1, #78 - Which do we want to do, first?
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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the pain of choosing: Life requires trade-offs and most of us hate that.
In particular, my job often depends on helping company leaders make strategic decisions. It’s never easy. I had an old boss who, whenever I would ask, “Do you want to go down path A or path B,” would always say: “I think we can do both.”
That was a constant point of frustration for me, since many of those paths were mutually exclusive. But probably also because it reflected my own tendency to resist constraints and cling to optionality as long as possible.
This week, a friend/mentor shared what he called magic words for this kind of situation:
“Which one do we want to do, first?”
Yes, sometimes you do have to walk through a door that means closing all of the other ones. But lots of decisions are matters of prioritization … and to reduce the anxiety that comes from making the wrong choice, this framing is brilliant.
So, whether you’re making decisions for yourself or helping someone else, try this: Pick a path for now. If saying ‘No’ to the other options hurts too much, just think of it as telling them, ‘Not yet.’
Insight inspired by the legendary Joe Bennett.