Thread by @george__mack

I've yet to see one Type-A personality fail because they didn't work hard enough.

I've seen countless fail because they were working on the wrong thing.

This is a condition I call 'Opportunity Cost Blindness' and it plagues every hard-working person I've ever met.

THREAD...

1. Opportunity Cost Blindness is a parasite that robs us of our time and energy.

2. Opportunity Cost Blindness convinces us we should be optimizing marginal returns out of our current strategy, at the expense of 1000x returns out of other strategies we could be explorining.

3. Opportunity Cost Blindness is only internal, never external.

We can see it so clearly when a friend should break up with their partner, quit their job, close down their company or move cities.

We struggle to see it in ourselves.

Why? 👇

4. Opportunity Cost Blindness feeds off of our need for consistency and identity.

It looks to optimize the decisions a past version of yourself made, rather than make new decisions with the information you now have available.

5. We're so afraid of admitting we've made the wrong decision. We would rather convince ourselves and the rest of the world that it was the right decision than quit.

The sunk cost fallacy is a cancer that eats the ultimate scarce resources that matter - Time and Energy.

6. Opportunity Cost Blindness turns our egos into Frogs sitting in boiling water.

We'd rather burn to death than admit defeat.

The irony is that the only defeat was the inability to admit defeat.

7. There are 7 billion people in the world.

What are the odds that the best friends for you went to the same school at the same time as you?

What are the odds that the best romantic partner for you was in the same dorms as you at university?

8. Don't listen to the media.

Self-doubt isn't a bad thing.

Self-doubt is a superpower if it is applied against reality.

Stress test every assumption you have until you find out what is true.

9. Iterate like there's no tomorrow:

"The compound interest from many quick small iterations is greater than the compound interest from a few slow big iterations." - @naval

10. Opportunity Cost Blindness always focuses on the micro and ignores the macro.

Deleting & Exploring >>> Optimising

11. Instead of optimizing the Feng Shui in your room, we should just move and live with the smartest people we know.

It's better to sleep on the floor with the right people than in a king-sized bed with the wrong people.

12. Opportunity Cost Blindness focuses on reducing the downside.

"I think the biggest career mistake young people make is they’re afraid to look dumb, so they follow safe paths that cap their downside, not realizing that they also cap their upside" - @eriktorenberg

13. It's baffling how we can look back on ourselves from 5 years ago and cringe, and not realize that 5 years from now we will be cringing again at our present self.

A great exercise is to ask yourself: "What current actions am I doing will I cringe at in 5 years time?"

14. The only way to defeat Opportunity Cost Blindness is to acknowledge that it is always running.

Assume that everything you are doing is wrong and stress test it against reality.

15. Attachment is what creates Opportunity Cost Blindness.

Therefore, detachment is what can kill it.

Look at yourself like a video game character.

https://twitter.com/george__mack/status/1049009037021523968

16. Your friends already have the answers.

However, they'd rather give you white lies than hurt your ego.

All the years of lying to yourself attract people who would rather lie to you than tell you the truth.

16. To attract honest friends, be an honest friend.

Don't pull the punches with your feedback, and they won't pull the punches with their feedback.

17. “Integrity is a closeness of fit of what you would say to someone’s face and what you would say about them when they leave the room” - @SamHarrisOrg

18. Even better than friends are complete strangers who have no skin in your game.

They don't have to tell the emperor he has clothes.

You can get more value in a 2-minute conversation with a blunt honest stranger than you can from 10 years of dishonest friends.

19. Startup idea to fix Opportunity Cost Blindness:

Upload your life and your assumptions for it to be reviewed by well-meaning constructive strangers who can see your reality clearer than you could ever imagine.

Call it "Emperors Clothes".

SUMMARY:

- Explore your options.
- Always be a student.
- The only mistake is the inability to admit mistakes.
- Applied self-doubt is a superpower.
- Honest friends attract honest friends.
- Seek out feedback.
- Blunt strangers can change your life.

PS. This is not advice and more of a note to self.

I spend all my life thinking about how hard I'm working.

Yet upon reflection, every mistake I have ever made has never been my work ethic, but what I was working on.

“People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall” - Thomas Merton

Dont try and optimise the carpet store.