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I think the best balance is somewhere like 90% / 10%. So you spend 90% of the time finding and capturing opportunities, while 10% you spend on risks for sanity

I think the best balance is somewhere like 90% / 10%. So you spend 90% of the time finding and capturing opportunities, while 10% you spend on risks for sanity checking. Is 90/10 an optimist? I was diagnosed with depression 15 years ago and at the time also subscribed to this pessimist = realist idea or in some ways intelligence. And there's a lot of validation on the internet for that idea "intelligent people are more depressed and pessimistic", so as a teenager I thought that this is the right way to be because I wanted to think that I am intelligent. I think I'm very glad that I managed to escape this sort of mindset. To provide most value I believe I should look for opportunities and the ways they play out positively, while spending a limited amount of time to make sure I'm not wasting my time.

haswell 3y ago
I also started digging into this as part of a depression journey. One of the things that persistent pessimism also leads to is the concept of “learned helplessness”, which could be described as a kind of pathological pessimism. A state where on top of thinking certain outcomes aren’t possible, the impulse to try moving out of our current situation never even occurs. The equivalent of drowning in 2 feet of water, because it never occurred to the person to stand up. I’m also really grateful to have started moving away from this mindset. I wouldn’t say I’ve fully escaped, but I’m on the path. That book also provides some helpful reframing exercises that when applied consistently, start to re-wire default responses to situations. This has been transformative in my life. I think that the 90/10 split is an interesting way to look at this, and I tend to agree. I think the degree of optimism applied probably needs to scale inversely to the calculable risk (e.g. building an airplane necessitates lower risk tolerance). But in most situations, it seems like a much better default. And ideally this is always contextual to the situation at hand.

haswell 3y ago

I also started digging into this as part of a depression journey. One of the things that persistent pessimism also leads to is the concept of “learned helplessness”, which could be described as a kind of pathological pessimism. A state where on top of thinking certain outcomes aren’t possible, the impulse to try moving out of our current situation never even occurs. The equivalent of drowning in 2 feet of water, because it never occurred to the person to stand up. I’m also really grateful to have started moving away from this mindset. I wouldn’t say I’ve fully escaped, but I’m on the path. That book also provides some helpful reframing exercises that when applied consistently, start to re-wire default responses to situations. This has been transformative in my life. I think that the 90/10 split is an interesting way to look at this, and I tend to agree. I think the degree of optimism applied probably needs to scale inversely to the calculable risk (e.g. building an airplane necessitates lower risk tolerance). But in most situations, it seems like a much better default. And ideally this is always contextual to the situation at hand.