Make Hard Decisions Easy
My kid texted me out of the blue recently and asked to be picked up early from school. He likes school, so this was out of character (unlike my daughter who asks to be picked up early almost daily…I kid…kinda).
I texted back, “Why? What’s up?”
He responded that he’d thought about it and actually did want to go see retired U.S. ambassador to Malawi David Young speak at Mizzou about pathways to international careers starting at 4pm. See, the night before we’d talked about maybe him doing that, but he had decided then that he didn’t want to miss school or swim practice.
But apparently he’d changed his mind.
So I went to get him, and when he got in the car I asked what prompted the rethink. He said that sitting in class he started thinking about how much he might regret missing Ambassador Young’s talk in 20 years if he found himself wishing he were in the foreign service but wasn’t. And that missing 15 minutes of school and one of many swim practices didn’t feel like it had the same downside.
I said, “Oh, that’s called the regret minimization framework and it’s how Jeff Bezos makes hard decisions easy.” He looked at me funny, but that’s par for the course these days.
After I dropped him off, I started thinking about what he said, and I was proud of him for thinking about the situation like that. But then I got a little bit sad. That’s because a regret minimization framework only becomes useful after you accept the fact that no matter what you do, you’re going to have regrets.
And I’m not sure a kid knows that yet.
– Tim
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