The Unexpected Reason You Make Poor Decisions
Whoa. I shake my head and snap out of zombie mode after mindlessly scrolling through Twitter for an hour.
I sat at my computer to write, but I haven’t accomplished anything. My Google Docs page is blank and my brain is fried.
What’s worse, I don’t even know why this happened. How did I lose an hour of my life?
The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions
When we create goals, we often design a game plan to guide us to success.
If you want to write a 300-page book, you may decide to write one page every day. Do that and you’ll have a book written in less than a year. Simple, right?
There’s one problem: this doesn’t account for potential roadblocks.
What if you get sick?
What if you lose motivation?
What if you run out of ideas?
These aren’t hard problems to solve and they’re easy to prepare for. But they’re overwhelming in the heat of the moment if you don’t know how to respond.
The Power of Known Unknowns
Situations like this—where we could be prepared, but we’re not—arise more often than you think.
For example, my wife hounded me for misplacing the spatula while emptying the dishwasher. I immediately became defensive.
I was angry that she had the gall to get mad at me when I was the one doing this chore. I snapped and told her that she should be thankful, which created a bit of tension.
None of this was necessary. Could my wife have walked in, thanked me, then nicely asked where the spatula was? Sure. She could have also proceeded to massage my back.
But I can’t expect her to act exactly the way I want at every point in time.
Instead, I should stop worrying about being right and more concerned with finding the truth. I should listen, be curious, and ask questions like:
“ Are you upset?”
“What should I do next time?”
“Is this a big deal?”
She likely would have said, “No, just put it here next time,” and there would be no issue.
Unfortunately, I never prepared for this known unknown—instances where I believe my wife is unfairly upset with me. Instead of having a logical, pre-planned response, I relied on my emotions.
And that didn’t work too well.
Why Can’t We Stick to Our Game Plan?
Our emotions stir when we encounter roadblocks. We become frazzled.
If your ad isn’t successful, you run around looking for new marketing tactics. When your favorite guru doesn’t respond to your DM, you think no one will ever work with you.
These are irrational responses. You know that ads are hit or miss. You know that successful people are busy and can’t respond to everyone. You know that much of life is a numbers game.
However, you let yourself forget these important truths because you aren’t prepared. You don’t have a solid set of principles.
How Principles Can Change Your Life
It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark. And the best time to buy insurance is before you need it.
It’s not different for principles. The best time to adopt them is before your problems occur.
Principles are solutions before you need them.
They are mindsets that determine your behavior for generic situations. One of my favorite principles is “Give your word. Keep it.”
If you truly instill this mindset, you’ll think twice about making commitments because you don’t want to go back on your word. And when you do commit, you’ll put extra effort to make sure you follow through.
You can have broad life principles, like, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And you can have specific principles, like, “When I wake up, I make the bed before going to the bathroom.”
Bill Walsh, one of the greatest coaches of all time, who led the San Francisco 49ers to five Super Bowl victories, was a huge proponent of specific principles. In The Score Takes Care of Itself, he called them his Standards of Performance. Walsh detailed every action for every person in his organization, from coaching staff to players, and even receptionists.
When you adhere to principles based on important aspects of your life, you make good decisions on autopilot, even when challenges arise. The goal is to do as Ray Dalio says in his book Principles:
“Systemize your decision making.”
Turn Your Problems into Gold Mines
When I found myself using Twitter to procrastinate, I wasn’t alarmed. I knew it was a problem, but it was also an opportunity to prepare for this situation in the future.
First, I determined the issue. I was afraid my article wouldn’t be ready for my Friday deadline, a publishing schedule I’ve set for myself. That meant I needed to come up with a different article that I could write quickly.
But I didn’t have a process for coming up with these topics. And that’s when I froze. Since I didn’t know what to do, I procrastinated.
Recognizing this is crucial because I can create a new principle to live by: When I run out of content ideas, I will peruse my book notes, read my list of principles, then jot down ideas until I have one I can write about quickly.
This is the beauty of principles—they develop over time. Don’t be concerned if you make a poor decision. Just make sure you learn from it so you don’t make the same mistake twice.
And the best news of it all? If you live by the principles you set, you can become whoever you want to be.
Originally published at https://robriker.com on July 10, 2020.
