Wild Minds Weekly: How to not waste your life
Hello friends,
Too many people waffle through life avoiding decisions, but hesitation kills more dreams than failure ever will.
"When I'm ready"
"I need more information"
"I'm still deciding"
Nothing will waste more of your life and lead to more regret than an unwillingness to decide, and then act.
Making no decision, is a decision. You're deciding to let somebody else decide for you.
Which decisions should you take time over?
The biggest factor to consider, is the cost of being wrong.
There are two types of decisions:
Some decisions are irreversible (or very costly to undo), these are the ones that you should spend more time thinking about. Don't:
-get married
-have a child
-uproot your life
-adopt a pet
on a whim. Getting those wrong will cost you.
But most decisions are actually extremely easy to reverse, and that's 90%+ decisions in life. The problem is, most people have it backwards (which probably doesn't surprise you). They spend far too long on decisions like
- What gym routine they should do
- What you should study
- What the optimal health protocol is
- What restaurant to go to for dinner
Every moment spent deliberating is a moment wasted.
Decisions can be scary, but your ability to make good decisions can be trained. You can improve your ability to make better decisions, faster.
How?
Follow these 5 principles to avoid wasting your life with indecision or the wrong decision:
1) Don't ask everyone.
"If you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone." - Naval Ravikant's wisdom has guided many of my decisions since I first came across "The Almanack of Naval Ravikant" by Eric Jorgensson
2) Don't take advice from people whose lives you do not want.
Don't take relationship advice from single friends, don't take money advice from poor people, don't take health advice from a "normal" person (obesity, heart-disease and cancer are "normal").
3) Don't ignore future regret.
What will you regret more when you're 80, trying and failing, or never having tried at all? This is the question Jeff Bezos asked himself before he quit his job to start Amazon.
4) Don't let your head talk you into something your gut already said no to.
Trust your gut feeling, but only once you've put in the work to develop your intuition through experience (which ironically, only comes from making more decisions).
5) Don't make decisions without knowing your destination.
This is what actually takes time and experience to figure out. But once you know your purpose, decisions become easy. This is why one of the first steps we guide people through is defining your vision.
Those 5 principles will help you avoid bad decisions, make more good decisions, and move faster towards your goals.
If you don't decide, somebody else will decide for you.
So the question is, what is the most important decision that you're putting off right now?
Hit 'reply' and tell me the one decision you'll make this week. And remember, a decision isn't made until you have taken action that makes other options unavailable.
Stop stalling. You don't need more information. Action produces information.
Your future self is waiting,
Wild Minds Community
