Stupid Decisions, Philosophical Cartoons and Something Useful

1. Quote about luck

This is luck in its purist form. A bad decision that delivered a good outcome.

It should have delivered a bad outcome, and over the long term, repeating bad decisions will more often deliver bad outcomes.

However, sometimes we get lucky.

What matters most, is our decision making process. More thoughtful, calculated decision, over the long-term will deliver good outcomes.

Every now and then, things will go against us - this is bad luck.

As humans we need answers, we need to know cause and effect. Why the bad outcome? Putting it down to bad luck doesn’t sit well with us. Because of the one unfavourable outcome, we change our decision making process.

In poker they call this Resulting. Players have a tendency to judge the quality of their decision on the immediate outcome of their hand.

When a player is "resulting," they are overly focused on the outcome of a single hand or session, often basing their assessment of the quality of their decision solely on whether they won or lost.

This mindset fails to consider the inherent uncertainty and variability of poker, where short-term luck can play a significant role in the outcome of an individual hand.

It disregards the fundamental principle of evaluating decisions based on their expected outcome over the long-term.

We also have our self serving bias. We want to protect our self serving image that we are smart, capable and wise.

We want to attribute good outcomes to our skill. But we attribute bad outcomes to luck.

Again, disregarding the uncertainty and variability in this complex system called: life.

A bad decision that delivers an unintentional good outcome is easy to explain in hindsight. But difficult to predict with foresight.

We often hide the fact that the results were not aligned with out intentions.

2. A philosophical cartoon to ponder

Victor Frankl, survivor of the Holocaust, an existentialist and psychotherapist, and author of my most gifted and recommended book, described this kind of phenomenon in a more elegant statement in, Mans Search for Meaning.

Frankl wrote, “‘Sunday neurosis’ [is] that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest”

Being exposed to the frequency of our meaningless tasks can bring a sense of nihilism (nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no objective meaning or purpose.) When the busyness of our lives comes to halt, we’re left with our thoughts.

Frankl, went on to say that mans greatest gift is the ability to ‘will meaning’ into life.

Finding a ‘purpose’ is a way to combat this. Martin Heigger, another existentialist said that we are ‘thrown’ into the world without a clue of what to do here - looking for what he called a ‘project.’

It can come in many shapes and forms. Some people find it in raising children, some in religion, others in entrepreneurship.

The important take away from this, is to find your project.

3. An article I loved

If you struggle with copy writing, you’re not alone. It’s a creative process that requires skill. I’ve found this article immensely helpful because it provides you with a well guided template to follow.

I have used this more times than I can count. It’s my default for when I need to clearly communicate a marketing message in one form or another.

We actually use this on our website at Partnar.io “ B2B Partnerships for D2C Brands” 

The template used for this is: {What} for {Who}. What is your product and who is it for?

Check out all 7 below.

If you enjoyed one of these topics, please forward to a friend and let them know why you enjoyed it.

Ryan