Trade-Offs

THERE ARE NO SOLUTIONS, ONLY TRADE-OFFS

What do you think of this quote by Thomas Sowell?

“there are no solutions, only trade-offs.”

If this is true, this means that anything we do (or don't do) will have trade-offs.

If we accept this fact, we can give ourselves permission not to uncover the perfect solution (there might not be one), but rather to reflect on possible trade-offs and decide how we feel about them.

We can do this for small decisions (the trade-off for eating at this restaurant is waiting 20 minutes; how do we feel about that?) and big ones (the trade-off of saying yes to the new opportunity is giving up my fully remote working structure and being in the office 3 days per week; how do I feel about that?)

As Cheryl Strayed reminds us in her exceptional piece, The Ghost Ship that Did Not Carry Us,

“I'll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

Our sister life, and our sister decisions, are important and beautiful and perhaps not the ones we choose. Exploring trade-offs is one possible avenue to help us determine which path to choose.

What do you think?

Any decisions you're currently in the middle of at the moment? Or, any ghost ships you've set free?

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Thanks for reading.