Tag: mental models

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On judgment-based decisions

On April 1, 2016, I was excited and full of optimism. After months of negotiation, we were about to sign a purchase agreement to sell our company. Although I had mentally braced myself for the buyer saying the deal was off in an attempt at an April fool’s joke, we closed the deal that day. Three years later, the real trick was revealed.

Dr. Bob Knight, the founder of our company, had recruited me to become CEO in January 2009. Bob, an engineer in his mid-sixties, was ready to retire. Our company focused on commercializing new technology in the utility and energy industry, and we worked on a broad range of projects including ways to commercialize fuel-cell vehicles, emission control technology at power plants, and new approaches to make buildings more energy efficient. 

Our company’s growth had been fueled by the 2008 economic downturn. In response to the devastating impacts of the recession, the Obama administration earmarked billions of dollars in federal stimulus funding to support “shovel-ready” jobs related to energy projects, including the retrofit and weatherization of buildings. When I realized most of the money would flow to state and local governments, we developed a strategy to help governments quickly implement energy retrofit programs that would make homes and buildings more energy efficient and create jobs. Our strategy worked. We won multiyear contracts valued over $60M, and our company grew overnight from fifteen to fifty employees. 

I learned a lot from this experience. But years of battling onerous regulatory requirements and red tape prevented us from implementing our best ideas and made me feel like a fighter going up against a much larger opponent with one arm tied behind my back. I was ready to move on to my next chapter.

I had an idea for a startup. In fact, we had already begun work on the new idea, and as a condition of selling the company, I negotiated a small team to go with me to pursue it. My new company was called UtilityScore. We built software that estimated electricity, natural gas, and water bills based on property information, local utility rates, and climate data. We contracted with Zillow and other real estate websites to give buyers a good picture of the total cost of ownership of a particular property before they made a purchase. Every home was assigned a score related to the cost of utilities so homebuyers could compare homes in their area.

Because utility costs are 20%-40% of housing expenses in most of the U.S., we expected that homebuyers would be eager to have such information. Contractors could also use our data to show potential customers how much they could save by installing solar or upgrading their air conditioner or heater. 

Life was good and about to get better. I had money in the bank from the sale of the business and a great team I looked forward to working with every day. And in early June, we were accepted into the summer 2016 batch of Y Combinator (YC.) Getting the stamp of approval from the most famous startup accelerator in the world gave us a boost of confidence.

YC has helped some of the most successful high-growth startups including Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox, Twitch, and Reddit. And as soon as we got into YC, several angel investors decided to invest. YC Demo Day is the main event of the program, providing an opportunity to pitch several hundred investors. The amount of money raised by companies varies, but many of the companies raise a $1M to $2M seed round in the weeks following Demo Day. 

Clouds roll in

We raised a total of $0 dollars after Demo Day. Not a typo! I think we were the only company not to raise any money in that batch. I felt demoralized and embarrassed. I had entertained no illusions that we were going to be a top company in the batch, but I had certainly expected to raise at least a few hundred thousand dollars to buy us time to continue our mission. Telling my team and existing angel investors that we didn’t raise any money was difficult and sent a terrible signal.

Shortly after Demo Day, things went from bad to worse. Around 5 a.m. on October 6, 2016, I was pulling out of my garage to go to the gym when the front left tire of the car broke off the axle, making it impossible to drive or even return it to the garage. Determined to get in my morning workout, I went back upstairs, asked my girlfriend to call AAA, and changed into my running shoes. 

Early morning light was just beginning to bathe the streets of San Francisco’s SOMA district when I started running down 7th street. My lungs were full of the cool air as my body put up its normal fight against running so early in the morning. 

As I approached the intersection at 7th St and Brannon, I saw a car slowing down for the stop light. The pedestrian walk light was illuminated, so I proceeded to run into the intersection as I watched the car approach. By the time I realized the driver did not see me and had no intention of stopping for the red light, it was too late. The car struck my right side. I flew into the air, smashed down on the hood of her car, and violently bounced off onto the hard pavement — shattering my left knee on impact. Doctors had to drill nine screws and support hardware into my bone to hold my knee together. 

And that’s when things really started to get dark. Intense pain shot through my knee for weeks. I lay on my couch, relying on my girlfriend and other people for everything. I could not even bathe myself. My head was so foggy from painkillers that I could barely focus on work.

But the clock was ticking, and I felt like a dark cloud was constantly looming above me. I got sick to my stomach watching my bank account shrink month after month. So I started going to the gym on crutches to strengthen my body and build back the muscle and range of motion in my left leg. Motivated to get back to work with my team as quickly as possible, I hobbled into the office, putting my leg up on a pillow on my desk.  

But Zillow, our biggest customer, continued to drag their feet and kept finding new reasons to delay implementation. We made multiple attempts to test new approaches and pivot, leveraging the assets we built. But we were not getting traction. 

Persistent or Irresponsible?

One of the hardest parts of entrepreneurship is knowing when to quit. Every successful entrepreneur tells stories of persevering against all odds when everything looked hopeless — making their eventual success seem even sweeter. “Don’t quit” had been seared into my brain. But it’s hard to know whether you are wisely pushing through adversity or just flushing money down the toilet and banging your head against the wall for no good reason. 

After three years of hard work and experimentation, we were out of ideas and money. We were speeding toward a cliff, and I needed to make a decision. I tried to sell the company’s assets, but multiple deals fell through. I had to shut down the company. 

The mental whiplash of making and losing millions of dollars in a short period of time shook me to my core. Questions swirled through my head. Why did we fail? What could we have done differently? What important signal did we miss? I became obsessed with uncovering and understanding my mistakes. My search for answers sent me deep down a rabbit hole to learn what I did wrong. I was determined to prevent it from happening again.

What I learned completely transformed how I think about building companies, making decisions, and solving problems. Much of what I learned is not intuitive and pushes against the way most of us naturally think.

Learning hard lessons

One of my most important lessons was learning to question my beliefs. You can end up making poor choices if you don’t frequently strip bare your beliefs, which requires rigorous questioning and inspection of assumptions. This process is even harder than it sounds, which is why most of us don’t do it. When was the last time you actively tried to disprove your beliefs like a scientist trying to poke holes in a hypothesis through testing? 

Your beliefs shape your perspective and influence your judgment, which affects your decisions. Your decisions shape who you are and the reality you live in. The stakes are high because your decisions will play a large part in determining if you succeed or fail. 

I played a very expensive trick on myself by pursuing solutions to a made-up problem. I should have tested my assumptions — my beliefs — without committing three years and millions of dollars to them. UtilityScore did not create enough value to justify the cost. My desire to help reduce energy use in homes contributed to my blindness and clouded my judgment. Be extra careful when you feel virtuous about your mission. It’s easier to fool yourself when your identity is tangled up in the mission and you are gaining a sense of purpose from your efforts.

Judgment is knowing the long-term consequences of your choices and making the right decisions to capitalize on them. Good judgment is a superpower, which is normally gained through trial and error. But it’s also a skill you can cultivate by learning to apply principles, processes, and tools. Good judgment leads to better decisions.

What you decide to work on is far more important than how hard you work. Tactics don’t matter if you have the wrong strategy, and your direction matters more than your speed. You can be an amazing engineer, marketer, or salesperson, but if you decide to build, promote, or sell the wrong product for the wrong market, you’re going to fail.

Decisions are not one-size-fits-all. Math-based decisions are straightforward and usually involve running cost-benefit analyses. These decisions are typically not controversial and easy to make. Judgement-based decisions call for taking action under uncertain conditions, often due to missing information. 

Some decisions are difficult or even impossible to reverse. Jeff Bezos, founder/CEO of Amazon, calls these decisions one-way doors. Make these decisions carefully and methodically, ideally after performing a detailed scenario analysis in consultation with key stakeholders. Decisions that can be easily reversed are called two-way doors, and these lighter-weight decisions should be made quickly by high-judgement individuals or small groups.

Just DO IT

Following a process helps you improve the quality of your decisions as it can help you structure your thinking. To help me remember the steps of my decision-making process, I created the acronym DO IT: Define Observe Imagine Test. With a little practice, applying this process becomes automatic.

Don’t make the mistake of needing to learn everything the hard way. We have unprecedented opportunities to access knowledge and training that can teach you how to question your beliefs, improve your judgment, and make better decisions. Learn as much as you can from other people’s experiences to minimize wasting time, losing money, or regretting your choices.

If you want to build your judgment faster and learn to apply principles, processes, and tools to make better decisions, get my free e-book on judgment and decision making. The e-book pulls together hard-earned wisdom and shares the best of what I’ve learned, including the how-to’s, frameworks, and mental models to save yourself the pain of learning the hard way.

Beyond the practical content, you can use these ideas as a sharpening stone to become a more independent thinker. Learn how to test your beliefs and insulate yourself from outside forces that want to control or manipulate you. Overcome the fears and desires that cloud your judgment. Tackle stressful decisions with confidence. Most importantly, learn how to think more clearly and make better decisions in order to build the life you want.

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How do you generate new business ideas?

The best way to develop ideas for new services or products is to consider your own problems. What do you find tedious, annoying, or inconvenient? How could you solve that problem or minimize the irritation?

Solving your own problem will ensure the problem actually exists. It’s much harder to create a solution for a problem you don’t have. If you don’t experience the pain yourself, you will have to depend on customer feedback to determine if you have solved the problem.

Even worse: You may find a great solution to a problem that doesn’t actually exist or that doesn’t cause a lot of pain. Many new businesses fail because they start with a made-up idea.  

I’ve made this mistake myself. I started a software company that calculated estimates for electricity, natural gas, and water bills based on property data, local utility rates, and climate data. Because utility costs are 20%-40% of housing expenses in most of the U.S., we expected that homebuyers would be eager to have such information. We contracted with Zillow and other real estate websites to give buyers a good picture of the total cost of ownership before they made a purchase. Contractors could also use our data to show potential customers how much they could save by installing solar or upgrading their air conditioner or heater.

Unfortunately, this service did not create enough value to justify the cost. I was too far away from the problem to accurately assess the value of our solution. And my desire to help reduce energy use in homes contributed to my blindness. You can avoid this type of mistake by identifying a painful problem that frustrates you personally. It’s likely you are not the only person dealing with that problem, so focus on solving your problem or looking for ways to ease your frustrations.

Is there a missing element that could fix your problem? Often, the best solutions fill gaps between existing products or services rather than creating a completely new way of doing things. Seek out ideas that are unsexy but make weekly tasks easier.

And make sure your idea passes the dog food test: Will the dog eat the dog food? In this case, you are the dog. How much would you be willing to pay for a product to solve the problem? If you would not be inclined to pay to solve this problem, then why would anyone else?

Cultivating ideas to solve your own problem at least ensures you are creating something you want. And if you want it, it’s likely some other people will too. 

Create constraints

If I gave you a blank piece of paper and told you to start writing, you might have a hard time knowing where to start. But if I gave you a blank piece of paper and asked you to list your favorite foods, you likely would have no trouble. When thinking about new business ideas, don’t get paralyzed or overwhelmed by the abundance of choices. Instead, create constraints to help you narrow your focus.

Zoom in. Focus on problems you can solve with minimal outside help and support. Your goals and the constraints you set will determine what types of ideas you pursue. I’m currently in the process of creating a new online business, and I imposed the following constraints on my ideas:

My constraints limit the type of ideas I can pursue.

Consider your own constraints. Do you want to create a lifestyle business that optimizes freedom, flexibility, and time for your family and interests? Do you want to build a company that requires investors and employees? Maybe you should constrain ideas to a specific industry or product type. 

Here’s an idea I decided not to pursue. I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks. Often, I hear an idea I want to capture, but I’m doing the dishes or driving and can’t stop and take out my phone and record a note. Even though I’m experiencing this problem myself, solving it would not align with my constraints. A solution to this problem would likely require building a new software application, raising money from investors, and hiring a development team. But please let me know if you build a frictionless, hands-free solution for taking audio notes from Audible and podcasts that integrates into Notion (my preferred note taking app.) I’ll happily pay you a $10/month subscription fee.

Practice noticing problems 

Notice friction throughout your day. Look for it. The friction will often lead you to good ideas hiding in plain sight. Think about the last time you purchased a car. If you’re like me, after you narrow down your choices to a specific make and model, you start seeing the model everywhere as you drive around town. You spot the car because you are now tuned to look for it. When you pay attention, you will notice a lot of friction as you go about your day.

Identify what you don’t want

Often it’s easier to identify what you don’t want than what you do. Imagine you and I are going to dinner, and I ask you what you want to eat. Your brain thinks through all the potential options of food you like, and you find it hard to narrow down your choices. However, if I ask what type of food you don’t like, it’s likely you would give me a quick answer.

So, make a list of things you don’t want to do. Maybe you don’t want to travel for work, talk on the phone, or manage people. Then screen out new business ideas that would require you to invest a lot of time in these activities.

Find your niche

Don’t chase the latest hot trends. Avoid competition. What are you good at? What have you done that gives you a unique perspective? Where can you build a personal monopoly because of your specific knowledge? Start with the smallest niche possible and expand out only after you gain traction. Even the biggest successful companies started by focusing on a niche. Amazon started with books. Facebook targeted students at Harvard. Airbnb rented out blow-up mattresses for conference attendees who could not find hotel rooms. Try to find the smallest viable audience that shares your painful problem.

Build your idea muscle

Become an idea machine. After you have identified a problem, then start generating creative ideas for solutions. Build your creativity muscle. Muscles get weak and flabby unless you put them to work. Exercise your creativity muscle to generate more and better ideas. Creativity requires practice. 

Create an idea habit. Invest 10 minutes a day generating new ideas. Hat tip to James Altucher for sharing his daily practice of writing down 10 new ideas every day. Yes, I said 10. Make your brain sweat. Let your imagination run wild and write down all of your ideas. Don’t worry if most of the ideas are terrible, and don’t limit yourself to business-related ideas. This daily practice will help strengthen your idea muscle. You may be surprised to discover how creative you become when you stop limiting yourself to only good ideas.

Describe your idea in 50 characters or fewer

Complex ideas are a sign of muddled thinking or a made-up problem. Ideas need to be clear to spread. Use clear and concise language to describe your idea. Entrepreneurs who think and communicate clearly have a big advantage because your idea must be clearly defined in order to sell, recruit, and raise money. Creating a 50-character limit forces you to distill your idea down to its simplest form. 

Examples

Surround yourself with optimistic people

New ideas are fragile. And good ideas usually don’t sound good in the beginning. Ideas need to be nurtured, so don’t keep them secret. It’s rare for anyone to steal your idea. And 99% of the work is in the execution, not the idea.

Surround yourself with smart, creative people and share your ideas freely. Explain your projects to help you refine them and get feedback to improve them. Don’t waste your time hanging around people who make you feel stupid for sharing bad or silly ideas. 

Combining ideas creates innovation.

In biology, male and female genes combine to form the embryo. The re-combination principle also applies to ideas and technology. Every new idea is a combination of other ideas, and new technology is a combination of other technologies. Apple did not invent silicon chips, the touchscreen, batteries, GPS, or any of the dozens of other technologies that combine to create the iPhone. It just combined existing technologies in a new and novel way.

Mix and match ideas and experiment with new combinations. Be playful with this exercise. Some of the combinations may not make sense. But you may be surprised when you create a combination you had not previously envisioned.

Size matters

If you can’t identify the immediate next step to test your idea, then it may be too big or too far out of your circle of competence. Try to break the idea down into smaller pieces. 

Sell before you build

Talk to potential customers about your idea. Don’t build a minimum viable product (MVP) or invest significant time in an idea without trying to sell the value to your target customer. Start by crafting your message. The exact language you choose to describe your product and the value of your offer will help you and your customer understand what you are selling. Test your idea by trying to sell it to a customer before you write a line of code or build anything.

Be creative. Create a landing page with your offer and try to sell the product. You don’t need to fulfill the order. Put customers who click the call-to-action button on a waiting list. Call customers or meet them in-person and speak with them one on one. Beware—they will lie to you unless you are presenting a specific offer and price. If they bite, get a letter of intent to purchase your product when it’s ready.

Test lots of ideas

Experiment a lot. Don’t be attached to the outcome. Most of your ideas will fail, so you need to develop the correct mindset to learn fast and move on. Edison tested 6,000 plant materials to find the right type of bamboo for the filament of a light bulb. Mozart was a prolific composer and wrote over 600 compositions across multiple genres, but only a select few of those compositions are known by most people today. 

Let ideas evolve slowly

Let ideas simmer. Don’t rush to create a company. If you get good feedback from customers on an idea, consider turning it into a project, but keep expectations low. Iterate on your idea and build momentum. Work on the project as long as possible before turning it into a company. The moment you create a company, expectations change and financial commitment increases. 

Now it’s your turn

Notice friction throughout your day. If you approach this task in the right mindset, it can be addictive and fun. Flex your idea muscle to generate lots of creative solutions. Combine ideas and identify ways to test them quickly with minimal time investment. Start with language to sell the value and gauge interest. Enjoy the creative process and, most importantly, have fun.

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Blind certainty

Our interpretations of the world can often be wrong due to bias, optimism, pessimism, or bad information. Yet most of us think we are right and other people are wrong. This can cause us to overlook or dismiss crucial information and lead to bad decisions.

In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis proposed doctors wash their hands before delivering babies in obstetric clinics to reduce the spread of “childbed fever,”  a common and often fatal disease in hospitals in the mid-19th century. A doctor and a scientist, Semmelweis had noticed that two clinics had a significant difference in mortality rates for women giving birth. The two facilities used similar techniques, but one clinic taught medical students, who also performed autopsies, and those students did not wash their hands before going to the maternity ward to help a woman give birth.

 The second clinic taught midwives and did not engage in autopsies, so the students  had no contact with corpses. The clinic educating doctors had a mortality rate of 10%, and the clinic educating midwives had a mortality rate of 4%. Women begged to give birth in the clinic with the midwives and would even give birth in the streets to avoid the clinic with the  student doctors.

Although Semmelweis published results showing that the mortality rate for mothers dropped below 1% when medical staff engaged in proper handwashing, his observations conflicted with what the scientific and medical establishment believed at the time. Doctors were offended by the idea that they should wash their hands and mocked him. Semmelweis ended up having a nervous breakdown because no one would accept his findings. He was committed to a mental asylum and died 14 days later, at the age of 47. Cause of death was gangrene from a wound he received when he was beaten by the guards. 

The blind certainty of the doctors in Semmelweis’s day caused people to die. It took us 150,000 years to figure out that washing our hands prevents the spread of disease. In evolutionary timescale, this is the equivalent of yesterday, and a lot of lives were needlessly lost in those years. 

Our veil of ignorance prevents us from seeing reality accurately. I’ve noticed that the top experts in a field often admit  that there is a lot they don’t  know or understand. The more you know about something, the more likely you are to see how much you don’t know. We don’t even understand consciousness or how our own brains work, and we have barely begun exploring the oceans or outer space. To say we have blind spots is a big understatement.

Fooling Ourselves

The easiest person to fool is yourself. As you get older, you realize how  wrong you  were in the past. Most of the  beliefs I held most deeply in my twenties and thirties were wrong. In fact, it would be an easier exercise to identify what I was right about than to try to count all the ways I was wrong. I see the error of my past ways more clearly now because I’ve learned more, seen more, and thought more. Exposing yourself to different viewpoints and engaging in a little bit of self-reflection can reveal how easy it is to trick yourself. 

It’s very difficult to convince yourself of a new idea when a contradictory idea is already anchored in your thinking. When you understand that this blind spot is our normal state, you can  design decision-making processes to overcome it — which can help you avoid painful mistakes and give you an unfair advantage. But this effort takes humility and can be difficult. 

Here are a few ways I’ve found to improve my judgment and be wrong less often.

Don’t fool yourself. Apply these ideas to see reality more clearly, improve your judgement, and be wrong less often. 

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Be like Ike: Make better decisions, get more done

Dwight Eisenhower was a productive person who is best remembered today as a military leader and two-term U.S. president. In World War II, Eisenhower served as a five-star general in the U.S. Army and supervised the invasion of Normandy as the commander of the Allied Expeditionary force in Europe.

After the war, Eisenhower served as president of Columbia University and as the first Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (which may be better known as NATO) before running for president in 1952. He was elected twice in landslide votes (with the help of his famous “I Like Ike” slogan), serving as president from 1953 till 1961.

As president, Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, championed the interstate highway system, and authorized the creation of the space program while containing the spread of Communism across the world. He still found time to golf frequently during his presidency, even having his golf balls painted black so he could play when there was snow on the ground. He also found oil painting relaxing, creating about 260 paintings in the final 20 years of his life.

Eisenhower Decision Matrix

Success in so many endeavors required Eisenhower to be a master of prioritizing tasks and making decisions. To optimize productivity, he employed a simple decision-making tool that has become known as the Eisenhower Decision Matrix. The tool helps you discern between urgent and important tasks and is built on the idea that what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

The two-by-two matrix helps prioritize your actions into four possibilities. Start by drawing a four-square grid and label the quadrants according to the following categories.

  1. Urgent and Important. In this square, list the tasks you will do immediately. These are time sensitive  and important tasks that help achieve your goals. Examples include meeting a customer deadline, resolving a key employee issue, or fixing a web server problem.
  2. Important But Not Urgent. Aim to invest most of your time working on tasks that fall into this quadrant. These tasks are important but do not need immediate attention. Examples include developing a strategic plan, creating a budget, building relationships, or solving an important engineering problem.
  3. Urgent But Not Important. Here, you should list the tasks you will try to outsource or delegate to someone else. The items in this quadrant will be issues that make you feel like you need to react immediately, but they likely don’t have long-term consequences. This list may include responses to last minute meeting requests, most events, text messages, emails, or a timely news story.
  4. Neither Urgent Nor Important. These are the tasks to avoid. This is the most important category. The best and most underutilized productivity tool is saying, “No,” and removing a task from your list. Ask yourself, “Do I really need to do this?” Examples include attending most conferences and most things that distract from focus on customers and product.

Effective Productivity Tool

Don’t waste time and mental energy keeping your tasks in your head or spread across emails, meeting notes, and pieces of paper. I use the Eisenhower Decision Matrix every day to prioritize my “to-do” list. When I arrive at my desk, the first thing I do is spend five to ten minutes slotting my tasks for the day into these four categories. I use a free version of a note-taking app called Notion and organize my to-do list under these four headings. I can then access my list on my mobile phone or computer whenever I need it.

I find it useful to identify my top priority for the day and then order my tasks to follow. This practice better organizes my day, prevents unnecessary task switching, and allows me to stay focused on my number-one priority. After completing a task, I don’t need to think about what to do next, conserving mental energy and reducing distraction.

Don’t risk getting jerked like a puppet by the conditions around you. Use the Eisenhower Decision Matrix to focus the majority of your time on important non urgent tasks.

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The advantage of going first

Have you ever had the experience of walking down the street and found yourself smiling at a stranger who smiled at you first? You were practicing mirrored reciprocity, a universal social norm. For the last 20,000 years of recorded human history, mirrored reciprocity has been foundational in human relationships, culture, and economic exchange. By choosing to go first, you can employ this ancient and powerful principle to build stronger relationships and gain an unfair advantage in business and in life.

Long-lasting, healthy relationships in your professional and personal life make a huge impact on your happiness and success. However, we often hesitate to cultivate those relationships. We don’t reach out and share our true thoughts and feelings with people around us because we fear rejection or judgment. Learning how mirrored reciprocity works and choosing to go first can radically change your life and relationships.

Mirrored reciprocity is imbedded in the blueprint of life. The evidence is overwhelming and all around us. In physics, Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This has been true for over 13.5 billion years — since the beginning of our universe. The pattern of mirrored reciprocity has also been evident in almost all biological life on earth for the last 3.5 billion years.

You don’t have to be a scientist to observe mirrored reciprocity. Aggression is usually met with aggression, whereas playfulness or affection is met in kind. You can witness reciprocity even in the simplest of human interactions. If you walk into an elevator and smile and say good morning, the people in the elevator will almost always return your positive greeting.

However, mirrored reciprocity works for both positive and negative behaviors, so think carefully about your attitude and actions. If you display aggressiveness or treat other people badly, expect that other people will treat you poorly. I’ve watched calm, normal people escalate into full-on road rage in less than a second after a rude or aggressive driver cut them off in traffic. I bet you have seen that happen, too. Or maybe you’ve been that driver!

If you strive to be trustworthy, courageous, competent, and kind, you will attract people into your life with similar aspirations.

Choosing to go first, bringing authenticity, and engaging people will yield a positive result the vast majority of the time. Of course, there is always a small chance you will be rejected or judged. But the rewards and benefits far outweigh the risks.

Don’t wait for other people to reach out or take the first step. Default to action and go first. Apply this principle to important relationships in your life. Don’t worry if people do not initially invest an equivalent amount of time or energy in the relationship. Hold a long-term mindset. Over time, you will benefit from your investment in these relationships.

Bring your “go-first” mindset to your work. Express your ideas. Start a blog or podcast to connect with people who share your interests. Initiate conversations with people you don’t know. Everyone you meet has something to teach you. You never know what opportunities are around the corner. Go first and you will build stronger relationships and gain an unfair advantage in business and in life.

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Solving problems backward

I want to share one of my favorite mental models called inversion. Mental models provide shortcuts to higher-level thinking, forcing your brain to think about a problem or decision from different perspectives. Inversion helps you flip a problem around and approach it from the opposite end of the natural starting point. Instead of starting at the beginning and thinking forward, start at the end and think backward.

It’s a lot easier to identity something that is likely to fail versus something that will likely succeed. Therefore removing an obstacle is often easier than creating a new solution. To see this process in action, try doing a pre-mortem with key members of your work team at the beginning of your next important project. Imagine the end of the project and think backward to identify all of the ways the project could fail.

This exercise is opposite of the way most teams begin a project. Normally, you discuss goals, roles and responsibilities, tasks, and the timeline, but you rarely spend time identifying potential problems. Inversion helps you identify obstacles and develop strategies to avoid or overcome those obstacles.

Inversion also works to help you achieve goals. Instead of focusing on what actions or processes to add, focus on what should be removed. For example, I’ve wanted to invest more time writing on the weekends, so I set a weekly goal and allotted a specific time to write. Even so, I continued to struggle to meet my goal.

I decided to run an experiment. I cut out drinking alcohol. Removing this one behavior made a huge difference. Not consuming alcohol allowed me to sleep better, think more clearly, and increased my energy and motivation. I ended up doubling the amount of time spent writing. What’s the number one behavior you can cut to help you achieve your goals. Experiment with removing it and see what happens.

Next time you are facing a tough problem, try thinking about it forward and backward. You may find that it will be easier to reduce errors or remove obstacles than to create new solutions.

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The advantages of thinking gray

Black-and-white thinking distorts your ability to see reality objectively. Jumping to conclusions too quickly when making important decisions does not serve you well. The stakes are high because your decisions will play a large part in determining whether you succeed or fail.

The world is complex. To efficiently navigate life, we make instant judgments. We categorize information as true or false. We label people as friends or enemies. Making quick decisions had its evolutionary advantages in helping us avoid predators and poisonous snakes. However, relying on quick judgments is not the most effective way to make important decisions at work and in your personal life.

We make instant judgments and quick decisions because uncertainty is both uncomfortable and mentally demanding. Our brains use lots of energy to process conflicting information, which is what we get when we engage in nuanced thinking or look at a problem from multiple points of view.

We want to resolve conflicts as quickly as possible to restore our physical and mental comfort. Think back to the last time you had a disagreement with a friend or co-worker. If you are like me, you wanted to either avoid the issue or resolve it as soon as possible. That’s how our brain feels when it’s conflicted.

Thinking gray is a mental model that forces you to delay forming an opinion until you have reviewed all the important facts and heard from all key stakeholders. This technique forces you to be patient. Thinking gray helps us overcome confirmation bias, which is our tendency to search for, interpret, and favor information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs and desired outcomes.

Important questions rarely have black-and-white answers, and important decisions require self-reflection and input from others. In business, you make dozens of decisions every day.

Can you think of anything that will have a bigger impact on your success than the decisions you make? Luck may play a part, but your decisions can overcome bad luck or squander good luck.

Here are a few ways you can apply thinking gray to improve your judgement.

  1. Have fewer opinions. We are not experts on most things, so why do we need to have an opinion on so many issues?
  2. Hold your opinions loosely. Be open to new information and seek out diverse points of view.
  3. Change your vocabulary and learn to say, “I don’t know.”
  4. When you are in conflict with others, invest the time to understand other sides of an argument better than you understand your own.
  5. Write down and apply decision-making criteria to think through a problem.
  6. Create scenarios and use probability weighting. Are you 50%, 70% or 90% certain your decision is correct?

The best way to improve your thinking and the quality of your decisions is to refine your decision-making process. Not all decisions are important enough to require a process. But employing a process to avoid bias and blind spots when you are making an important decision will give you the best chance to be successful. Next time you’re making an important decision, avoid black-and-white thinking and remember to think in shades of gray to improve your judgement.

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How’s the water?

Two young fish are contentedly swimming along when they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way. He nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for a bit, until one of them looks at the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”

Like a fish in water, we are swimming in our cognitive biases, which are errors in thinking caused by our brain distorting reality. Our biases are pervasive, highly resistant to feedback, and can cause us to overlook or dismiss crucial information.

Biases and blind spots

To save time, our brain creates shortcuts called judgment heuristics, which allow us to think faster and to conserve energy. These mental shortcuts are usually helpful, but can also create blind spots when you are trying to make important decisions.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

—Richard Feynman (Nobel-prize-winning physicist)

Self-deception and ignorance can harm you. Not seeing reality accurately can often lead to unnecessary painful mistakes. Too often, we make decisions without recognizing our own biases.

Here are examples of common biases that can get in the way.

Availability bias. This leads you to believe that what you see is all there is. It can cause you to give priority to info and events that immediately come to mind, usually because they were recent, memorable, or personal.

Example. Most people overestimate the number of people killed by terrorism and underestimate risks associated with driving a car. More people die in car crashes every six days than die from global terrorist attacks in a year.[1] Yet, people are often more worried about terrorism than driving.

Representative bias. When two things look or seem similar, you may assume the two things will be the same or will lead to the same outcome. Representative bias is at the heart of stereotyping.

Example. Imagine you have a friend who grew up playing chess and video games. She was president of the computer science club in high school and loved to build things. You might predict, based on her interests and activities, that she would be likely to major in engineering at college. However, numbers show she is more likely to major in business as there are almost four times more business degrees given annually than engineering degrees.[2]

Confirmation bias. We tend to search for, interpret, and favor information that confirms our preexisting beliefs and desired outcomes rather than viewing information with objectivity.

Example. Confirmation bias is prevalent in politics and can be seen when people consider emotionally charged issues such as immigration and abortion. Deeply held beliefs can cause people from varying political viewpoints not only to see the same event in radically different ways, but also to reject alternative explanations.

Affect bias. Beware of making decisions based on a strong positive or negative emotional state—a “gut” feeling—without consulting all the evidence.

Example. Attitudes toward nuclear power and climate change are commonly influenced by affect bias. I’ve been guilty of this bias. I worked for twenty years promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. Due to my strong beliefs, I did not fully consider the benefits of nuclear power and fossil fuels. I was wrong.

Here’s a more extensive list of cognitive biases.

To avoid fooling yourself, stress test your ideas by trying to disprove your assumptions, get feedback from people with different perspectives, hold your opinions loosely, and follow a structured decision-making process. It’s unlikely you can eliminate bias but you can be wrong less often.

[1] According to a report created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in 2017 18,753 people were killed globally by terrorists. According to Safer America, every year, roughly 1.3 million people die in car accidents worldwide—an average of 3,287 deaths per day.

[2] According to a report by the National Center for Educational Statistics, in the academic year 2014–15, 364,000 degrees in business and 98,000 engineering degrees were awarded.

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DO IT

Following a process helps you improve the quality of your decisions. Too often we let thoughts bang around in our heads and never apply a process to structure our thinking.

I created the acronym DO IT (Define Observe Imagine Test) to help me remember the steps. With a little practice, applying this process becomes automatic and you can use it daily for different type of decisions.

Not all decisions are important enough to require all four steps, but I recommend engaging in at least the first two steps for most decisions. Use no more steps or complexity than needed. Calibrate your time investment to the importance of the decision and how urgently it needs to be made. An effective process requires thinking deeply and writing down answers to each step.

Consider these four steps when you are in the process of making a decision.

DO IT (Define, Observe, Imagine, Test)

Step 1. Define

Define the problem or opportunity. Recognize the type of decision you are facing. You may think you do this now, but I bet you don’t. Following your fuzzy intuition without consciously thinking about the nature of the decision does not count. Write down the problem or opportunity using clear and precise language. Clarify the importance. What’s the magnitude? Is it reversible? How much time do you have to make the decision? Do other people need to be involved? Who are they? If you are the only decision-maker, then it’s easier, but multiple parties may need to be involved for a complex decision.

In addition to defining the problem, you also need to define who is responsible for the outcome. Every decision needs an owner who is held accountable and bears the consequences (good or bad) of the decision. No two people are alike in their knowledge, values, and experience. Therefore it makes sense to have different levels and kinds of decision rights. Decision rights should not be based on the rank of the person in the company hierarchy but should be given to the person closest to the problem who demonstrates good judgment and a comparable advantage to make the decision.

This first process step can be accomplished in a few minutes of focused thinking, but you must slow down enough to determine what you are facing before you move on. The time invested in this step depends on the complexity of the decision. Straightforward decisions may take only a few minutes while more important and more complicated decisions will require more time.

Step 2. Observe

After you’ve clearly defined the problem or opportunity, pause again and consider this question: Why do you need or want to solve this problem? Is making a decision about this issue the most important thing you can do now? What are your motivations? How does this decision or opportunity map to your goals? Make sure you are solving the right problem. Before you start digging in to seek solutions, ask yourself, “Am I focused on the right problem? Is this problem even worth solving?” Your time and attention are valuable, and you could be working on many problems.

To determine if this problem deserves your attention now, quickly review your list of priorities. Pausing and asking why forces you to prioritize your time before you blindly stumble into action. This only takes a few moments, but we rarely do it. Practice this process after you complete each task during the day and are preparing to move to the next item on your to-do list.

When you determine a problem is worth your time investment, start breaking down the problem into smaller pieces. Tease it apart. We frequently do not recognize exactly what problem we are trying to solve until we dig deeper. Breaking a complex problem down to its foundation and generating original solutions is a way of thinking from “first principles.” Write down your assumptions, then ask “why?” and keep asking “why” until you have exhausted your ability to answer. There you will find the root cause of your problem.

Step 3. Imagine

Engage in mental time travel and create multiple scenarios of the future. Scenario analysis helps you evaluate your choices. Don’t be lazy. Invest the time and energy to think through and evaluate your options. Before you write a line of code or change a single piece of hardware, make sure you have probed and punctured your best ideas from every angle. Nothing saves time and money more effectively than a well-run evaluation process to vet scenarios. Not every decision needs scenario analysis, but all important decisions do.

Step 4. Test

Test your ideas by getting feedback from customers, partners, or other appropriate stakeholders. Try to disprove each scenario. Without feedback, we are blind and stupid, and we will make the same mistakes repeatedly. Feedback helps you better see the reality of the world and allows you to correct mistakes and learn faster. Feedback provides an opportunity to gain empathy by seeing different perspectives, and it shines a bright light on your blind spots, which can improve your decision-making ability.

Direct, honest feedback is hard to find because very few people are willing to tell you the truth. Most people want to avoid conflict and are reluctant to jeopardize relationships. Thus, you will need to actively seek feedback from people with diverse perspectives and experience. Seek out people who have truly different skills, experiences, and worldviews to expose your blind spots. Challenge yourself to accept feedback from someone you dislike. I admit this is hard to do, but we can learn from everyone.

Make the decision

After you engage in the four DO IT steps, then do it—make the decision. For important decisions, think slowly. Be less impulsive and more deliberate. Your first reaction is usually not the best one. Take time for careful and considered reasoning. Take a break. Set aside time to review and think about scenarios. Grapple with tradeoffs, uncertainties, and risk. Sleep on it to allow your mind to consider your options. Your subconscious mind does more thinking than you realize. Frequently, a better solution will occur to you the next morning.

Don’t let thoughts bang around in your head. Apply the DO IT steps to structure your thinking and improve the quality of your decisions.

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How to evaluate job offers

I hate the idea of backtracking and wasting time. Have you ever accidentally gotten on the wrong train or bus and traveled for a while before realizing you were going in the wrong direction? If so, you understand the anxiety and frustration. Getting on the wrong train or bus may only waste 30 to 60 minutes of your time, but accepting the wrong job offer can cost you six months to a year of your life.

Because job decisions involve so much uncertainty and tradeoffs, the ideal job-decision tool would be a crystal ball. Then you could peer into your future and see the outcome of your choice. But since you don’t have a crystal ball, how do you make a decision?

The stakes are high. Where you decide to work has an outsized impact on your happiness and quality of life. And the person or people you work for and with have an even greater impact than the company you join. These decisions affect where you live, how much free time you have, the quality of your relationships with friends and family, your health, and what type of house you buy.

When you accept a job offer, you are committing significant time and energy. And you’re closing the door to other opportunities, at least temporarily. Often, it takes three to six months to ramp up in a new job before you hit your stride to make significant contributions or understand whether you are a good fit for the role, team, and culture. You don’t want to waste time and deal with the consequences of quitting suddenly just because you didn’t make a good decision. 

Invest time evaluating this critical decision. Leverage over two decades of scientific research into the predictors of a satisfying life and career to help you assess your job offer.

The best predictors of job satisfaction:

Use thinking tools to evaluate job offers

You may be thinking, “Those factors make sense, but how do I practically apply them to my job decision?”

Use the evaluation criteria and thinking tools discussed below to help you grapple with tradeoffs and clarify your thinking. To figure out whether a decision is good or bad, you need to understand what could be gained or lost and the likelihood of each possibility unfolding.

Thinking tools provide shortcuts to higher-level thinking, forcing your brain to think about a decision from different perspectives. They also allow you to engage in mental time travel and imagine your future in the job to uncover risks and weigh options. 

Think deeply, write down answers, and take time for careful and considered reasoning. I recommend investing a minimum of three hours of focused, undistracted time using the thinking tools below before soliciting feedback from trusted friends or advisors.

Avoid pro-con lists

Before I share my recommended thinking tools, I want to tell you about a common tool you should avoid: pro-con lists.

Pro-con lists suck because they:

Instead of pro-con lists, use the following tools and mental models to improve your thinking and evaluate your options.

Use the job decision scorecard

I created the job decision scorecard based on scientific research and other important factors to help me think through and evaluate job offers. Use this tool to assess a single job offer or compare multiple offers.

The scorecard includes:

Evaluation criteria

Adjust weights based on importance. Not all criteria are of equal importance. Adjust weights on a 1-to-10 scale (10 = most important) based on your preferred level of importance of each criterion. For example, you highly value having a supervisor you enjoy working with, so you assign a weight of 9 for the “Supervisor” category. Since you care less about “Perks” (e.g., gym membership, meals, cell phone), you assign a weight of 2 to this category.

Score each job offer. Add a score for each criterion on a 1-to-10 scale (10 = most favorable.) You will receive a total score adjusted by assigned weights. For example, if one job opportunity includes a 15-minute commute, I would give it a score of 9 in that category. I would give another job with a one-hour commute a score of 2.

Add confidence levels. Consider all factors and add your degree of certainty and likelihood of success. Are you 80%, 50%, or 20% confident this job provides the best next step in your career? Use a 1%-to-100% scale in Row 20 on the job scorecard template.

Instructions to complete the job decision scorecard

Step 1. Make a copy of the Google sheet to enable editing and data entry.

Step 2. Adjust weights in column B on a 1-to-10 scale (10 = most important) based on your preferred level of importance of each criterion.

Step 3. Score each job offer on a 1-to-10 scale (10 = most favorable) for each evaluation criteria. You will receive a total score adjusted by assigned weights on Row 21.

Step 4. Add confidence levels using a 1%-to-100% scale on your likelihood of success (e.g., 80%, 50%, 20%) on Row 22.

Don’t get caught up in being too precise. Remember, it’s a thinking tool—not a crystal ball. It can help you grapple with tradeoffs but can’t precisely predict the future, no matter how accurately you score it.

Engage in mental time travel

Envisioning positive and negative future outcomes helps you identify obstacles, predict reasons for success and eliminate regrets. Research shows that anticipating the ways things might go wrong helps you more successfully reach your destination. You can produce 30% more reasons for why something might fail when you engage in mental time travel to identify obstacles to the desired outcome.[1] Use the following steps to facilitate your mental trips.

Apply mental models

In the summer of 2016, I went through the startup accelerator Y Combinator (YC.) One of the most valuable aspects of that experience was “office hours,” when I met with a YC partner and got feedback about a specific problem or decision. I gained new insight as the partner helped me view my problem through a different lens. Mental models can function like a YC partner or advisor, forcing you to see a problem from a different perspective and teaching you how to think better.

Mental models make decisions less risky by helping you better understand the reality of the world around you. We all have models in our heads based on our genetics, experiences, and backgrounds, but we need a toolkit of models to make good decisions. Relying solely on one model is like seeing every problem as a nail and solving every problem with a hammer.

Get feedback on your job decision

After you invest time alone using thinking tools, ask two to three trusted friends who know you well to provide feedback on the job offer. Also, seek feedback from a coach or two to three people in the field you want to enter. Feedback will give you an outside view to ensure your enthusiasm for the opportunity is not blinding you to negative consequences or other options. Be aware of the bias of the people giving you feedback. Sometimes you will receive feedback that conflicts. Your job is to synthesize the input and decide what to disregard.

Choose wisely

Don’t rush your decision. Sleep on it to allow your mind to consider your options. Your subconscious mind does more thinking than you realize. After investing time using thinking tools and seeking feedback, you are ready to make your choice and commit. Don’t accept the offer if you lack conviction. Remember, “Hell Yeah or No!” It may be better to invest your time exploring other options and building skills rather than job hop as there will be a significant time investment before you and your new employer know if you will be a successful match. If you decide to accept, commit fully and start planning for success.

To learn more, sign-up for the “High-Performance Playbook” email series (it’s free), where I share the best evidence-based strategies, tactics, and frameworks to advance your career and make more money.

[1] Deborah Mitchell, J. Edward Russo, Nancy Pennington, “Back to the future: Temporal perspectives in the explanation of events,” Journal of Behavior Decision-Making 2, no. 1 (January 1989): 25-38.

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Rules for decision making

Without rules we risk getting jerked like a puppet, simply reacting to conditions around us. Rules for behavior and communication allow us to work together more effectively, and rules can also help you make better decisions. Just as programming languages provide instructions for computers, decision-making rules become the operating logic of your company. Rather than issuing top-down, centralized mandates, providing decision-making rules will empower the people closest to the problem to decide how to proceed.

How you act and communicate with the people you work with will determine your company culture. Using rules, you can embed the actions you want into your culture. Decision rules provide a structure so you can navigate uncertainty and increase your chances of success.

Rules must be memorable and clearly explain the desired action. If you forget the rules or don’t understand them, you won’t use them. Rules work best if you use them daily, reinforcing their concepts.

Follow these eight rules to make smarter decisions and be wrong less often.

Don’t get jerked like a puppet and react to conditions around you. Use decision rules to program your culture and make better decisions.

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Opportunity cost

You make dozens of decisions every day. And every decision you make has a cost. By deciding to pursue one thing, you’re saying no to something else. At work, if you decide to participate in a meeting, that timeslot is filled and you can’t spend the time focused on a creative task. You can’t do everything. Life requires tradeoffs.

Opportunity cost is the cost of not pursuing alternative opportunities. The higher the value of what you could be doing versus what you actually are doing, the greater the opportunity cost.

It’s easy to recognize opportunity cost when it’s staring you in the face—like moving to a new city, changing jobs, or planning your next vacation. But most of us don’t consider opportunity cost in our decision-making process for the majority of our decisions.

We know money is not infinite, but we often treat time, energy, and attention as if they are. Your time is limited. If you choose to spend an hour on something, you can’t use it for anything else, so making smart decisions about your time is critical.

Do you stop to consider multiple scenarios of how you could spend your time before scheduling a meeting, attending a conference, pursuing a potential customer, or deciding to build a new product feature?

What are the costs of spending too much time on nonessential busy work? Such as cleaning up your email inbox or spending time in non-essential meetings.

What are the costs of signing a contract with a customer? Are there higher-value clients you won’t be able to serve because you’re too busy serving a lower-value customer? You want to choose your customers carefully.

One of the most extreme examples of opportunity cost is the decision to start a company. I love creating and building businesses. But startups require a tremendous commitment of time and energy. The potential rewards are large if you succeed, but the opportunity cost is huge if you fail. If you’re an employee of a company and the business isn’t doing well, it’s much easier to go to work somewhere else. It’s worth it to start your own company. But you should consider the opportunity cost before jumping in blindly.

Here are a few useful ways to consider opportunity cost.

  1. Do fewer things better. Tradeoffs imply that in order to become good at a few things, you’ll be mediocre at a bunch of other things. That’s okay. Focus on being excellent at a handful of things and consider dropping or outsourcing some of the other stuff. Doing fewer things also allows for breathing room. If you’re too busy, you could miss out on great opportunities. But it’s also hard to say no to good opportunities. Be ruthless and say no to almost everything. This frees up time and creates space to pursue a great opportunity.
  2. Create a minimum of three imagined scenarios. For important decisions, develop at least three different potential solutions or scenarios with a detailed list of benefits and consequences for each scenario. Consider not only what you’ll gain from each scenario, but also what you will lose. Assume each scenario is wrong. Try to disprove them!
  3. Choose a high aspirational hourly rate for yourself. No one values your time more than you do. Your aspirational hourly rate doesn’t have to be consistent with what the market is paying you today. Factor it into every decision. I set my hourly rate at $1,000 an hour. This usually forces me to outsource most things so I can focus my time and mental energy on higher-value work. This means delegating tasks whenever possible and minimizing time doing busy work, errands, and household chores. Having a $1,000-per-hour opportunity cost helps motivate me to focus on what’s important.
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A map is not the territory

Maps help guide us where we want to go. They represent the accumulation of knowledge from people who have traveled the route before you. Maps help you avoid getting lost and wasting time.

But a map is not reality—just as an architectural blueprint for a building is not the building. A map is both a representation of reality and an interpretation of reality shaped from the perspective of the map maker. There are no perfect maps. All maps are subjective and distorted, capturing the best understanding of the people who create them. 

One of the earliest surviving world maps was drawn on silk in 1389 and depicts the Chinese Ming Empire. The map spans the entire Eurasian continent from Japan to the Atlantic Ocean. It is particularly notable for the way in which it distorts the size of various landmasses. Mainland China sits like a monolith in the middle of the map, while Japan and Korea are both far larger than modern-day India. The African continent, meanwhile, is depicted as a relatively small peninsula with what appears to be a giant lake in its center. You would have a hard time navigating the world if you were following that map.

Often, we think of maps as tools to help us navigate the physical world, allowing us to get where we want to go. But we also have mental maps. You interpret reality based on the maps in your head. When you learn a new skill, you create a mental map of each step you must take to perform the skill. Your experiences of people, culture, and physical environment shape your mental maps.

Imagine being born into a world that had no maps—of either the geographical or mental varieties. Imagine trying to navigate the world without the benefit of thousands of years of knowledge compiled from our ancestors’ painful failures and hard-earned victories. Just as cartographers provide us with maps of our city, so science provides us a map of human knowledge. Art maps our creative expression, imagination, and experience. Religion gives us maps to a virtuous and meaningful life.

Maps are useful. But It’s important not to confuse a map with the territory. Maps get outdated because the terrain constantly changes and evolves. Even Google maps can lead you in the wrong direction if you don’t pay attention.

Navigating the wilderness

In my early twenties, I led backpacking and climbing expeditions for teenagers in remote parts of Alaska. Backpacking with a group of kids in remote wilderness areas ten days from the nearest road required me to become proficient at reading maps. We did not have GPS, and our only backup in case of an emergency was a radio that only worked when a plane flew over us—which would happen every few days. A route-finding mistake could bring severe consequences.

We could carry only enough food for seven days. A small plane would meet us mid-route, land on the glacier, and drop another seven days of food. If we did not make it to this predetermined food-drop location, we would not have food. Route finding was challenging because some rivers could not be crossed and others could be crossed only before sunrise. After a few hours of sunshine, the ice on the glacier warmed enough to unleash a torrent of water, making a river crossing impossible. 

Learning to navigate with maps and also learning that the “map is the not the territory” was essential to navigating the wilderness. Those principles have also proved valuable in business. It’s important to study your competition and companies who came before you to look for patterns, to see what strategies worked and failed. But every company is unique, and you can’t blindly copy the customer acquisition strategy, design process, or business model of another company. Even if your business is targeting the same customers, it’s highly unlikely your map will look exactly the same as the map from another company. 

Strategies for navigation

Here are a few strategies that have helped me follow the right paths and successfully navigate unexpected changes in terrain.

  1. Aim at the right target. Make sure you have a well-defined destination that aligns with your goals.
  2. Orient your map. When I taught 16-year-olds to read a map in the wilderness, I first taught them to orient the map correctly. If you don’t align the map to the terrain, it is easy to start walking in the wrong direction.
  3. Zoom in and out. Zoom in to deconstruct a problem into its foundational elements. Zoom out to see the big picture and make sure you are solving the right problem.
  4. Calibrate against reality often. Test your assumptions often to make sure you are on the right path.