Your Decisions = Your Life
October 14, 2020Questions Of Self
December 14, 2020Every day in many different ways, we work on the premise of evaluating cost vs benefit.
-Grocery shopping
-Hiring of staff
-Car servicing
-Telephone plans
-Computer software
We do this sometimes consciously and sometime subconsciously, but the reality is that we do it, and we do it a lot.
But do we do it across other areas of our lives?
Do we look at both aspects… cost and benefit?
Or are we that busy or that focussed that we miss a number of true advantages?
Let’s look at few examples:
Self assembling Scandinavian furniture
We bring it home and then what happens? Yep, we just start ripping the box apart looking for pieces that, in our mind, will go together easily just so we can get a sense of achievement. Or provide the feeling that we are on the right track or we are winning, or we are getting the job done.
But what if we took the time to actually read the instructions?
What!?
Read the instructions!
I can’t do that, it takes too much time. It will cost me valuable assembly time.
Reading the instructions- Cost: takes 1-2 hours. Benefit: an assembly time of 2 hours.
Not reading the instructions- Benefit: straight into building. Cost: frustration, argument with your partner, project doesn’t get completed, tools get thrown around the house.
So, we need to start looking at life through the same lens that we do with our normal everyday purchases, sometimes the cost is going to be high, however the benefit, if we have done our homework correctly, is going the be even higher.
But sometimes there will be aspects that have very little cost, but bring with it a great benefit, yet we still don’t follow them.
Think:
-Manners
-Courtesy
-Smiling
-Listening
-Gratitude
-Empathy
The single commodity that everyone these days seems to be short on is – time. In our desire to save us time, we usually overlook the true benefit of taking time upfront to give us time on the back end.
Once again, there are specifics that we should use the cost vs benefit analysis with and then again, there are our general everyday opportunities that we could do a much better job with.
Observation….cost = time. Benefit = understanding
Thinking….cost = time. Benefit = understanding, clarity, perspective
Preparation….cost = time. Benefit = stress reduced accomplishment
Realistically everything is going to have an associated cost. However, if you take your time and understand the situation from all angles and evaluate the cost upfront against the true benefits on the back end, your P & L of life will start to look pretty good.
As Albert Einstein once said “If I had five minutes to save the world, I would spend four minutes studying what the problem is, and one minute solving it”
The Journey Continues!