Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

Shuvi Shrivastava
Jul 10, 2017 · 1 min read

How much time do you normally allot to decision making, specially decisions that look to significantly alter the course of your life? I’ve been munching on a thought the last few weeks and here’s the hypothesis:

Most of the important, non-straightforward choices we will make in life will be gut calls— our direction is defined by our instinct, and all the time we give to ‘decision making’ is just the time we give to rationalize the answer. We make an ‘emotional’ choice and then use our smarts to navigate ‘logically’ to that outcome aka sell it to ourselves internally.

Accepting this has gone a long way in helping me be okay with the uncertainty that comes with not knowing everything, not necessarily making the ‘right’ choice always. The next time you ask me why X and not Y — I’m going to be okay saying ‘I was more excited by it’ versus going into a long pros-and-cons monologue that could honestly be directed either way. Excitement. Not risk/reward, not cost/benefit, not SWOT. Plain vanilla excitement. And this everyday excitement that makes us want to get out of bed every morning is what we live for anyway, right?

Two roads diverged in a wood
And I — I took the one I was more excited by,
And that promises to make all the difference.
(And I will never know otherwise because the counter-factual will not exist)

Shuvi Shrivastava

Written by

So opposed to the mainstream that I have never owned an Android phone.

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