Cheatcode #23: Changing trains or staying seated

Quote: “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

early stages

This week’s piece comes from Nick – a friend, colleague, and the creator of early stages, one of the most refreshing newsletters out there for students in the early stages of their career.

His weekly emails are concise, practical, and packed with insights that help you develop mental clarity about the early stages in your own career.

If that sounds relevant to you I highly recommend subscribing.

Let’s dive in —

I’m going to throw a metaphor at you – hang tight, I promise it’s going somewhere.

Life is like riding a train. In your early stages you usually have trains arriving automatically at some destination (graduation, finishing an internship, ending travels etc.). Time to change to the connecting train.

It gets a bit trickier in full-time jobs. The train will just naturally continue running. You’ll have to constantly decide if you want to continue or get off and change trains.

The same logic applies for your relationship, place of living, the sports you do, and so on.

we can differentiate between two types of decisions

Leaning on a framework Jeff Bezos shared in an Amazon shareholder letter (before his mega-rich laughing-like-a-movie-villain times), there are two types of decisions:

Type 1: Consequential, (nearly) irreversible, one-way doors

This is basically the decision to get off the train and take another one. Changing jobs, moving cities, breaking up with your partner.

Type 2: Manageable consequences, reversible, two-way doors

This would be the choice of where you sit or what you do during the train ride. Making dinner plans, wearing the black or white shirt, taking another way to the office.

type 2: 99% of decisions don’t matter.

That’s at least what Daniel Dippold’s Productivity Bible argues. Whether it’s 99% or less, the vast majority of our day-to-day decisions are type 2.

It matters less how you decide but more that you actually do it.

According to Bezos, a big error is treating type 2 decisions as if they were type 1, i.e.treating them like they require deep deliberation and wasting a lot of time on them.

Limitation A: Directionality of little decisions.

Arguably, there is a cumulative effect to those countless small decisions.

The question whether you’re eating a burger or salad for lunch does not matter for one day. It will matter, though, if you aggregate this decision over a year – eating a burger 4 out of 5 days does hit differently.

Limitation B: Butterfly effect

Still, even small steps can have big consequences. I found my current job with all the fantastic people I met along the way just because of the small decision to reach out to my future boss based on a LinkedIn post the algorithm randomly showed me.

type 1: take the big ones consciously

Once you stop overthinking the type 2s, the real challenge becomes giving the type 1s the focus they deserve.

Deciding at which university to study or which company to join full-time.

These are very hard to reverse and you will be stuck with them for a while. One thing I find particularly helpful is to map out all possible scenarios (however ridiculous they may be) to then speak with as many people who went this path as possible.

This will not make it easier to reach a decision, but it will at least allow you to do it based on a much more comprehensive informational landscape.

But: Taking no decision is a decision.

If you’re not happy with your life (job, relationship, you name it) but are not changing your situation – you’re taking a decision as well. You’re deciding to stick to the miserable version.

It’s super hard to identify those hidden decisions and put the spotlight on them. One good way to do this is through life audits, where you look at your life holistically and identify weak spots. Then you can decide for change or status quo.

Whether you switch trains or stay seated – just make sure you’re the one choosing.

If that was helpful, you’ll definitely enjoy subscribing to early stages.