Everything is a tradeoff.
Technology is a prime example. Based on varying news and social media narratives, we are in a love-hate relationship with it.
A few years back I was listening to an interview with Georgia’s quarterback, Stetson Bennett, following their championship game.
He shared that he had traded in his iPhone for a flip phone. Not the then new Galaxy Z Flip; rather, those exciting phones from the late 90’s. Yes, you can still buy them at Walmart.
Why did he do that? In his words, he felt like he was wasting at least an hour a day on his phone (significant understatement for many), and he needed to regain that time if he was going to achieve his goals.
He clearly was happy with the results – football national championship and offensive MVP of the game.
This happens simultaneous with people making millions by being social media “influencers.” If you don’t know what an “influencer” is, you missed the last decade.
Primary among the challenges of technology is the beauty and bane of the siren song of multitasking – I can do multiple things at a time! My phone can do much of what my laptop can do. I can access all my files and watch the news while walking down the grocery isle.
According to Stanford University research, not only is multitasking not possible, attempting to do so regularly breaks down the boundaries that define your focus and makes you “suckers for irrelevancy.” It also causes us to be ignorant of the fact that tradeoffs are the price we pay for everything we do.
Excuse me, my grocery cart just took out the Coca-Cola display.
Don’t text and drive. Why not? Because everything is a tradeoff.
We push the boundaries, but amidst the speed of life, do we recognize what we are trading our life for? Am I spending my life or leveraging and investing it?
What is the relationship among my personal innate design, internal motives, and intended purpose?
No matter where you are in the maturity and fulfillment of your life and goals, visiting these questions has great value.
At Beyond Sunday, Inc. this is central to what we help executives, entrepreneurs, and their companies discover. While our coaching process (BIC Analysis) gives a detailed process for understanding tradeoffs and developing and executing design, motives, and purpose, here are seven keys to understanding tradeoffs.
- Tradeoffs are fundamental to growth.
Growth does not happen in a vacuum. It does not occur by accident. There is a cost, and the key currency is tradeoffs.
Vicotria Azarenka, former world #1 in women’s tennis, described the price of professional training, “I was missing out on a lot of things that my friends were doing, but in another way, they were missing things I was doing. It was kind of a trade-off I had to make.”
- Release the past, and it is a platform. Hang on to the past, and it is an anchor.
Sports are great not only for a chance for vicarious victory but also as a microcosm of life. They are easily quantifiable petri dishes for the effects of action.
One vital attribute of great players is they have a very short memory. I don’t mean they don’t learn from the past. I mean they learn from it and then release it.
- Growth is not a bigger version of the past. It is fundamentally different.
Either that or you still would be wearing diapers.
This is more challenging than it may appear. You must trade off who you were, which includes much of what you thought you knew, to become what you have yet to experience or achieve.
- The core reason you tradeoff is belief.
You are continually making tradeoffs, and the pivotal processor is belief.
Your tradeoffs are visible indicators of what you believe. Belief is the mental and soul processor through which information and options are assessed.
- You are where you are because of what you prefer
If the pivotal processor for tradeoffs is belief, the tipping point is preference.
You have traded off numerous things to get where you are. They may have been highly valuable tradeoffs, subconscious tradeoffs, or even seemingly unavoidable tradeoffs. But in the moment, you made a preferential decision. What do I prefer?
Even embracing pain (trading off comfort or peace) for gain is a preferential decision.
Early on in my career, I was leading an organization, and I shared with my key mentor that I hated confronting people. His response was not that he liked confronting people just that he liked the results.
Confronting is painful, but done well, the results are promising. It is possible to prefer what is painful because of the promise of a better future.
Of course, taking the easy way out is also a tradeoff.
- Investing versus spending is productive versus counterproductive tradeoff.
To spend is to consume in the moment. The benefit is immediate followed by immediate or protracted depreciation.
Investing is the opposite. It is to give up any other present use of what is invested to achieve a future multiples greater.
Releasing short-term payoff for long-term value is one of the key steps to essential tradeoffs.
- Pain, fear, and destructive pride are the most formative parasites to tradeoffs
If you allow them to remain, parasites sap the lifeblood of what they live off.
Pain, fear, and self-focused pride are universal. What you do with them is not. Refusing to allow them to become established is a choice and a process.
How are you effecting tradeoffs in your ongoing development?
Chapter 7 of From Belief to Behavior: The Power of Belief in Business, helps you further clarify and pursue your reason for being and the role of tradeoffs in achieving this.