Anytime I see three dots on a screen page, I assume it means there are more options.
For example, on Slack, it asks me if I want to invite people or sign out.
In my notes app, it means I want to delete, share, make a copy, add collaborators, or delete.
It gives me more options than what is available. I want more options too so it validates this desire.
I’m constantly searching, looking, waiting for more options.
For example, what are some of the ways we can acquire customers? Referral programs, influencer-sponsored initiatives, and paid ads. Great, but I want more options.
Email marketing, events. Great, but I want more options.
Maybe I’m saying this right now because I’m reading Principles by Ray Dalio and I presume he’s going to talk about solving problems.
It’s in the way he started his book, almost like an advice to balance realism with delusion.
His statement of accepting, understanding and working with reality instead of wishing things were different has been ringing in my head for three days now. In my head, there is no balance. I am 90% delusional. I detest reality.
But now it strikes me that my insatiety is normal. I’ll never be satisfied.
Ray has said it too, adding that our true goal in life is evolution as striving for a new goal forces us to evolve, creating a new version of us and that is what we are truly after.
Ray is right but he doesn’t want me to say he’s right. He wants me to think deeply about what he’s saying, which is why I can’t speed-read this book.
This is why I like Ray. It’s probably too early to fall in love but at least, I can admire this humility.
Truthfully, as I continue, I may find out Ray will not say anything truly different from what Naval, Brandon, James Clear, or Adam Grant have been saying.
But I’m only here because I’m searching for more options, like I’m searching for more acquisition options too.
But you see, before you search for more options, you must make sure you also think granularly. You can’t just think of more options from a superficial level.
Cashapp focused on an untapped market, the underbanked, the unbankable millennials. They were also thinking of where their target audience was.
I’m digressing but I like it because it’s making me consider more angles, more options. It’s probably why when I learnt of the MECE framework in the McKinsey Program, it stayed with me.
Having to structure information or ideas into categories that are both non overlapping (mutually exclusive) and still cover all possibilities (collectively exhaustive) helps you consider more options.
It’s difficult for me to admit that I’ll always be insatiable, that nothing may truly satisfy me.
It also seems like this burden may never go away.
This is why I’m seeking more options.
More options, more ways, more possibilities, just more.
Like Ray, like you, maybe?
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