eightSeven music

Intuition and instinct form the bedrock of our decision-making, especially the rapid-fire decisions that make up our daily lives. We don’t have to analyze why we turn left here and right there on the way to work, we just do it. A chess player can spot a simple checkmate in three moves without hesitation even if he’s never seen that exact position before in his life. We depend on patterns the way we depend on our autonomic systems to keep us breathing. We are not like whales, which have to think about every breath.

You wouldn’t want to consider every decision you make, and so you rely on patterns gleaned from experience. These are essential shortcuts and have no drawbacks as long as they are confined to the basic functions. Problems arise when we begin to rely on patterns for more sophisticated decisions in our lives. This stifles creativity and leads to a “one size fits all” approach to decision-making as we try to force the same patterns and solution onto every problem we face.

With the sheer quantity of decisions we make every day, even small improvements and adaptations in our process make a huge cumulative difference. It’s like making a tiny enhancement in an assembly line that shaves a few precious seconds off the production of each car.

Big branches in the decision tree require extra caution. These are the forks in the road that leave us with no way back. It is an old chess maxim that “pawns can’t move backward,” which is more than a simple statement of the obvious. If I put my bishop on a bad square, I can later change my mind and move it back, and the same goes for any other piece. But pawns can only move in one direction, forward. We often talk about “committal moves,” usually captures or other moves that change the position irrevocably. Every pawn move is of this sort and must therefore be considered more carefully.

Life’s rules aren’t as clear as those of chess we can’t always know when a decision will lead to irreversible consequences. As with detecting a crisis, sometimes it is obvious and at other times you have to go on instinct. It is always valuable to ask ourselves if we will be able to reverse course if our decision turns out poorly. What will our alternatives be if things go wrong? Is there a satisfactory alternative course where we can keep our options open longer?

This mentality requires us to overcome the desire to release the tension. Many bad decisions come from wanting to just get the process over to escape the pressure of having to make the decision. This is the worst type of haste, an unforced error. Resist it! If there is no benefit to making the decision at the moment and no penalty in delaying it, use that time to improve your evaluation, to gather more information, and to examine other options. As Margaret Thatcher put it, “I’ve learned one thing in politics. You don’t make a decision until you have to.”

As ever, my personal preference is to err on the side of intuition and optimism. Decisions derived from positive thinking may not be any more accurate than conservative decisions, but we definitely learn more from our mistakes. Over time our decisions will become more accurate as we exercise and hone our intuition. Most of us are happier when doing, when fulfilling the human need to push boundaries. As F. Scott Fitzgerald worte, “Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.” If we err and must begin again, we must. This vitality isn’t only about quality of life; staying motivated and involved in decision-making is one key to improving it. One of the best ways to do this is to take the initiative, which puts positive pressure on you while challenging your competition. I like to say that the attacker always has the advantage.

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between the average millionaire and the average person?

Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

This metaphorical Mount Everest doesn’t have to manifest itself as “Art”. For some people, yes, it might be a novel or a painting. But Art is just one path up the mountain, one of many. With others the path may be something more prosaic. Making a million dollars, raising a family, owning the most Burger King franchises in the Tri-State area, building some crazy oversized model airplane, the list has no end.

Whatever. Let’s talk about you now. Your mountain. Your private Mount Everest. Yes, that one. Exactly.

Let’s say you never climb it. Do you have a problem with that? Can you just say to yourself, “Never mind, I never really wanted it anyway” and take up stamp collecting instead?

Well, you could try. But I wouldn’t believe you. I think it’s not OK for you never to try to climb it. And I think you agree with me. Otherwise you wouldn’t have read this far.

So it looks like you’re going to have to climb the fckin’ mountain. Deal with it.

My advice? You don’t need my advice. You really don’t. The biggest piece of advice I could give anyone would be this:

“Admit that your own private Mount Everest exists. That is half the battle.”

And you’ve already done that. You really have. Otherwise, again, you wouldn’t have read this far.

life is real .

shout out to hugh macleod