Quotes About Choice

What are you supposed to do when something like that happens? Do you hold on or let go?

Your participation is now optional.

want to, you say it's not a good idea." She shook her head. Grown-

How would you learn right if you knew not wrong? How would you choose good if you knew not evil? How would you recognise the light if there were no darkness? How would you move if there were no resistance?

In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing.

Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.

If you feel like you've got a close call between quitting and persevering, it's likely that quitting is the better choice.

At the moment that quitting becomes the objectively best choice, in practice things generally won't look particularly grim, even though the present does contain clues that can help you figure out how the future might unfold. The problem is, perhaps because of our aversion to quitting, we tend to rationalize away the clues contained in the present that would allow us to see how bad things really are.

When people result, they look at whether the result was good or bad to figure out if the decision was good or bad.

RESULTING A mental shortcut in which we use the quality of an outcome to figure out the quality of a decision.

Determining whether a decision is good or bad means examining the quality of the beliefs informing the decision, the available options, and how the future might turn out given any choice you make.

The decision you make determines which set of outcomes are possible and how likely each of those outcomes is. But it doesn't determine which of that set of outcomes will actually happen.

Luck is what intervenes between your decision (which has a range of possible outcomes) and the outcome that you actually get. Because any decision determines only the set of possible outcomes (some good, some bad, some in between), this means good outcomes can result from both good and bad

Most decisions have a mix of upside and downside potentials. When figuring out whether a decision is good or bad, you are essentially asking if the upside potential compensates for the risk of the downside.

As Nietzsche points out, regret can do nothing to change what has already happened. We just wallow in remorse about something over which we no longer have any control. But if regret happened before a decision instead of after, the experience of regret might get us to change a choice likely to result in a bad outcome.

Whenever we choose an alternative (whether it is taking a new job or moving to Des Moines for month), we are automatically rejecting every other possible choice. All those rejected alternatives are paths to possible futures where things could be better or worse than the path we chose. There is potential opportunity cost in any choice we forgo.

When we field our outcomes as the future unfolds, we always run into this problem: the way things turn out could be the result of our decisions, luck, or some combination of the two.

Do you want to just let it all out, or are you thinking of what to do about it next?

information. We

Essentially, regardless of the history they have with the decision, they ask themselves, "If I were approaching this decision fresh, would I want to enter into this course of action?

We are much more bothered by the downside potential of changing course than we are by the downside potential of staying on the path we're already on.

For any single decision, there are different ways the future could unfold—some better, some worse. When you make a decision, the decision makes certain paths possible (even if you don't know where they lead) and others impossible. The decision you make determines which set of outcomes are possible and how likely each of those outcomes is. But it doesn't determine which of that set of outcomes will actually happen.

Wrapped within all these forces interfering with quitting decisions is that we do not think of sticking with the status quo as an active decision in the same way that we view switching as one. We are much more concerned with errors of commission than errors of omission (failures to act). We're more wary of "causing" a bad outcome by acting than "letting it happen" through inaction.

Switching to something, like a new job or a new major or a new relationship or a new business strategy, is perceived as a new decision, and an active one. In contrast, we don't really view the choice to stick with the status quo as a decision at all.