This is the second in a series of articles to let you see my thought process. For what that’s worth!
Get A Bit Of Perspective
If I have a decision to make that isn’t a yes / no one (which would have been sorted out by John’s Law Number 1), I have a strategy that helps me make an informed choice.
I picture myself lying in a bed. I’m staring at the ceiling but I’m not really looking at it. I can hear people around me but I’m not really listening to them. I don’t feel any pain, in fact I’d don’t really feel much of anything. It’s probably the drugs. You see it’s decades from now and I’m lying on my death-bed. I know I’m on my way out and I’m running through my life in my head seeing what I made of it all.
I then find myself at the exact point of making the decision I’m about to make. Back to the present. I play out each possible decision in my head and see what the death-bed version of myself would make of each choice. The one that makes my grey, withered old self smile is the one I’ll do.
The way I see it, nothing much we do really changes anything in the grand scheme of things. We’re pretty small, living on a pretty small planet circling an insignificant star in a rather unspectacular part of an average galaxy in a near infinite cosmos filled with a near infinite number of galaxies. Once I have that perspective in mind I’m free to make an informed choice without being influenced unduly. It works for me.
Sort of like extrapolating the relationship between all matter with say, a piece of fairy cake ….
That’s an interesting thought…
Spookily, I was already a follower of this law because whatever you do, you die anyway. How depressing!
John, do you ever actually make any decisions? Do you agonise over them for hours and days and weeks and years until the opportune moment for action has passed, making your decision a default ‘do nothing’?
What about a more intuitive approach to problem solving?
To put it another way, if it’s something you’d actually remember on your death bed, then it’s probably important enough to warrant a bit of cogitation, otherwise, take a best guess and replan on the fly if you happened to be wrong.
Bah! What do I know?
OK, while i’m impressed at the depth of your perspective rule, i’m totally amazed with your ability to break these rules down. it must be an engineering/computer geek thing that makes them think in such detail and process!
Very interesting…and not stupid! Remembering Rowen and Martin laugh in, or are you too young and me too old?