Last week’s challenge report:

Day 1: I woke up and spent an hour in bed watching a spinning ceiling fan (great invention, btw!). Torture.

Day 2: 63-minute walk with no phone or AirPods. Yeah, I cheated once. I had an urge to escape the office.

Day 3 onwards: I stuck myself in my office with nothing more than a pen and a notebook.

I started dumping things onto paper: a meal plan for the week, pros and cons of getting a whiteboard for the wall, what outdoor project I could still finish this year with little to no budget. And more...

Result? I guess I’ll keep doing it for now. Apparently, if I sit there long enough with nothing else to do, my brain eventually comes up with something useful.

I should’ve defined what 80% actually means. I’d heard about the Japanese practice but did not bother to understand it.

My relationship with food is complicated. I am always hungry. So I just made my meals a little smaller (my wife would happily challenge that claim) and stopped before my stomach got bloated.

No changes observed.

I expected this to be the most challenging one. But a week without chocolate and cakes flew by. Thanks to cherry and peach season, perhaps.

Going to cook a cheesecake after I finish writing this. Half the sugar though, as always. Do not judge.

For the next week I picked:

Report in a week.

Somehow, I got inspired by a quick story about Elon Musk buying Twitter.

One engineer recalled: “We had worked on many new features for years, but no one ever made decisions about them. Suddenly, we had this guy making rapid decisions.”

This caught my attention because I can overthink almost anything.

So naturally, I hesitated to try fast decision-making.

Until a few weeks ago, when we booked a short family vacation.

Have you ever booked the first option you saw without checking the others?

Imagine:

That is exactly what we did!

We booked the whole thing in under 30 minutes. That included deciding what actually mattered and feeding it to ChatGPT to search.

Our requirements were reasonable:

ChatGPT 5.6 made fun of me until I loosened a few of the non-negotiables and increased the budget slightly.

It then produced a ranked list.

We opened the first option.

I turned to my darling with one question: “What is wrong with this one?”

She went through it properly and still couldn’t find anything wrong.

It met every real requirement, including the very new to us “minimum age is 18”.

Nothing was wrong.

So we booked it.

My darling made one honest attempt to continue the search: “Can we at least look at one more?”

But why?

She did not have a reason.

“There might be something better” did not count. That sentence has already cost me several days of my life previously.

I refused to open another option without knowing exactly what was wrong with the first one.

She understood that the choices were now “book it” or “discuss it for another month”.

It was non-refundable, so the trip could no longer be postponed.

She wisely ended the discussion there.

Later that day, I realized I had made an expensive decision in under 30 minutes.

This was new.

No comparison.

No hesitation.

No sleeping on it.

And, surprisingly, no regret.

Normally, finding a good option only makes me look for another one.

During the past year, I spent hours comparing:

The air-fryer research was especially useful because I eventually bought a Cosori TurboBlaze.

It was on a flash sale.

But with the vacation, we skipped all of that.

Will we regret it after the vacation?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Even after comparing ten resorts, the answer would still be: maybe.

We get to test only ONE.

More research might improve the choice. It never stops me from questioning it.

So now, before I open option two, I am trying to ask one question:

What is actually wrong with option one?

Till next time.

The Nobel-Winning Psychologist Who Believed He Found the Secret to Happiness - 7 min read.

Herbert Simon called it “satisficing”: decide what is good enough, pick the first option that meets the standard, and stop researching. Apparently, this often makes people happier than finding “the best”. Fun fact: I found this article after writing the “Learn from My Mistakes” section. Perfect timing, as usual. Message me if you cannot access it.

How to Rescue an Overloaded Organization - 7 min read.

Some companies treat permanent crisis as proof that everyone is working hard. This article explains why overloaded teams do not necessarily need more people.

Mind wandering enhances the brain’s ability to learn hidden patterns - 10 min read.

Good news for anyone who has stared at a page for five minutes while thinking about lunch (me!). Mind wandering hurt people’s immediate performance in this study, but helped them notice repeating patterns without realizing it.

This book looks at why talking to strangers is surprisingly good for us. Gillian Sandstrom uses psychology research to show how even short conversations can improve your mood and make you feel more connected. Breaking news: talking to people may actually be useful.

Apparently, a desk setup can still be just a desk and a chair.
No screens.
Welcome to the future of productivity.

One Company at a Time: In 2022, Brad Jacobs said, “I only do one thing at a time.” He has built several large companies, but concentrates on one major company-building project at a time.

Fifteen Private Interviews: Before buying a company, Jacobs interviews about 15 senior employees for 60 to 90 minutes each. Would you buy it with your own money? What would you change? What would a new owner be crazy to change?

What Should Never Change?: After an acquisition, employees are asked three questions: what should never change, what is not working, and what would you improve?

A Name Beside Every Task: During an acquisition integration, every task goes to one person. Some items are checked daily or more often. “The team” is not an owner.

Devices Off: In Jacobs’s important meetings, devices are shut down, one person speaks at a time, and side conversations are not allowed.

Board Members Skip the Presentation: Directors read the materials beforehand, then question 10 to 20 employees and managers from different levels of the company.

A Long Shot Still Gets a Number: Jacobs assigns probabilities to major initiatives. A likely result might get 90 percent; a long shot might get 10 or 20 percent, along with high, low, and most likely outcomes. I am trying to apply it to everything in my life. Nothing is certain.

The Forecast Has a History: Jacobs said his companies update budgets every day. When a manager repeatedly missed forecasts by 3 to 5 percent over three years, later projections were adjusted for that record.

Cut the Loss: When numbers and feedback show Jacobs that a decision was wrong, he admits it, cuts the loss, and acts.

Half-Good Managers: Jacobs uses this phrase for executives who can grow revenue but cannot control costs, or control costs but cannot grow revenue. He looks for people who can do both.

If you’ve ever researched a big decision and still had no idea what to do, this is worth watching. L.A. Paul explains why some choices are so hard to predict: the experience itself can change what you care about. It reminded me of the observer effect in physics: sometimes the act of measuring something changes it. Here, the thing that changes is you.

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