How The Magic of Having a Direction in Life Makes Your Decision-Making Easy
Life is complex, so stop making it harder by wandering around without purpose.
If you assume that your life is a resource, time is its unit.
Your time is finite.
The stoics remind us of this in “memento mori.” Remember, you’ll die. Because being finite creatures, we must decide what we focus on. We can’t have it all. The key to a good life is focusing on what’s important to you.
Choose what’s important. Doubledown on that. Enjoy the ride.
As a result, you’ll see your life as meaningful.
Deciding what to do next becomes easier when you know where you’re going. You orient everything toward your direction. The decision process gets simplified. Your attention is on getting what you want. New shiny ideas or things are no distractions to you.
It’s better to finish something than start everything, not finish anything.
I want to show you how to start creating a direction to get what you want
Warren Buffet and doing precisely what brings value — choosing a direction
You can categorize everything into two sets: what you want and what you don’t want.
According to Warren Buffet, you must actively ignore what you don’t want to maximize the chance of getting what you want.
21st of August 2023: I’ve found out that Warren Buffet never approached goals like this. So, the additional credibility is gone. Still, I’m using this to this day.
Focus on what matters to you. Avoid the rest at all costs.
How to implement the idea in practice?
- Write 25 goals,
- Select 5, the most important for you (here you can check how),
- These 5 goals are your direction in life,
- The rest becomes your “unwanted list.” Avoid them at all cost
- Only when you’re done with your 5 goals can you work on the next
People tend to pursue the goals from the unwanted list.
They fear of missing out on opportunities they can provide. They lose energy because they’re spread thin. The biggest potential lies in the wanted list, in those 5 goals. You selected them. They’re the most important ones. Respect your choice, and laser focus on the big 5.
Above, you can see my first-ever written list of goals. On the left is the list to ignore. On the right are the 5 most important ones:
- Buy a flat
- Create an open-source app and gather a community around it
- Stabilize my weight to 85–87kg, care about my shape and health
- Discover how people think to be able to look at things from their perspective
- Train my mind, so it stays sharp — math, physics, learning
Now I know some of these goals need more specificity and some less.
Then it was a big thing to finally know what I wanted. The list is from 31 January 2021, and after 2 years, I only have #2 to get. Having a direction allowed me to pursue activities that gave me what I wanted.
To buy a flat, I had to take a mortgage. I had to organize my finances and gather money for the contribution to get the loan. I would do none of those without the goal of buying a flat.
Your goals serve as a visualization of your destination. They’re the light of the lighthouse pointing you the way. Use them to evaluate everything you do.
To decide means to reject all other choices. Make the process easier by having a direction
We’re afraid of cutting off our options.
Everything seems important when it comes to getting rid of it. Having a direction makes a decision like this bearable. You resign from something for the greater good.
I always gathered a lot of things.
Same as my dad and his dad. Our cellars were full of junk. My grandpa never smoked, yet he had 100 packs of cigarettes. He also had 10 drills. And a lot of alcohol.
Our thinking was that someday we might use those things.
Maybe we could. But having them wasn’t free. Our mind extends itself over our possessions. We care about them. We think about them. They’re an additional burden for our busy minds.
I read that if you haven’t used something for a year, you never will.
That was helpful. I could get rid of things, but I clinched to ideas, projects, and whims. What ultimately helped me was having a direction. Consciously choosing goals through negotiations with myself gave me the tools. The tools to know what I need to have and what I need to do to get what I want.
Knowing what I want is so powerful that it straightened my life.
Before, I was paralyzed by anxiety, but now I act based on anxiety. Now, I know what I want. To get that, I must become something more than I’m now. Anxiety is a must. Together with fear, they show me the way.
Negotiate with yourself about what you want. Let your fears show you the way.
Knowing what you want makes plans work for you
We’re finite creatures in a world of infinite possibilities.
It’s crucial to know what we want to avoid wasting time. Pleasing others and learning skills we never cared about are not worthy of our precious resource. The only things worth being in your schedule are those pushing you towards what you want.
As usual, I learned the hard way.
My days were full. Planned to the minutes. Then I met a girl. And I was ready for a relationship. I had to resign from many things to have time for us.
One of my 5 goals was to create a relationship.
I reviewed my schedule. Anything ineffective or not related to what I wanted was out. My side programming projects — gone. The only reason I could clean my schedule was clearly defined goals. I’d have no idea how to prioritize my tasks without them.
Stop planning to feel productive. Plan to get what you want.
If you don’t create a direction for your life, someone else will
If you have no plan for the future, you’ll follow someone else’s.
You’ll run around in circles fulfilling whims of yours and others. One person would want this, another that. In the meantime, you’ll get distracted by the new shiny thing. Instead of going step by step to what you want, you’ll change your goal a million times.
You can’t build your future this way.
It’s like laying bricks randomly. No matter how long you do this, they’ll never become home.
One brick is meaningless, but 10000 is a house.
Having a direction is building a house out of what you’ve learned. It’s more beneficial to choose any direction than to choose none. No direction means you’ll always struggle to find meaning. You’ll have to rely on what others serve you. Choosing and following your way creates opportunities to learn what is useful.
Choose a direction and follow it to avoid running in circles.
Summary
Life rushes, waiting for no one.
Wouldn’t it be great to get out of its way and flow with it instead?
Get out of the way. Become the solution.
Find out what you want. Use Warren Buffet’s idea:
- create a list of 25 goals and select 5 of them
- 5 is your to-do list, 20 is your not-to-do list Evaluate everything in the context of your 5 goals.
Knowing what you want will simplify your decision-making process. Letting go of things will be easier if you have clearly defined goals. If something doesn’t bring you value, should you do it? Cut out the fluff.
Feeling productive is useless if it comes without results. Start planning to get what you want.
Following a direction allows you to build a shelter iteratively. No direction means running around, laying bricks randomly. One brick means nothing, but 10000 are a home. Build it brick by brick by following your goals.
Make your decisions support you.
Use the magic of having a direction to navigate through storms, mists, pain, and suffering.
Looking for a way to get what you want?
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