Make decisions that are mostly right, sort-of right, or on-balance right

There are two ways of thinking:

• Binary thinking – right/wrong, yes/no, good/bad, start/finish.
• Directional thinking – moving forward, a step closer, lighter grey/darker grey, an experiment, an opportunity to learn, smart-ish, safer, right-ish, wrong-ish, finished-ish.

Binary thinking feels safe. It creates a world where things are black or white. In the binary world there are start dates and finish dates. Things happen sequentially in a linear, orderly fashion. The largest and most powerful part of our brain loves the idea that this is how the world works. It craves the clarity of a world that unfolds in a straight line. It’s happy if there’s a plan and it takes comfort that if we stick to it, everything will be ok.

Sadly this isn’t how the world works. Success is always in a mess, it unfolds from a world of grey decisions that are ‘directionally correct’.

Success is a network effect from dozens of simultaneous side events coming together over time. The decisions are never easy at the level of high performance – they involve trade-offs and risks.

The way success looks from a distance is as if it was a plan that came to fruition. The way it is behind the scenes is a mess that was moving in vaguely the right direction most of the time.

Directional thinking is suitable in the domain of uncertainty. It’s the thinking required to keep the many moving parts of our life moving ‘roughly’ towards a desirable outcome – more often than not. Directional thinking doesn’t resolve any tension. It doesn’t feel safe or complete. Therefore it requires emotional intelligence.

As a growing person, we must stop looking for answers. Stop the quest for a beggining or an end. Let go of clear boundaries. Make our guidelines broad at best. There are no right answers – only directionally correct answers.

The only way forward in this transformational time is to make decisions that are mostly right, sort-of right, on-balance right based on all the incomplete information we have access to.

Be ok with grey. The best decisions are directionally correct.