Making Decisions

“If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.” – Michel de Montaigne

“If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no”.
When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” — then say “no.”
– Derek Sivers

When you’re presented with a choice, there are a few paths in front of you. You could go with the flow and see where it leads you. You could just say no to everything and stay the course on whatever you’re currently doing. Or you could explore the path, decide if it’s a hell yeah! or a maybe yeah and jump in… or jump away.

I found myself a while back with an attractive offer to go play in another sandbox for what was on paper a big chunk of money more. I contemplated it, talked to a few people to bounce the idea off of them, and thought about it some more. Tempting. Distracting. But admittedly less than Wow! for me. I’m at a point in my life where time expended on the unknown for incrementally more profit better mean a Wow! or it’s necessarily a No!

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

And so it was that at 4 AM I woke up for a bathroom break and lay there with the Sivers phrase above spinning through my head, reminding me that this thing you’re contemplating? It’s not a Hell yeah! for you. It’s an opportunistic money grab. And what of the time expended in its pursuit? For life is very short, as living keeps reminding me. So it’s a “no”. Which led me to wondering, then what is my Hell yeah! anyway? And it was right in front of me all along. And then I knew where to double down.