Financial Freedom Is Merely Organized Common Sense
Many years ago, one of my cousins attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard. This is a program for seasoned executives and most find it quite fulfilling. One of the things they do when they are there is work as a team and carry out a research project.
Their Project was:
Discover how strong managers make better decisions than weak managers.
That is a very interesting topic and one that would have a huge payback if you could discover the underlying principles.
They investigated information accumulation, assessment skills, personality, delegation skills, strategic insight, tactical awareness, implementation skills, and more.
They found that weak managers made decisions that were wrong about two thirds of the time. On the other hand, strong managers made wrong decisions about two thirds of the time. Not a vast difference there.
But, there were still weak and strong managers. How Come?
Eight weeks later, they knew the answer.
Strong managers quit doing stupid things sooner. Addition by subtraction.
That is crucial. Let the good decisions run and kill the bad ones. That is least wasteful of resources, least demanding for service, least error prone, and least depressing. Everything you are involved with is either working or new and that sounds like fun.
Why doesn’t everyone do that? Insecurity, pride, psychopathic persistence, irrational optimism, nurturing personality. Who knows?
Understand and operate under the law of symmetry of ownership.
At a given price, the decision to invest in a project and the decision to keep that project at the price it would sell for if you already own it are identical. Each offers the choice between having a given amount of money or the project.
Assuming you have given it a fair shot and if you would not buy the project for the price it would sell for, you should not keep it either. That is true even if the price to sell is zero dollars. Some gifts are liabilities.
It is like golf. There is not a lot of point spending time and thought deciding how to make a downhill 20-foot putt with two turns in it. Get it close and move on.
Quit Quick!
I love this approach!