Arjun Mahadevan (Mr. LLC 🇺🇸)@ArjunMahadevan
A mental model everyone should know:
The Regret Minimization Framework.
This is how Jeff Bezos used this model to decide to start Amazon:
I went to my boss and told him, "I'm going to go do this crazy thing — I'm going to start this company selling books online."
This is something I had already been talking to him about in a more general context, and he said, "Let's go on a walk."
So we went on a 2-hour walk in Central Park in New York City. The conclusion of that was, he said, "This actually sounds like a really good idea to me, but it sounds like it would be a better idea for somebody who didn't already have a good job!"
He convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision.
So I went away and was trying to find the right framework to make that kind of big decision. I had already talked to my wife about this, and she was 100 percent supportive, saying, "You can count me in – whatever you want to do."
It's true, she had married this guy with a stable career and path, but she was 100 percent supportive. So it was really a decision I had to make for myself.
The framework I found, which made the decision incredibly easy, was what I called — only a nerd would call — a regret minimization framework.
I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, "I'm looking back on my life, I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have."
I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret participating in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn't regret that.
But I knew the one thing I might regret is not having ever tried.
And I knew that would haunt me every day.
When I thought about it that way, it was an incredibly easy decision. If you can project yourself to age 80 and think, "What will I think at that time?" it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion.
I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year, and when you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus.
That's the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but when you think about the long-term, you can really make good life decisions that you won't regret later.
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Summary
Ask yourself: in X years, will I regret not doing this?
• If Yes → DO IT!
• If No → Don't bother.
This can apply to any decision:
• Should I switch jobs?
• Should I start my dream business?
• And more...
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Takeaway: Optimize for Asymmetric Upside
• Record content (podcast, video)
• Write content (book, blog)
• Go to a cocktail party
• Move to a big city
• Invest in startups
• Go on first dates
• Build in public
• Start a biz
• Tweet
Shoot. Your. Shot. Life is too short not to do so.
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That's a wrap and I hope you found this helpful.
If you found value in this post:
1. Follow me @arjunmahadevan for more.
2. Re-post this, if you can, to share this mental model with a friend and to remind them to: Shoot. Your. Shot. Life is too short not to do so.
