Unentschlossenheit macht dich fertig

0:00The heaviest things in life aren't iron and gold, but unmade decisions. The reason you are stressed is that you have decisions to make and you're not making them. It's a good quote. >> [laughter] >> Who said it? You said it. I think a lot of times the decisions that we make are predicated on the on the conversations we need to have.

0:26Because usually like the And what's interesting is like You can define commitment by eliminating alternatives. So, if you are committed you've eliminated alternative actions. Right? Like you can say I'm committed, but until you eliminate other options, you're not committed. >> There's always a get out of jail free card. >> Right. And so a lot of people make decisions to end relationships, to quit their job, to start the new thing. But they don't become committed to the decision until they remove the other options. And then you're forced to take action on it. And so I think actually defining those two two different things. Now, you could define, you know, decision is to kill off like dicidere from Latin. But from a from an from a colloquial thing, I think there are two different instances. It's like I need to change this and then I do change it. Um And the making the decision is when it would becomes a commitment. Why unmade decisions so heavy?

1:18I think at least for me it's because I have this hamster wheel on the my back of my mind where I keep playing out different scenarios. And so I keep thinking like, well, maybe maybe I need to change what I'm currently doing. Maybe maybe if I just rethought like cuz I'm I'm a a big frame guy. So, I'm like, maybe I just need to be thinking about this differently, [laughter] right? Maybe if I zoom all the way out the earth doesn't exist. So, maybe this doesn't matter. Or maybe I'm just making a problem that doesn't exist. Maybe the best action to take is nothing, right? Like I, you know, I reframe all those things. Um but usually it's just because I'm afraid of something.

1:45And then that's why I'm not making the decision. And I think once I name and put a face and it's usually not even a thing that I'm afraid of. It's one person's judgment I'm afraid of. And then when I name the person then it becomes then it becomes real. Instead of being this amorphous like people, society, judgment, it's like Tom. Like do I really care what Tom thinks? I guess so. It seems like I'm not making this big change in my life because of Tom. >> Looks like Tom's more in control of my life than I am. Dude. So I remember this.

2:14When I was 19 years old, I was super angry. Like all 19-year-old men, right? That's the the standard default, right? I was angry at both my parents for who because I was 19, right? And I remember blaming them for everything. Blaming them for my life, blaming them for not being a better person. blame them for being a bad person. And I remember realizing that when I blamed them that I gave them control over my life. And then the idea that the people that I hated the most at the time were the ones who actually were controlling me was the thing that most sickened me to then actually flip my narrative to actually taking control.

2:50Like that was the one thought process. Like my mother, I'm giving her control over my romantic like my mother controls this? [ __ ] that. I was like No. And so like just the idea that somebody who I I was disgusted by at the time um had that much power is what gave me the power to start taking action. >> So, this hamster wheel thing that continues to distract you. I've got this concept called anxiety cost. Uh-huh.

3:16>> So, kind of like opportunity cost. >> Um when you have an unmade decision every single second that you spend thinking about the unmade decision could have been gotten back had you just made the decision. Oh, yeah. And realizing that it it's it's a justification for eating frogs earlier in the day. I need to answer that email. The longer that you wait until you answer that email, the more times you will think the thought I need to answer that email.

3:45>> Yeah. And if we assume that what truly truly matters in life is the time and the attention that we spend within that time your time is being captured and your attention is being captured by a thought that could have been gotten rid of had you have just done it. Had you have just had the conversation, broken up with the relationship, left the job, told the father, whatever. Done your stretches, cleaned your teeth, had a shower, whatever it is that you needed to do.

4:10All of that anxiety cost could have been gotten rid of had you just gone and done it. You can move through life at seven times the rate of other people by simply changing when you say you're going to make a decision from end of week to end of day. So, think about how that stacks up. So, it's like let's say that there were four decisions that you needed to make. If the normal person takes a week to make the decision and then their mind moves on to the next thing that they have anxiety for and start making that decision and decide another week, decide another week, decide another week. It's a month to make these four decisions.

4:43Whereas the the super the superman the takes one decision day one, one second decision day two, third decision day three, fourth decision day four. They aren't even finished the week yet and they're where the other person is at the end of the month. And like that speed of decision making, like not paying the attention cost, the opportunity cost of your time I think it's really profound in terms of how quickly people move through life in terms of achieving the goals that they set out. Because people are like, how did that how is that guy so young and he's achieved X, Y, and Z? It's like, well, what takes you a month to make a decision we make in an hour. And then the next hour I make another decision that takes you your next month. And so like that's how you can go 30 times or 100 times faster than than the quote average person who's overweight, has a thousand dollars in their bank account, you know, and is going to die at 70. Can you just go back to before you made that first decision with your dad? Because you've mentioned it, you know, people might look at your I would say ruthlessness at least in some regards with decision making. You know, hiring and firing and making these business decisions and there's all of these great stories about I had I had this thing and I realized that partner wasn't right. So, I got rid of that business. And you know, that's the sort of thing that would tear most people up for six months, 18 months, maybe forever. Yeah. And to look at that degree of cutthroatedness or at least decisiveness I think is almost unfathomable for a lot of people.

6:10Are you a representative avatar? Is pre leaving Baltimore Alex a representative avatar for the average person? I think so. I mean, I was high achieving. You know, I still mean like I did well in school. I tried hard. I did those things. But in terms of my risk tolerance and my fear of failure and my insecurities, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if anything, real talk, I'll bet you that I have more insecurities than most people because those insecurities are what drove me to do well in those things. Not because I cared about school, but because I cared about what other people thought about me. Yeah.

6:40Real quick, if you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information. And if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team and we will look at your business, see if we can help. And if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.