When to look and when to leap - The optimal stopping point
Hi!
It has been quite an eventful start to 2020 for me. In the past two weeks I was involved in two weddings, both of which were of some of my dearest friends.
It was also my last two weeks in Lazada, and I have been trying my best to handover my work as best I can. I cannot help but worry about whether I had left things in a good state, and passed on what is needed to minimize the pain for the rest of my former team. Although I think it is time to move on, the past 2.5 years have been enjoyable, educational, and quite defining for my legal career. I suspect my experiences here will carry on for a long time.
Marriages and changing jobs have one thing in common. Both are "look, then leap" problems - consisting of a search phase in which there is never enough information, and a big commitment. The difficult part is in deciding how much to look before leaping. It is a problem of regret, either way you might have passed up a better option.
Mathematicians claim to have an answer for this. 37% - pass on the first 37% of opportunities and then accept the first one that comes after that which is the best of all the choices seen so far. That is most likely to be the best possible option available. The book "Algorithims to live by" describes this problem and its various permutations in much greater detail, and in an entertaining way. Depending on the variables, the 37% number will change (going down if being rejected is possible, and going up if it is possible to go back to earlier options).
Looking is important. Without gathering some data, we are unlikely to make a good decision. Those who have interviewed others for jobs before would know that trying to compare two candidates is really hard. How would we then know which is actually the better one?
Leap earlier than you think you are ready. It is often tempting to keep wanting to see more options and gather more information. However, the 37% stopping point suggests that we should move earlier than expected. Once the threshold data is collected, then we should act quickly and firmly.
Learn to control the "what if". In truth, this guideline is impossible to apply in real life. There are too many different factors at play, and no way to truly calculate the optimal stopping for any decision. Even if it were possible, it merely gives confidence that we have done what is most likely to give the best result. Questions like "what if a better job was going to come by later", or "what would life be like if I had married another person instead" can always exist. These questions are destructive, since the result can never be known, the mind can fill them in with anything it wants. Once we have made a decision, it is best to focus on making that decision work, rather than let the mind be distracted by how the other choices could have played out.
What big decisions have you taken in your life? How did you gain the confidence to make them? How did they turn out?
I will be between jobs from now till Feb 24 - Drop me a reply if you would like to catch up over coffee!
Have a good week ahead!
James
About Ideothetic Flow
Ideothetic Flow is a small passion project following my own thoughts about living life better. Every 2 weeks I share something I find interesting, usually related to mental models which challenge common expectations or ideas.