Thereโs no decision-making without constraints
What does decision-making without constraints look like? Here are three high-stakes examples.
๐Renรฉ Redzepi, head chef of three Michelin-star restaurant Noma, only uses native Nordic ingredients to create delicious food. Nordic winters are long and unforgiving. Foraging for ingredients is tough. But being forced to do so is a recipe for surprise: โplucking grass from rotten seaweed to find it tastes like coriander or biting into ants to find they taste just like lemons.โ
๐Celebrated writer Neil Gaiman always writes his first drafts on paper. When he was editing a short-story anthology in the late eighties, the average entry he received was about 3000 words. Five-seven years later, that swelled to up to 9000 words but these entries โdidnโt really have much more story than the 3000-word ones.โ Wondering why, he realized it was the ease of word processors over typewriters and handwriting. Adding words wasnโt work, choosing was. The computer led to turgid writing. The typewriter or the fountain pen made you write careful prose. Thatโs what is most important to a writer.
๐Retired US Army General Stan McChrystal believes military leaders are better at developing leaders because they donโt have the luxury of throwing money at the problem. They do so by maximizing purpose for soldiers because they cannot distribute bigger annual bonuses to employees, like civilian leaders do.
๐๐จ๐ฎ ๐ฐ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐ข๐ฌ๐ข๐จ๐ง-๐ฆ๐๐ค๐๐ซ ๐ฐ๐ข๐ญ๐ก๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ ๐๐จ๐ง๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐๐ข๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ. Some will even welcome them. Why? The best decision-makers believe limitations breed creativity. So they take a limitation and create a better solution ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ค๐ข๐ถ๐ด๐ฆ of it. ๐ก
This is how they do it ๐
Constraints kill distraction. Direction emerges when distraction dies. If progress is speed in the right direction, having direction means progress pared to a single dimension. Scalar is much easier to tame than vector is. Now you have your path set out. Now you are free to gather speed ๐ Now you are free to create.
Before you plunge into your next decision worried about the things you donโt have, ask yourself: What if thereโs nothing to change about your situation? What if this is it?
And then just leave your mind wide open.
