(The following is an excerpt from the book, Hacking Normal by John Stevenot available on Amazon.com)
“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs. It’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” – Michael Porter
Trade-offs are the first step in regaining control of our time.
They allow us to choose how our precious minutes are spent, rather than someone or something else choosing for us. Trade-offs are the calculated consequences that we decide to accept or deny when we make a choice.
For instance, the fact that you are reading this post is a choice that has consequences. You have either chosen to accept the consequences or you are blind to them. And, because you have made this choice, you are putting off other things that you could be doing such as watching TV, going for a run, or planning for a presentation you have next week.
At the core of this choice is the trade-off.
You have calculated, either consciously or unconsciously, that reading this post is a better use of your time and efforts than doing literally anything else (by the way, I’m honored).
The Hard Part About Trade-Offs
The hard part about understanding and using trade-offs is knowing which actions are best. I mean, that’s the goal, right? Wouldn’t you want every choice you make to deliver the highest return?
Of course!
But, if you are not in the practice of evaluating the trade-offs of life, it is very easy for some things to completely derail you from those that matter.
Starting Small
Here’s how I started evaluating things in order to get the most efficacious results…
I started small. I started with a few easy, daily disciplines that I knew were going to be beneficial to me in the long run. Every morning, I woke up and immediately got into the shower rather than hit the snooze button. I found that I had more energy throughout the day when I got up immediately, rather than wasting another nine minutes in a restless sleep.
Then I tried eating a healthy breakfast and, while I ate, instead of reading Facebook or the terrors of life from random news sites, I put on either soft classical music and meditated or I listened to excerpts of personal development from gurus such as Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins.
I chose to fill my head with calm, positive thoughts in the morning, rather than the drama of social media or the chaos of life. I found that this kept me vibrant and jovial throughout the day rather than pessimistic and gossipy.
Going Bigger
Then, once I started mastering the small stuff, I decided to take on bigger things. Now, bigger doesn’t mean I was upending my entire schedule for something completely different. Instead, I started to carve chunks of time out of my day to focus on things that I knew were going to benefit me in the long run.
I started taking 30 minutes of my lunch to read books in order to learn something new about myself (or my work industry). I began to write small blog posts for my website to help me cement the ideas from those books in my head. That meant that I was more likely to use them in my daily life.
Going Major
Only when I had established healthy routines and a constant appetite for learning and bettering myself did I start to change major parts of my life. I began to weigh the trade-offs I was making financially, emotionally, and physically.
At first, it was painful.
I didn’t want to come to grips with the fact that watching Netflix before going to bed was screwing up my sleep schedule (which was the cause of some irritableness that I couldn’t shake).
I didn’t want to succumb to the idea that I didn’t need to spend nine hours of my day working when four hours would suffice (I felt like I was a piece of shit for not working the whole day like everyone else).
But, like getting up and not hitting the snooze button, evaluating the trade-offs of these changes was going to put me in a place that I wanted to be in 5 or 10 years. And that was exciting.
Short-Term Versus Long-Term Trade-Offs
When I first started evaluating trade-offs, I didn’t know which actions were going to be good and which were going to be bad. The reality is, no one does.
We must decide and reflect on the consequences.
If it was a choice between something clearly bad versus something clearly good, it would only take us a millisecond to choose one path over the other.
But, when we evaluate our actions based on two outcomes that we would like, it’s a challenge. I would venture to say that it’s even more challenging when we must weigh two options that are beneficial to us.
Often, one is an immediate benefit while the other is a longer-term benefit.
For instance, investing in a Roth IRA is a great idea in the long run. It’s such a good idea that I believe everyone should max theirs out every single year. But, in the short run, it sucks having to give up over $5,000 of disposable income.
Buying a new car, purchasing new clothes, and going out to eat with friends is undoubtedly more exciting than investing in a Roth IRA, but those short-term gains are nothing compared to the compounded benefit you’ll get by investing in a Roth IRA over 40 years.
As someone who is looking to change his or her life, you need to be able to make the tough choices. Sometimes, though, those tough choices aren’t going to pan out in your favor. Hence, why I started small.
When you start small, you give yourself the opportunity to exercise your trade-off muscle.
As you recognize which trade-offs are better than others, start adding more “weight” to your choices. For a while, this new weight might be difficult, but as you exercise your trade-off muscle more, you’ll find that even these new choices will get easier and easier to make.
I always like to ask myself the following questions: Who am I becoming? Will option A or will option B be the most direct path to the life I want to live?