might be true, but you can’t start your analysis there. You gotta check the narrowest scope first and slowly escalate as you discover more information. “What was my mistake while doing X?”, “She is on a family trip, might be having fun with them”, “Oh, do I have fuel in my car?”

Cost analysis

That being said. Here is how to analyse choices in front of you. First, you gotta write down the cost of indecision. What are you losing if you don’t make this decision. The worst case. This should make you somewhat uncomfortable.

Next, you write down how you are going to measure if your decision was right or wrong. This is where your internal compass will help. If you later figure out a decision was wrong, how will you undo that decision and what will it cost? (Time, money, energy, emotional toll etc). If this cost is less for all the choices you just stop your analysis pick on choice, immediately. Because more analysis will be counter productive. If the cost of undoing it is massive spend more time figuring it out.

Note: You can’t do this inside your head. Most people can’t. I highly recommend writing.

Heuristics

• Reverse your behavior: If you tend to over analyse, try to retarmaxx and do things first. If you tend to be more impulsive, stop and write first.
• Easy to undo –> Just pick a direction and execute
• Expensive to undo –> Do a long and deep cost vs benefit analysis. Extrapolate behaviors long term and think about low likelihood but high impact risks
• Too many unknowns –> Just pick a direction and execute. Then course-correct when you have more info
• Giving you anxiety –> Do a brief analysis in writing, then just pick a direction and execute

Just do shit

As a business owner you gotta have a overarching vision of where your company is going. As a employee you gotta know if you’ll be satisfied in the career track you are walking. As a partner you gotta figure out the direction of your life together.

The vector framework works for decisions across the field. You figure out the big vectors that are pulling on you, then you work on aligning them to the right direction. You gotta avoid the cost of indecision and bias yourself for doing things first.

You develop an overarching vision to the best of your ability and you do things. Your vision can and will change over time, but you gotta make sure it is explicit and life isn’t just happening to you. You are making it happen.