Only 3% of Your Decisions Matter, or, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!

“We’re very lucky in the band in that we have two visionaries, David and Nigel.  They’re like poets, like Shelley and Byron.  They’re two distinct types of visionaries, it’s like fire and ice, basically.  I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.” – This is Spinal Tap

Oh, I don’t need alcohol to make bad decisions.  But it doesn’t hurt.  Just ask Tiger Woods.

Life is filled with events.  Some of them are predictable, some not.  But I generally break the events that will influence the course of my life into three categories because I’m sitting in a meeting and it kind of looks like I’m actually working when I take blog notes:

1. Certainties

Certainties are just as shown on the label – things that are certain to happen.  These are one extreme of the spectrum, for instance unless a race of aliens is intent on destroying humanity so that Bono™ doesn’t escape the Earth and infect the galaxy and drops a Moon-size batch of anti-matter into the Sun causing a solar flare that extinguishes life, the Sun will come up tomorrow.  Notice I didn’t say that the race of aliens was evil, in fact it seems entirely logical and rational and a good choice – Bono© as a trade for the rest of humanity.  Other examples of certainty:

• Death.
• Taxes.
• Someone saying “Death and Taxes” when they write about certainties (at least every year since Christopher Bullock first wrote the phrase in 1716 in Ye Olde Bloge Poste on the Worlde Wilde Web).
• Gravity.  Like Bono®, it also sucks.
• Celebrities flying in private jets to protest global warming.

2. Impossibilities

Impossibilities are things that cannot happen in this Universe.  Okay, it’s not a creative title, like calling your dog “dog” and your cat “cat” – and we both know people who have done just that.

The number of things that I thought were impossible were nearly zero when I was under age five or so.  Starships were only 20 years in the future.  I would own a tank.  And I’d marry Miss Roberts, my first grade teacher.  About the time I went to high school, the number of Impossible things started to climb.  I think this happens when you start experiencing disappointments in life, like the Space Shuttle.  I mean, why did humanity spend so much time trying to get to space with a ship that had the glide ratio of a brick?

I think my Impossibles peaked in my thirties.  After a divorce and NOT winning a MacArthur© Grant for my incredible ability to sleep on the couch while the kids watched Saturday morning cartoons, my view of what was possible shrank.  But as I grew older, I kept seeing the same pattern – if people tried things, they often achieved them.  There are, however, things that are really Impossible.  What are some Impossible things?

• A Beatles® reunion.   A living Beatles™ reunion.
• The molecules of Leonardo Dicaprio spontaneously rearranging themselves to form something useful, like a ham sandwich or a beer.
• A good, new Star Wars® movie will be made during my lifetime.

Is it me, or have John and George lost weight?

I think one of the really neat things about being human is the curiosity and creativity that allows us to think of things that could never, ever happen, like Johnny Depp learning to read.  It’s a great day to be alive!

 

3. Things That Might Happen

Most things in life are neither Certain nor Impossible.  They fall into that grey area of possibility that makes life interesting.  I find it fascinating that so much of life consists of these contrasts – in between the chaos of fire Venus and the stasis of icy Mars lies, well, us.  The other day I heard an astronomer state if you take average star weight and the weight of an atom, you end up at about 50 kilograms©, whatever that is.  But the average human weighs . . . 62 kilograms®.  It’s almost like this place was made for us.

Hmmm.

Anyway, while not everything interesting happens in the middle, most interesting things happen in the middle.  But, in the interest of continuing to subcategorize, I see two types of events in that sweet middle region:

A.  Events You Can’t Influence

Sometimes, whatever’s going to happen is beyond your control.  Despite what you want or any action you might take, the outcome will be the same.  You can’t change a thing.  Call it fate.  It’s not certain that the event will happen, mind you, it’s just that you can’t control it.  Some examples are:

• How much Oprah will weigh tomorrow morning.
• Collapse of the global financial system.
• Whether Ilhan Omar will join the Hair Club for Men.

Baldness – I hear it’s more common if your family interbreeds too often . . . oh.  Sorry. H/T WRSA (LINK).

So, this is a record – my first back-to-back meme.  Is that not MacArthur Grant® worthy?

B.  Things you can influence or control

Here is where it gets interesting.  In my option (and in my experience) most people can control more about their lives than they want to admit.  Personally, it’s scary how many things that I’ve tried to do in my life that I’ve accomplished, which makes me wonder if I haven’t aimed too low.  I’ve recently changed one of my goals to be horribly unrealistic (learn how to make a tasty pizza, or at least buy a tasty pizza) so I’ll keep you updated on the progress on that stretch goal.

But what sorts of things can you control?

• Your weight.
• If you shower.
• If you smoke.
• Your psychic power to make Taylor Swift love you using only your mind.
• If you go broke.

Now, I didn’t say you have total control of your life, but some actions you take (not decisions you make, mind you, but actions that you take) can influence most things about your life, including how you die and when you die.

But even as beautifully written as the preceding was, it’s not the where the post is going to end up.  The point I’m getting to is, how many events that occur in your life, choices that you make, should you really worry about.

I’m thinking about 3% or less.

From my vantage point, most things don’t matter.  Examples?

• Yellow or blue Post-It™ notes?
• Romaine or iceberg lettuce?
• Tom Brady’s 2015 clone or Tom Brady’s 2018 clone.

Most decisions that you make simply do not matter at all.  My personal difficulty is that I sometimes don’t process a decision like that.  I want to make the right decision so I’ll spend time researching and learning online about a purchase I’m going to make . . . of something I’ll use exactly once and then toss into a closet.  Heck, as an example tonight I’ve spent about half an hour trying to decide between one type of laptop and another.  Does it matter?

Probably not.

What I did with the flowchart was just start with a random decision or event.  Does it matter?  I pulled out Pareto’s rule, and off the bat, 80% of decisions in your life . . . don’t matter at all.  Paper or plastic.  .556 or .762.  Drilling a hole in your head or spending time with five year old children.

That means that 20% of the events matter.  Cool.  How many can your actions influence?  I’m betting 80% of that 20%.  That’s a huge number and from my experience it seems about right.  You’re rarely a complete victim.  That’s 16% left.

Is it the effort worth it.  I came up with . . . 80% of the time, no.  The time and effort to manage every event, even just 16% of them, is a lot.  You have to let some things go, since even if it matters, it’s not worth your time to influence everything around you.

The math is simple.  97% of decisions in life you should make with either no care or minor care.  They just don’t matter.  The good news is that means if you manage and select the decision you make, you can live, more or less, the life you want by only dealing with 3%.

Why?  I find that things we think are important, that society tells us are important decisions or important actions are not.  Here’s what I’ve found:

• We bought Stately Wilder Manor© about a decade ago. The Mrs. was living in Houston, and the house that we’d fallen in love with had cheated on us and was purchased by two doctors.  I was working outside of Houston, but we still needed a place to live, because we were going to move.  I kept looking.  I found a house.  Given that (then) the market was hot, I put in an offer.  The Mrs. had never even seen the house until the day we moved in.

How do you get the dead hooker smell out of carpet?  Asking for a friend.

• The last care I bought was a replacement for The Mrs.’ MUV (Mrs. Utility Vehicle). I was passing through a large city in Midwestia, stopped off at a car lot, and bought a car.  They delivered it to Modern Mayberry the next day.  Again, The Mrs. hadn’t driven or seen the new car.

Okay, it’s not that bad.  But while The Boy was driving it some woodland critter ran straight into the side of it.  The dent does not look hooker related.

Within relatively broad parameters, most decisions, even decisions that society says are “big” decisions, don’t matter.  Which house we got didn’t matter all that much, we just needed a house.  Admittedly we are horrible neighbors, so it’s best if there are no pesky homeowner associations.

And I wasn’t like that on the first house I bought.  We must have seen dozens of houses over months until we found . . . the one.  The first car I bought, I agonized over the decision.  Until I found . . . the one.

Strangely, I didn’t spend nearly enough time selecting my first wife she who will not be named and that had a much larger impact than any house or car ever could to my life.  There’s a joke in here about test driving and rentals, but I’m just gonna skip it.

It’s all the aftermarket add-ons that get you.

The point is not that I was young and stupid, although I really was young and stupid.

The point is:  Don’t worry.  Plan?  Sure.  Prepare?  Absolutely.  But like Pop Wilder always said, “Don’t pay interest on money you haven’t borrowed yet, son.”

97% of actions you take . . . don’t matter.  Don’t sweat them.  And don’t spend a second worrying about things you can’t change or influence.

But on those things you can?  Strike hard, like the fist of an angry god.  Never give up.  You can move mountains that way.  Feel motivated?  Good!

Now go out and get it done!  Oh, it’s Friday?

Kick back and get it done Monday.

Okay, I did once upon a time pretend my toy Thompson submachine gun was a phaser®.  Once.