How to Act: A Simple Guide For Smart People

Most smart people need to think less and act more.

As a small child I used to over analyse decisions, taking a long time to come to conclusions about what to do. It overly inhibited my OODA loop (action was delayed too long, opportunities passed).

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop)

Generally in life who acts first wins the day, at least in the short term. While you are deciding what to do the midwits and low IQ normies are pounding your face in, or talking to that girl you want to talk to, or launching that business that you have been thinking about starting. Unless you want that to be your life forever, follow my advice.

Getting beaten in near constant school fights as a child taught me to act first to win, then from a position of strength you can analyse. Thus I developed my current process.

The Winning Process

0) Pre stage your mind by staying in the right frame (situational), with the right information, with rehearsed mental and physical responses to stimuli (training).

1) Trust your gut response and act immediately on a pressing issue with full confidence that you are right (while knowing that you *might* be wrong).

2) Go back later and analyse the situation in more depth. If wrong, correct the mistake and apologise.

More than 90% of the time our gut response is right or close enough. The last 10% to achieve perfection requires tremendous investment more than equal to the first 90%. Therefore the cost to achieve 100% is not worth the time and lost opportunities.

Being theoretically 100% right and practically inactive is the death of many smart people. That is why I am no longer interested in being 100% right, only in being right enough to act in a way that "wins" most of the time.

Anyone who acts will fail. Occasional failure is part of life, embrace it when it comes, it is a sign you are doing something difficult, pushing your limits. As long as it does not kill you all is good.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt