The Difference Between Distractions & Opportunities

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Imagine you’re a young up-and-coming author with a crazy book idea.

You bounce from publisher to publisher looking for a book deal, but no one will take a risk on you. Frustrated but still hopeful, you try one more time to a small publisher that few people have heard of.

To your surprise, they say yes. You write the book, it sells millions of copies and you become a NYT best-selling author. Opportunities start to flow in, more book deals, more speaking engagements, and more podcast interviews. It seems like everyone wants a piece of your time.

Months go by and you realize you’ve spent more time doing what everyone else wants you to do than what you want to do. You realize you’ve barely written anything in the past few months.

The paradox of success is the more successful you become the more you’re set up to fail. Distractions disguised as opportunities multiply and it gets more difficult to distinguish between the two.

So how do you determine the difference between an opportunity and a distraction?

Beware of Analysis Paralysis

Analysis Paralysis is an obsession with making the best decision. We think that more time and research will help the decision become clear. But as Derek Sivers said, “If more information was the answer, then we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

We think that more thinking will help us gain clarity, but clarity only comes from action. More thinking creates more thinking. More action creates more clarity. The only way to see step two is to take step one.

What’s more, choosing to delay your decision is a decision in itself. By prolonging your decision, you may lose out on both choices. More time is rarely the answer.

Positioning > Predicting

The truth is no one can completely maximize life and make all the right decisions all the time. Instead of worrying about what the best decision is, worry about not being in the right place that attracts opportunities. If you’re at the wrong airport, every plane is the wrong plane.

It may seem easier to try to plan or predict your perfect career roadmap. However, obsessing over the perfect career path is futile because the future is unpredictable.

Instead of trying to predict the future, focus on improving your current position. What decision can you make today that will improve your position tomorrow? As Ben Thompson said, “Often when you get distracted by where you want to go, you don’t take advantage of the spot you’re in.”

Never let your dreams for tomorrow distract you from the blessing of the present.

While I don’t have all the answers — if you’re still at a crossroads — here are 3 mental frameworks that have helped me:

1) Opportunity Cost

By reading this newsletter, you are choosing not to read something else. Everything we do is like this. Doing one thing means giving up another. As David Perell said, “Whenever you explicitly choose to do one thing, you implicitly choose not to do another thing.”

In every decision, there’s a hidden cost.

What am I saying no to by saying yes?

2) ABZ Framework

Most people get paralyzed because they think they need a better plan. In reality, they need a minimal plan:

A: Where are you now?
B: What’s the very next step?
Z: What’s the end goal?

Write down your A, B, Z, and then do the step to get to B.

When in doubt, zoom out. Align your decisions with your north star.

h/t: Shaan Puri

3) Hard Now, Easy Later Framework

If you can't decide between two or more viable options, take the one that looks harder in the short term.

The problem with choosing what’s easy in the short term is that you may win the battle, but you’ll lose the war.

Short-term benefits lead to long-term sacrifices. Short-term sacrifices lead to long-term benefits.

Making big decisions is never easy. We’re bound to make the “wrong” decision at some point. We’re bound to “fail” in some form or fashion.

But remember: Failure is the price of entry if you want to live a high-performing life.

Jay “Make Better Decisions, Live A Better Life” Yang