Make easy decisions!
A while back I wrote about my lessons from playing poker and here is one that has been recently a lot in my mind. Whenever you can, try and put yourself into a position to make easy decisions and get someone else to make the hard ones. I know this sounds like a bunch of pop-culture preaching but once I dig into it you will see why it makes sense.
First for the poker example! You are playing a decent opponent and have a good hand (not the best but not too far off). Your opponent makes a standard raise and you want to re-raise him. Now to make a meaningful raise you would have to put up about 65-70% of you stack (chips you have). By raising only 65-70% you put yourself into a possible hard decision situation! What if he goes all-in? Are you going to commit the rest of the chips or fold? That is called a hard decision. On the other hand if you went all-in you transfer the hard decision to your opponent, now he has to think if he has a strong enough hand, are you bluffing or if it makes sense to risk it at all.
a) You make the easy decision
b) You have time left over that you would spend on thinking about the hard decision
c) If you make a mistake, hey that’s life be sure it hurts more when you make a mistake on hard decisions
Now how does this transfer into real life? Let’s say you are happy at work, everything seems good, your career is promising inside the company. You are approached by a recruiter for a rival company. Hard decision? Go for several rounds of interviews, perhaps get the job just to find out offer on the table is just a bit better than your current one. Easy decision? Start of with a clear message of what is required to get you to change companies. Money is the easiest thing to position as it is the only certain thing they can offer. Set an “easy decision demarcation”, “If I get offered 80% more money than my current job I can’t refuse.” That is an easy decision and you probably won’t get far with most recruiters but you will save a lot of money compared to entertaining each offer that comes on the table.
Does it make sense?
