Striving for Everything
A tradeoff is inevitable in almost every decision we take, as we usually forego some opportunity or benefit in our choices.
Many people strive for everything and believe there are no tradeoffs.
Focussing on less can get you something but focusing on everything may get you nothing.
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The real problem lies in our judgment of the opportunity cost.
We seem to think that the people around us have everything in life.
Tradeoffs in others take time to become apparent. Everyone lets go of something, making a sacrifice, to be able to focus, investing time and energy in what is important to them.
It becomes impossibly hard to completely fine-tune and balance your work, family, health, relationships, friends and hobbies.
We may have to let go of one of the areas to be able to fulfill the others.
Time is always a constraint as if we spend time doing something, we are not doing something else at that time. We can spend time in cultivating better habits than to unconsciously waste it daily doing trivial tasks.
This makes us eventually make satisfying choices, that we can prioritize.
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In anything we do, there’s always ~20% of activities that will deliver 80% of our desired results.
It’s easy to be wrapped up in ‘busy’ work without ever getting anything done. Pareto’s Law is a useful mental model to be more effective, rather than just be efficient.
- We are quick to jump to conclusions because we fail to search for information that might disprove our thoughts.
- We're overconfident. We look for information that fits our ideas and ignore information that doesn't.
Knowing these and other biases is not enough. We need a framework for making decisions.
If we’re feeling hunger, thirst or sexual desire, that can actually spill over into the decision areas of our brains, making us feel more desire for big rewards when we make choices.
This can lead us to make higher-risk choices and to want for more.