Just over a year ago, I shared the thoughts of Annie Duke and how good decisions can have bad outcomes. You might make the right choice, but things can still go sideways due to circumstances beyond your control.
David C. Baker recently talked a bit about that when referring to agency principals:
Your success as a principal will hinge in large part on the luck of the draw, feeding you opportunity or scarcity that’s out of your control. Aside from that—or more because of that—it’s pretty important to think about where you do have control.
So with that in mind, what can you really control in your life? More than anything, you can control your inputs.
Inputs
I’ve talked before about controlling your inputs from a digital perspective, and I think that’s very valuable. Keeping a reign on what kinds of digital noise gets in your way can make a major difference.
However, there are many inputs in your life beyond that:
- Where you spend your time. Did you exercise today?
- What you eat. That’s entirely up to you and the effort you’re willing to put in.
- What you read. A good book, or more doomscrolling on Facebook?
There are days when all of those can have a bad answer and that’s ok. Missing a workout or grabbing fast food is a necessity on certain days. Regardless, those are still decisions that you chose to make, and over the long run they’ll add up.
You’ll have plenty of bad luck to mess up some of your good decisions, so stacking the odds here and there when you can will help even things out.
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