<ul><li>Jeffrey Bezos is the founder and former CEO of Amazon.</li><li>With a net worth of US$182b, he's the world's second wealthiest person.</li></ul>The Jeff Bezos Reversible vs. Irreversible Decisions Framework is a powerful mental model for unlocking growth in your career, business, relationships, or life.

How The World's Second Richest Man Makes Decisions

There are some subtle traps that even high-performing large organizations can fall into as a matter of course, and we’ll have to learn as an institution how to guard against them. One common pitfall for large organizations – one that hurts speed and inventiveness – is “one-size-fits-all” decision making.

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before.Most decisions are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal but reversible decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through.

Irreversible And Reversible Decisions

Irreversible and reversible decisions exist on a continuum—they're not binary.You need to plot your decision against each spectrum to determine the importance of the decision.

Going In A Flow

Decisions can be broken down in three dimensions:1 Resource investment from a decision2 The overall impact of a positive outcome3 The impacts of a negative outcomeThe process involves plotting a point along each spectrum to determine overall importance.

The Three Dimensions

Step 1: Determine whether the decision is reversibleStep 2: If it's reversible, have confidence in making the decision quicklyStep 3: For irreversible decisions, slow down and gather more information before decidingReversible decisions aren't an excuse to act recklessly.They're a recognition that the ability to make decisions quickly is a competitive and life advantage.

Applying The Decision Framework In Our Lives

<ul><li>Once you start using this framework, you'll quickly learn that the vast majority of decisions are reversible.</li><li>This will unlock considerable progress for yourself, your career, or your business.</li><li>We should always aspire to speed, because time is the one resource we lack most.</li><li>Fear of failure and perfectionism is one of the greatest barriers to individual and collective human progress.</li><li>Much of overcoming these is learning when to go fast and when to go slow.</li><li>The irreversible vs. reversible decisions framework allows you to do that.</li></ul>

The Bottom Line

The Jeff Bezos Reversible vs. Irreversible Decisions Framework

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Reversible Vs Irreversible Decisions - The Jeff Bezos Model

Everybody talks about how to establish that work-life balance. But the phrase work-life balance is misleading. A better phrase is work-life harmony. When you feel energised and happy at work, feeling you're adding value, it makes you better at home. Likewise, if you're happy at home, it makes you a better employee or a better boss.

There is no such thing as work-life balance

It's not about the number of hours in the week. It's about if you have energy.  Is your work depriving you of energy or generating energy for you? Similarly, are you adding energy to your work or draining your coworkers of energy? You have to decide if you're going to add energy. The same at home. So it's a cycle, not a balance.

It's not a work-life balance, it's a cycle

The work-life balance metaphor implies there's a strict trade-off. However, you could be out of work and have all the time for your family but be really depressed and demoralised about your work situation.  It's not about the number of hours. Yet, if you went over the top and worked 100 hours a week, then there could be limits. The best place is where both sides of your life give you energy.

Why the work-life balance metaphor is dangerous

In this Sessions short, Jeff Bezos details why there is no such thing as work-life balance. To be considered to attend our next event, we welcome applications at http://www.summit.co/apply Connect with Summit: http://www.summit.co http://www.instagram.com/summit http://fb.com/summit

Work-life balance — Jeff Bezos

Not the one with the best outcome, necessarily, but the decision that you felt strongest about.

What’s the best decision you ever made?

I love the thought experiment that you give, which I think elucidates this concept well, which is when you ask people, “What’s the best decision you’ve ever made? What’s the worst decision you’ve ever made?” We tend to not focus on the process by which we made the decision or the inputs to that decision but instead what the outcome was. So what you found is you asked people, “What was the best decision?” Well, they tend to choose the thing that had the best outcome and and vice versa for the bad one. It’s very possible that you made, actually, a really crappy decision, but you just lucked out.

Related to this are the decisions we make that we don’t realize we’re making. For example, if you’re considering taking a new job and end up staying where you are, that was a decision. The same for choosing to stay in a relationship versus breaking up. Choosing not to make a change is a decision in and of itself.

Non-decisions are decisions

It’s tough to frame decisions that way, as it’s human nature to base the quality of a decision on the quality of the outcome. They’re related, for sure, but great decisions can go poorly and bad decisions can sometimes work out in your favor.

What's the best decision you ever made? Not the one with the best outcome, necessarily, but the decision that you felt strongest about. As Annie Duke recently shared on this episode of Maya Shankar's "A Slight Change of Plans" podcast, decisions and outcomes are two different things. I shared a…

What's the best decision you ever made?

Both in business and for life in general, decision-making can sometimes be something very complex, and for that reason we should train ourselves for it, have a structure that facilitates the way.Remember that the decision must be aligned with your values.… You must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; If you feel that you should not follow it, you should not continue on it under any conditions.… A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard just to take it. On the other hand, a path with a heart is easy: it does not make you work to take pleasure in it.

Good Decision-making Paves The Way To Success.

First we must have a firm and even floor where to begin to build the structure; we have to know what is a priority in our life.

Growth concepts

How to make good decisions

Working in a comfortable and high-paying job in the 90s, Jeff Bezos faced the dilemma of continuing his job or pursue the business idea he had about selling books online.
He posed a self-inquiry: At the end of my life, will I regret not having done this?
This self-inquiry, called the regret minimization framework, minimized his regrets as he opted to leave the job and start Amazon, which sells more than just books now and is worth USD 2 Trillion.

The Regret Minimization Framework

If the answer to the self-inquiry we pose ourselves (Would I regret not doing this when I am old?) is no, then it is not worth doing, but if the answer is maybe or yes, then it can be given a go-ahead.

No Regrets

The Regret Minimization Framework can be a great help with the big decisions, which should warrant one’s time and attention, instead of sweating on trivial stuff.
One has to make crucial decisions in life, and this method removes emotion from the equation. It also helps to talk through one’s decision with other people, family, friends and relatives to get an outside perspective.

Decision Making Is A Skill

The question Bezos asks is, “At the end of my life, will I regret not having done this?”


Reversible Vs Irreversible Decisions - The Jeff Bezos Model

Work-life balance — Jeff Bezos

What's the best decision you ever made?

How to make good decisions

Jeff Bezos uses a simple framework for making big decisions. Here’s how it works

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