Life is a Series of Trade-offs… Pure and Simple

We always want more. And of course, we want it now. Didn’t your boss just tell you that you’ll just have to do more with less because business is off? (The truth is there’s a number she has to meet).

Life is a series of trade-offs… yet, we expect more.

Life—it’s trade-off after trade-off. Pure and simple. We all try to deny this fact, but the brutal truth is that life is a series of choices and trade-offs. The simple rule is this…

When you say yes to one choice, you’re automatically saying no to something else. And the gotcha! is this…

The thing you unwittingly said no to might be far more important than many of your yes’s. Let that soak in. 

This moment, this thing you are giving away like it is worth nothing. This is actually worth everything. The one truly essential increment of time.”

—Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism 

To say you don’t have time is a terrible excuse.

If you say you don’t have enough time, well, you’re getting warmer. And wouldn’t it be more honest to say, I am choosing to do less important things with the time I have?

All because we rush into saying yes because someone happens to be skilled at asking in a way that’s hard to no without feeling like a jerk.

And it’s still a trade-off.

Plus, it’s easier to just say yes.

Even your mom understood this truth. She was trying to save you from yourself because she knew… she knew it well.

Remember when she made you choose between two options? You can have the red one or the blue one. She stood her ground, right? Until she gave in to who knows what? I sure learned to negotiate skillfully.

Isn’t that what’s happening in reality?

We begin to believe we can negotiate with father time in an attempt to skirt making thoughtful choices.

So, doesn’t life come down to how well we navigate the trade-offs we face? It can’t be treated the same as choosing between the red and blue toys like it was when we were little. Back then, the choice came with no real consequences.

Good engineers don’t whine about trade-offs, because they realize that they’re the entire point. If there were no trade-offs, we wouldn’t need their help, there would be no interesting problems worth solving.” 

—Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog

So, what can we do?

The solution is one of those simple, but not easy propositions.

First, we train ourselves to understand that anytime we say yes to a choice—and it IS a choice, we are passively saying no to something else.

Then, we get ourselves to accept that with the abundance of opportunities and choices life throws our way, we are limited by time and resources. One of the two is fixed… not variable.

And learn to say yes and no with thoughtful intention. It’s a zero-sum game, my friends. At least until some brilliant mind figures out how to bend time.

Be untucked.

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p.s. By the way, pay no attention to the red/blue thing… entirely coincidental.

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