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John’s Law Number 2

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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.

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Creator of John's Background Switcher. Scotsman, footballer, photographer, dog owner, risk taker, heart breaker, nice guy. Some of those are lies.

6 Comments Join the Conversation

  1. Sort of like extrapolating the relationship between all matter with say, a piece of fairy cake ….

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  2. 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?

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  3. 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!

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  4. Very interesting…and not stupid! Remembering Rowen and Martin laugh in, or are you too young and me too old?

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