Unlocking the power of optionality
We are obsessed with optionality. Not sure what to do with your life? Get a degree. Not quite sure what to do with this degree? Go to grad school. Still not quite sure? Get a consulting role at a big firm so you can decide what kind of job you enjoy. And so on and so forth. We fall prey to the optionality fallacy.
The problem is not with optionality itself. The problem is that we tend to assume optionality is built by keeping as many doors open for as long as possible. As Erik Torenberg puts it, it can be “like spending your whole life filling up the gas tank without ever driving.”
The conventional path of accumulating optionality gives you reassuring but fragile options. In contrast, the best options — which involve lots of experimenting and tinkering — may feel riskier in the short term but will help you thrive through uncertainty.
Traditional approaches to optionality assume a linear life curve, with a linear dependence on the parameters — if do this, you get that. People “follow safe paths that cap their downside, not realising that they also cap their upside,” says Torenberg. He adds: “Many ambitious people, even though they understand this intellectually, still prefer the more conventional paths of accumulating optionality.”
