Today’s subject will piss of some people. I’m guessing a lot of people. But that’s the beauty of lateral thinking - we shouldn’t all agree on things.
So let’s disagree on solutions for this tough lateral stretch question:
What’s one decision you can make that would eliminate 10 other decision you have to make?
As usual, one idea, at the end of this email.
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Making decisions
Everyone dreams about being in charge. About making decisions.
On paper, it’s everyone’s wet dream. And it makes sense, who wouldn’t want to take control of things?
In reality, we suck at making choices. We often procrastinate or find external motivation as to why we postponed a decision.
Going even further - we criticize people who make decisions (because, and that’s the harsh reality that most people who make decisions know, there’s no perfect outcome). In the military, you always choose the path with the least amount of casualties. But you still have casualties.
It’s much easier to criticize action than inaction.
Not doing anything is rarely criticized. You can brush it off as “it wasn’t the right time”, “I was still collecting information” and hundreds of other reasons.
Most people will only make a few real decisions in their life. But they will criticize others for making them.
Staying on the sidelines and commenting on decisions makes people feel better about themselves. It’s a tough reality that many will not accept (or downright criticize), but that doesn’t make it less true.
If you want to figure out things about yourself, try to step back and think about when you made decisions with incomplete information.
If you rarely did and you only make calls when you’re 100% certain, then you haven’t really made a lot of real choices in life.
If you did make tough calls without having access to all possible information (and were aware of that fact), congratulations. You’re an outlier.
Potential answer:
Decide on 5-10 (healthy) meals and repeat them recurrently, without ever eating the same thing twice in a row.
Might seem small, but deciding what to eat takes a big part of our life and often cripples us when it comes to making other decisions.