Think LESS. Act MORE...
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Think LESS. Act MORE đź’Ş

4 years ago
·
3 min read

Last week I announced that I was leaving Eventbrite. It was a tough decision, and yet probably one of the quickest decisions I’ve ever made. Why was that? I had an insightful conversation with one of my mentors that I’ll show you in this post.

❌ Paralysis by analysis…

A friend of mine introduced me to the “paralysis of the analysis” concept. Quoting Wikipedia: “overthinking a situation can cause forward motion or decision-making to become "paralyzed", meaning that no solution or course of action is decided upon”

If you know me in person, you’d probably consider me a person who likes to make quick decisions and move fast. While this is true, it wasn’t always like this when it comes to making fundamental career decisions.

However, this drastically changed recently for several reasons that I’m going to share with you below.

🎯 How did I make this career decision so quickly?

In the last few months, I started to reconnect with my biggest dreams, ambitions and goals. As I told you in my last week's post, my current priorities are: 1) Do Product Management and wear multiple hats and 2) Work at a startup. 3) Moving to the US

Having such clear priorities is amazingly helpful to make a career decision – you can’t imagine! Most importantly, it helped me reconnect with my true motivations, which we can discuss in a future post hehe.

Tip 1: Use introspection to create a list of your top life/career priorities. Having this clear will create a fast decision-making framework

đź’¬ The conversation that opened my eyes

I had really good arguments to jump to my next challenge, but I freaked out and didn’t know what was the right option to choose. This changed once I met Dennis.

Dennis Chow is a respected product leader and lecturer in the product management course I’m taking. We met in class and had a 1:1 shortly after. This conversation blew my mind: Dennis was very honest, direct and clear, and told me “Stop wasting your time without making a decision. ACT and move forward. You’re young and can afford to make mistakes”

Dennis: “Stop wasting your time without making a decision. ACT and move forward. You’re young and can afford to make mistakes”

Ultimately, this was my own decision, but it was thanks to Dennis that I realized that I was putting too much emphasis on what could go wrong, rather than focusing on what could go well and taking the risks associated with the decision.

Homework

Alright! Enough talking. Now I’d like to challenge you to do this exercise with yourself:

  1. What are your top priorities in life and in your career?
  2. Are you afraid to make a career-related decision? b. Yes? Then… What is blocking you and what is your backup plan?

That’s all for now! If you liked this article, be sure to share on Twitter or your favorite social platform!

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Jorge Ferreiro is a Software Developer, entrepreneur and product manager

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