Love what returns your love

This is one of those half-baked ideas I'm so fond of. It just means to dedicate ourselves to those things which pay off for us. Life is short and we can't afford to waste time and resources on anything that won't benefit us at all.

I speak of this from experience. I've aligned myself with lots of things, invested in all sorts of schools of thought and ways of living; I dedicated my time to so-called friends. All for them to betray me or not be there for me when I needed them most. I paid for that foolishness.

Magic the Gathering has been an obsession of mine. The deck for me is Red-Green Madness; however it's a sub-par deck, and I have a disappointing losing streak whenever I played - less than chance, really. I've only lost more money the longer I've dedicated to it.

Which isn't to say I haven't found gems. There have been things that have rewarded me for their dedication. The martial arts, for instance, have given me power and knowledge I did not have before. And it has also afforded me friends who are true inspirations; I feel privileged for being welcomed into their homes. 

In work, I made the choice to study IT. The sense of accomplishment I gain whenever I fix a bug or make a program work are concrete. I am able to write code that is utilized within organizations, code that is depended upon by untold number of people. The skills I struggled to learn initially are now my ticket to earning money and perhaps getting better things in life. 

Making this blog had a benefit: it made me more practiced in writing essays and has come in handy when I need to turn in an essay during the training sessions I subject myself to.

So, pay attention to those things that have a return for your money, while dropping everything else. Don't fall for the sunk cost fallacy. But my key insight regards making the distinction; after all, the hardest part is in knowing when to put more effort in and when to fold. 

For me, it seems like the cut-off is seven months. If after seven months there's no benefit, drop that crap. I am basing this off my experience in the martial arts I am practicing; it was about seven months before I gained anything. Now, the time-frame may be even less depending on the intensity of the activity; for instance, I learned jQuery and MVC in less than the five months I was assigned to a project that required them. 

Now that I've realized it, I'll be applying this criterion to other things in my life. One can always benefit from periodic weeding.

But what about optionality? Ever since I read about it I've been a fan of the concept. This extends from stock options trading, where you are able to buy or sell the right without the obligation of buying or selling something before a specific date. The key is that you can choose to exercise your right only in situations where it will profit you to do so; you don't have to buy or sell in bad conditions. You practice optionality when you think something might happen and so plan for the "just-in-case" scenario. Except this only works when you have a real, practical mastery over the odds and consequences. You also need a big enough buffer to weather any unforeseen  complications or mistakes. People in general don't have the first condition, and we don't have as much of the second condition as we would like to believe.

My point is, people tend to think they're practicing optionality when they're really not. I think it's because we're not so good with long-term forecasting/thinking. I must say though I am still working on applying optionality, so until I am able to say I am comfortable with applying the concept I would tend toward the rubric I outlined here.