Day 95 - 'Bezos-Twain' decision making model to project into your future success (1,000 days content creation challenge)

Sometimes, we look at a billionaire like Jeff Bezos and forget that at one time he was a typical employee who wrestled with the idea of leaving a secure job before jumping into the world of the unknown - entrepreneurship. Most crucially, where as an internet-based business is common place today, it was almost unheard of in the majority of the world 30 years ago when Amazon was founded.

So, how did he make the decision to jump ship?

“I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, ‘Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have,’” Bezos recalled

“I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried [Amazon].

I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision.”

His thought process has come to be known as the regret minimization decision making model.

Meaning, how can you minimize the possibility of regrets in your future? By projecting yourself many years from today and ask yourself whether you would regret doing or not doing something a couple of decades down the road.

This will guide you as to whether you should say "yes" or "no" over a decision you are considering.

Possibly Bezos was a student of Mark Twain who many years prior observed…

“We regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do.” Mark Twain

Of course, sometimes we regret over things we do but more than not it's about the things we do not do.

You can look at the above reflections in a combined mode. A duo of sorts. And I am upgrading it to be called the "Bezos-Twain regret minimization decision making model"

Use it when you have a major decision to make and it will be helpful to you down the road.

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