Transcript of a short YouTube talk by Utkarsh Amitabh (CEO, Network Capital) about improving decision-making by reducing the number of decisions one makes to avoid decision fatigue. He recommends focusing on one major daily goal (plus three subsidiary goals), prioritizing important over merely urgent tasks, delegating or ‘letting fires burn’, and conserving energy for roughly ten high-impact life decisions. Mentions upcoming Network Capital programs (Side Hustle Fellowship, Summer School starting June 1).
Chapters
Hi, everyone. My name is Utkarsh and I'm the CEO of Network Capital. Today I'm here to talk to you about the art of better decision making. We have out of the three Cs, the first C is called Career Intelligence. And essentially what it comes down to is enabling millennials and Gen Z and essentially any ambitious and curious person with the mental models, frameworks, community, network support, so that the person can take smarter career decisions. What I've noticed, beat entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, or regular ambitious, curious people like you and I, there is something called decision fatigue, which sets in when we take decisions about everything. So the rule of thumb for all of you is in order to get better at decision making, take fewer decisions. Not all tasks, not every hour of the day is designed equal. So what I do is typically I have one major goal of the day and three subsidiary goals. I have to do 100 tasks, but I focus on one goal at a time. And at the end of the day, I know whether I've accomplished that or not. So by just cutting down the number of decisions that I have to take, I have become slightly better in the quality of the major decisions that I have to get right. I say that in our entire lives at max, we just have to get 10 really big decisions, right? Not too many, just 10. And you want to make sure that you bring your best energy, best creativity, and the best, best frame of mind. When you're taking those 10 decisions, the last thing you want to do is to spend all your energy and time and mind space on urgent but unimportant issues and leave the important issues for later. So think about your week, think about the month. Think about 20, 21. Half of it is already done. Are you focusing on urgent issues or are you focusing on important issues? All of us have to navigate through all of them. But you can't drown yourself in the decision fatigue. I referenced Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and the like. The black turtleneck, that gray weathered out T shirt. These are gazillionaires. They can wear whatever they want. But why do they choose that? Because that is one less thing to decide, one less thing to think about. So the call to action for all of you is that what will you prioritize today? What is it that you will let go? In one of the books that I read recently, Reid Hoffman talks about the framework called Let Fires Burn. And of course, that was a different time and PayPal was a different company then, but he was focused on understanding there will always be fire and you can't always be firefighting. You need to let some fires burn so that you can create the frameworks for a solid foundation. I hope this was helpful and I look forward to your feedback and comments on this. Look forward to discussing more with you in the side Hustle Fellowship and the Summer School which is starting on the 1st of June. See you all on NetworkCapital TV. Take care.
