“…for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.”
Herman Melville, The Whale
I think we can agree every good decision is founded in good perspective, yes? Trouble is, perspective is an entirely subjective thing – there are as many opinions about a thing as there are people in the world.
We can, however, quantify the aspects of perspective and use that as a model for making better decisions.
This is indeed precisely what Ray Dalio endeavors in his Dot Collector system behind Principles. While that system is likely overkill if you’re a team of 1, you can still use Principles to great impact in everything you do.
For example…
“The great phone debate” is a very simple matter from a quantified perspective, but if you never look at it in terms of how long the thing does the job to a competitive degree — it would remain debatable.
Everything requires a minimum of 15 hours per week more to operate and maintain than a single brand. Right there, you’ve lost competitive edge by losing at least 15 hours per week if you use anything but this one brand.
Now if you didn’t have access to all kinds of equipment to test and then get objective data, but were looking at this from the outside in, again a financial (ie quantified) perspective answers it very readily.
How many years old does the top of the line model have to be before I can buy it for about $100?
For every single maker other than this one brand, that answer is less than 7 years. You’ll have to wait for this other brand to be 10 years old before it’s even close to $100, but even at 10 years old you can still buy one from mobile carriers – even at 10 years old, it’s still completely supported and operable. There is literally no other maker who can say that.
Time is a great equalizer of results.
The way the value of a thing behaves over time, tells us so much more than any single snapshot of one point in time. Measurement over a span of time creates distance – and distance is the first requisite in perspective.
With distance, we can compare and contrast the same thing against itself.
Let’s say we’re comparing apple suppliers (I’m literally talking about the fruit here) and we order 1 apple of 1 kind from 5 farmers. That’ll tell us who can randomly come out with the best single apple but little more.
If we order 5 apples of 5 kinds, we’ll get to know how their crop looks right now but who knows if that’ll be the reality next week.
If we trial the farmers over the course of a year and periodically measure the produce in that time, we have a pretty round idea of how their crop looks throughout every typical condition.
When you’re making a decision, one found it in data, and two ask yourself how reliable and statistically significant that data may be.
Let time develop you.
Fuck around and find out. And when you find out, make your mark – or at least write it down so you can look back and gain perspective.
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