Minimizing the pain of regret
Regret is the result of comparing what we did with what would have been the best.
We can minimize regret, especially in exploration, by trying to learn from others. In new territory, we can best prevent regret with optimism because we'll explore enough so that we won't regret any missed opportunity.
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One challenge in life is knowing when to explore new opportunities, and when to focus harder on existing ones. Do we keep learning new ideas, or do we enjoy what we've come to find and love?
In trying to assess if we should explore further or exploit our current opportunities, it's essential to consider how much time we have, how we can best avoid regrets, and what we can learn from failures.
When we consider seizing a day or seizing a lifetime, it is important to understand the interval over which we plan to enjoy them.
Explore when you have the time to use the resulting knowledge, exploit when you're ready to cash in.
Not all of our explorations will lead to something better or be satisfying, but with enough exploration behind us, many of them will.
Failures provide us with useful information that will enable us to make better explore or exploit decisions.
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Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it?
First, it keeps you awake, not merely conscious, but wide awake.
Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.
Third, writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
Our various cognitive biases make us behave irrationally, even though we believe we are acting logically. If we are tired, in a rush, or are distracted we tend to rush towards a bad decision. Other factors include working with an authority figure or in a group.
The rule to follow is to never make important decisions when one is emotionally weak, tired, distracted, or in a hurry.
We all make decisions. However, few of us realize that the process we use to make decisions is more important than the analysis we put into the decision.
A McKinsey Quarterly survey pointed out that 60 percent of executives thought that bad decisions were as frequent as good decisions.