Deciding what to do when you find yourself at a crossroad,
One thing I’ve been thinking about recently, is that a lot of the times, while our actions are binary (we either do something or we don’t), the things that we are trying to achieve are not that binary in nature. In other words, the options that we actually have, are most of the times more than the two things that we see in front of us. But here’s the problem
I’ve found out that with most things in life, you have a plan A, and when you’re not sure whether plan A is gonna work or not, you’re gonna fixate on what to do if plan A doesn’t work. If plan A fails soon enough, plan B will become the new plan A, and you’ll have a new plan B. This ia actually a good outcome! The worse outcome, is having to deal with that uncertainty for a long time, to the point where you start considering doing A and B at the same time. So far so good, but it become even worse when you come to a point where none of them seem to be working. Now what are you going to do?
If the bottleneck wasn’t human hours, you could just have plan C, D, …, etc or perhaps even have different people pursue different plans if the bottleneck is human hours. But in this scenario, I’m talking about cases where you have to deal with this whole thing yourself, and nobody’s gonna help you. What’s the best course of action?
My proposition, is that often times, you can take a step back, and look at this whole mess you’re in from another perspective. What would you do if this wasn’t even your problem and a friend was going through it? How would you advise them if they were asking you for advise? It’s interesting that a lot of times, pursuing option A & B (often at the same time) would not be the things you tell your friends to do. It’s just that, under your circumstances, you found yourself in a scenario where you’re doing A & B, and you’re so laser focused that you think you have to success either at A, or B. You just don’t see the possibility of moving forward without doing any of them, while in reality, the best option might be neither A or B in the first place! So, letting go of your ego, the time you’ve spent on your plans so far, what would be the best thing to do? Think of your problems as if they’re not your problems to begin with. They are just challenges that are waiting to be solved, and you’re looking at the current scenario, trying to come up with a plan.
I don’t know, I think this is one of those things that happen to me a bit too often. I don’t necessarily have a concrete framework for dealing with these issues, and I don’t think anybody really does, but I do think that I’m getting better at it. It just helps to not think that the options you chose for yourself a long time ago, might not be actually the only options you have.