In a previous post, I talked about false choices, situations where one is persuaded to pick from one of several sub-optimal options like A versus B when better ones exist outside the realm of consideration. I would like to highlight the other side of the problem, arguably a bigger deal for many people, which is this: it is usually not obvious how to classify a problem at hand into an A versus B situation in the first place.

Here’s an example: we have the well-known explore-exploit tradeoff that recognizes the dilemma we face between choosing the best option from what we know versus continuing to look for better options (at the cost of potentially losing what we already have in hand). In Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian points out that the best approach for such a problem is to dedicate the first 37% of your time in explore mode and the rest in exploit mode, that is, picking the next available “best” option¹. Here’s the kicker though: for someone who isn’t aware of this tradeoff in the first place and doesn’t realize that their actions could be classified into exploratory or exploitative ones, how are they to even know to look for a solution? And besides, it seems like we pulled this explore-exploit tradeoff out of thin air — what other dimensions are we missing?

Here are a few more:

There are undoubtedly many more that could be added to this list. I would offer the following observation: Category B is never enough — one must spend a good chunk of their time in Category A, maybe even up to 80% for some of them. I think it has something to do with how rapidly the environment is evolving, and how well-suited we are to adapt when our world shifts around us.

So much of our lives are affected by false choices. By ‘false choice’, I mean a decision where two options are presented to us and we make a choice without seeking out additional alternatives. Want Iced Latte or Melted Chocolate ice cream? Maybe the answer should be: Sea Salt & Caramel — but you have to know to ask!

Perhaps this is all a magic trick that we play upon on our own minds. It is my untested hypothesis that making the choices more detailed and intricate drives people to start focusing on its details and become less curious about alternatives — vanilla options, like Vanilla versus Chocolate, are more likely to be questioned than something exotic, like Iced Latte versus Melted Chocolate.

Within a group, the options being highly detailed can fool people into believing that they’ve been thought through deeply (by someone else). Some people have learned to invert the filter, and treat excess detail as a sign of shallow synthesis. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, and so this leads us to another type of false choice — options being considered mutually exclusive when they can very well co-exist, and implying a polarization when one really ought to speak of degrees within a spectrum.

Whenever I am presented with options, say A versus B, I usually start by seeking to understand how they came up with these options, and whether there were other options that got filtered out, based on unspoken assumptions or constraints. Then I check to see what they are optimizing for, and pick options that work, often going for a mix and match approach. The trick here is to never rule out options but simply put a pin in it saying, “This option works only if constraints X, Y and Z are broken…”

By the way, since you forgot to ask, the right answer to the ice cream conundrum is to have half Raspberry, half Chocolate, with some Candied Hazelnut as a topping.

Getting things done is a great way to keep moving forward in life with a sense of satisfaction. But sometimes, all one really needs is closure, and quitting is a perfectly good alternative.

I spent a good deal of time chipping away at creating a commenting system for this blog. The way it would work is that you would have a simple JavaScript-based submission form at the bottom of each post, and comment submissions (aka, replies) would traverse an AWS CloudFront Function for a clever spam check¹ and an AWS Lambda Function for actual processing. Processing would result in the comment data (consisting of a simple name and reply enriched to create a child post that rendered beautifully below its parent) being sent to GitHub as a pull request, authenticated to my personal account that hosts the source code for this blog. I would then review and manually approve these pull requests as they came in (I didn’t expect much comment traffic anyway).

But I remained on the fence as to whether I even wanted to make this blog that interactive, and I never did get to a solution that motivated me to complete the work. And the work stayed in a limbo until two days ago, when I finally decided to abandon the idea altogether. And now a weight has been lifted off my shoulders….

One of my principles in life is that when someone hands you your cup of coffee, you take a sip immediately. You don’t wait (until it cools, until you sit down, etc.). One sip. Now, not later. And of course, this principle extends to all beverages.

What this one sip gives you is peace of mind. No matter what random event causes you to spill your beverage after that, you can rest in the knowledge that you’ve already had at least a sip, and no one can take that experience away from you.

As we get older and gain more experience, the one thing we get better at, I think, is learning not to react to the world around us as readily. Recently, I was reminded of the idea that this is a mindset that we choose to adopt — we are either responsive or reactive to situations. Responsive is good; reactive is bad. Responsive means that we’ve taken a moment to digest external input and formulate a line of action. Reactive, on the other hand, implies a lack of intentionality on our part.

But I like to think of it thus:

To think before you (re)act is wisdom; to refrain from action altogether is Zen.

The root of the idea is this: nothing is ever as bad as it seems, and nothing is ever as good as it seems. In fact, facets of the same situation may simultaneously be better and worse than expected. Not only is the future unpredictable, it is also a continuous flow of moments, not a discrete set of milestones that we win or lose. All of this is summarized pithily in the Persian adage, “…and this, too, shall pass”.

But I’m not suggesting that we give up on our wants. Rather, I have found it to be true (more often than not) that taking no action is the quickest and most effective path to getting what you want, and all your actions or reactions, though well-intentioned, only tend to get in the way. Have you ever had the experience of working hard every single day, never taking a break because you’re worried that everything will fall apart if you do, and then one day you finally take a vacation for three weeks, and disconcertingly what happens is…nothing at all — everyone carries on just fine? In a similar vein, things that seem like huge problems often melt away; the real problems are the ones that come out of left field.

To avoid taking action requires a great deal of patience, and to be patient, one needs boundless optimism that all the right things will magically happen, that the universe will conspire to help you, and that everything will fall into place.

Be unreasonably optimistic.