On Vision

For the longest time, I’ve operated under what I call the high upside philosophy. What is the high upside philosophy you ask? It’s the philosophy you use, when you aren’t quite sure what you should be doing.

You see, when you’re not sure, you have three options:

1. Sit around and wait for inspiration to hit
2. Pick something, and go all in until you flame out or win
3. Just do things that are 100% good for you

All other things being equal, being healthier, wealthier, more skilled and more cultured will put you in a better position, so why not do that? This is Option 3.

This is what got me to learn Mandarin after ratcheting down my company in Taiwan. This what got me getting deeper on finance, health, speaking, french, and many other things I am happy to have learned over the last few years.

To better illustrate this, here’s the diagram of how I saw the world:

To clarify, by saying I had no vision, I mean I could not articulate any vision. I sort of “trusted” the world and my tastes, in that what I was doing would come together to form a unique whole, and reveal the vision to me.

This philosophy lasted me a while, but alas, all good things must come to an end.

I started to falter when I had an abundance of great opportunities. It gets harder to choose what to work on, since all of them are positive EV[1]. It’s also hard to get others involved — “high upside” does not get the blood rushing. Worst of all, the hardest, most high upside, large, creative, projects have “down periods”, where things just don’t look good, and you aren’t quite sure how to get out.

What if there was a tool you can use, that could let you say “no”, let you recruit the best and brightest, and help you make the decisions necessary to come back to center?

Ah, that’s vision…

I looked throughout my past, and realized that my mentors had this — this is why I worked with them.

I realized, that possibly the the world was like this:

I was to scared to take the next step, because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of blindness or inaction.

However, this is the tool I saw I needed to grow as a person. I still haven’t figured out what the tactical steps are, but I wanted to share, in case you have, then email me :)

[1] EV: Expected Value — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value