An Interesting Way to Think

This is in a way a cheap trick. Basically it goes like this. I thought there was something ready so I didn’t spend any time writing today. Now 15 min before my deadline I’m sitting here saying “what am I going to write about?”

I think a lot of people would assume writer’s block, however, no. I typically have the opposite problem in my life. Too many ideas, too much to choose from and often it is hard to just pick.

If I want to think about this properly. If that is a thing. We could just apply some structure. I’ll give you an example. When playing poker. One needs to tell others about their hands. There is a way to do so that would convey maximal information.

You could start with the facts. Focus on what happened in the hand ensuring that you touch on all the important points. What was the game type/structure? What were the stacks? What position are you and what about the opponent we are focusing on?

Then you tell your story in a logical, typically time organized, fashion. Bonus tip you can learn a lot about another poker players thinking process and ability in general by listening to them talk about hands.

Now that we have the right information. We can analyze the situation and devising a strategy moving forward. What we have done is take a situation, analyzed the outcome, and predicted a method to have a more desired outcome on the next go around.

Now admittedly this is a little oversimplified. There are differences that we will not look at in this post (maybe another time). Differences between “games” of imperfect information and those with perfect information, but the overall plan remains the same. Think in this case poker vs chess.

This gets interesting because we can do this same thing with any life situation. Personal, business, and whatever else. For instance, let’s pick something easy. Maybe even something stupid but something I have had issues with in the past, maybe I’m not alone in this.

Drinking enough water.

We live our normal daily routine. Then for whatever reason, we might realize that we have failed to have enough water throughout the day. For me, this means headaches and tiredness.

As ridiculous as it might seem the process is simple. Look at what actions happened in the day. Think about the way we can improve or change them for the next day to avoid the headache.

So we might do something like wake up and have a glass of water first thing. Or we could try to carry a water bottle around. I feel like you can get the picture.

Of course, drinking enough water is helpful but that is not the point of this post. This comes back to one of the many topics I would like to talk about in the near future. Elon Musk’s use of “first principles” it is a mental model. Take things down to an understandable base unit and then examine them with some structure.

Doing this allows us to make very good decisions. In life the decisions we make shape our futures and lives. Now I would write some more examples here, but I’ll save that for next time.

So just think about what you want to improve. The exercise is fun and interesting and may lead to insights that propel you forward.

Spencer Heckathorn

I've been writing online on and off for nearly 20 years now. But I have been building online businesses and trying to figure out different ways to make money online consistently for 15 years. Recently you can find me writing on https://foodieresults.com and posting odd musings to Twitter @mrhobbeys. I also have a mailing list I'm passionate about growing because email and a personal website are better ways for people to do social media.

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