“Choosing is winning”
They say “Choosing is losing”.
The losing of options, of things you’ll need later.
But I believe that saying’s outdated now.
Generations carry wisdom.
From one to the next.
From elder to younger.
And in the generation that came before, this saying made sense.
Options were scarce.
Options were gold.
So choosing meant closing the door on gold that could turn into jewellery later.
Not a good idea.
But now the world has changed.
Options are no longer scarce.
They’re abundant.
And when items become abundant,
their value decreases.
It’s like we went from shopping in a specialised place with limited-stock items, to shopping in a €1 store.
Everything’s possible so you can buy more, yes, but somehow, each item lost some quality.
So you buy more, get less, have to do maintenance on all of them. Attention gets divided, energy depleted.
The thing is, these stores are new. They didn’t exist before. So no one kind of knows how to navigate these things.
Previous generations are in awe, they’re buying everything. New generations follow, because that’s what they’re observing.
But the skill everyone desperately needs is this:
The ability to choose.
Because these €1 dollar items never last. So you go back, and back, and back, and before you know it you’re in a never ending cycle of buying things you shouldn’t be needing in the first place.
And that’s costly.
So there’s two options.
You deliberately choose to leave the €1 store and go seek a specialised one. (But then where do you go?)
You don’t buy anything.
The last one’s surfacing more and more. People going into analysis paralysis, keeping options open, not daring to take a stance.
It’s in the strategy meetings that turn into 25 priorities or in the businesses that have 4 ideal clients.
It’s in the not knowing what you actually want because no one taught you how to do that.
So you want to do 1, but you end up doing 2.
But this is where the entire concept of the €1 store turns into gold. Because the store can be used as a playground.
You test, you learn, you find out what’s true for you or your business. You get easy access to figuring out what it is you’re supposed to be doing.
Then you throw the stuff away, or double down.
The key is to use the store as testing, learn from it, then stop the testing at one point.
An interesting strategy for this is the 37% rule.
The 37% rule is a proven mathematical strategy (from optimal stopping theory) to help understand when to stop exploring options and when to commit.
How it works for infinite possibilities:
1/ Choose the maximum time you want to spend on your choice.
2/ Calculate how many options you’d be able to evaluate in that time frame.
3/ Reject the first 37% of candidates to understand the playing field.
4/ As of 38%, commit to any candidate that’s better than the previous 37% .
5/ Realize that the first 37% were never cheaper to explore than they are today.
In a world of €1 stores, choosing becomes winning.
Because choosing became cheaper to do, but more valuable than ever.
Choosing is winning, or you’ll keep circling the €1 store forever.
