the greatest skill in life ⚒️

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What’s the greatest skill you could ever develop?

I know… bit of a weird question. It’s hard to make a definitive case for any one skill being the “greatest”.

But here’s my take: a bias for action.

Let me explain.

Actually, I’ll let Jeff Bezos explain. (Why listen to me when you can listen to one of the richest men in the world?)

After Bezos founded Amazon, he meticulously developed a series of 14 leadership principles, to guide the trajectory of the company as well as to serve as hiring criteria for leadership candidates.

And it just so happens that one of these principles is this: bias for action.

Here’s how Bezos describes the trait.

“Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking.”

Here’s how I’d paraphrase that…

You’re better off making the wrong decision, than making no decision at all.

Here’s a little bit about my story.

I moved out when I was 17. (And no, I didn’t run away…)

A good chunk of my childhood was spent in Indonesia, where my family still lives today. However, weeks before I started my final year of high school, an opportunity opened up.

I had an offer to fly halfway across the world to Toronto, to play my final year of high school basketball for a team in the Canadian prep league.

And I had two weeks to decide.

Before I knew it, I was on a flight out of Jakarta, with everything I owned in a few suitcases.

Didn’t know a soul in Toronto. Didn’t know my team, my coach, or even who was picking me up from the airport.

It was a pretty surreal experience for this wide-eyed 17 year old kid.

Looking back, I can connect all the dots and see how they led me to where I am today. But at the time, all I knew was that I had a very real decision to make, and I chose to go all in.

But here’s the interesting part of the story: it didn’t pan out.

If it isn’t obvious to you already, I don’t play basketball anymore.

No college career, no overseas contract… a chronic overuse injury came in the way of all that.

And yet… almost everything about my life right now I owe to that one decision that I made. The decision to move out, fly across the world, settle in a new city, and push myself harder than I ever had before.

In fact, when I look around at my life right now, it’s incredible how much came from that one decision.

Where I live, who I spend time with, what I do for work, how capable my body is.

It’d be easy to look back and wish I had never sacrificed so much for basketball.

But at the time, all that mattered was that I committed. That one decision led to a domino effect of basically every other decision that led me to where I am today.

The dots all connect… but only in reverse.

You lose more through indecision than you ever will from making the wrong decision.

The skill that will come through for you, time and time again, is this.

A bias for action.

Make decisions. Take risks. Get things done, even if they’re not perfect.

Of course you’ll fail sometimes… that’s the whole point. If success was always guaranteed, there wouldn’t be any decisions to make at all.

But the quicker you can get your failures out of the way, the faster you’ll get to the good stuff.

When I moved out, I remember having this vivid sense that suddenly life was very, very real. I felt as if I had to get everything in my life figured out, and quickly.

Adults had their lives together; I didn’t.

But the reality is this… most people have no clue what they’re doing. Even the ones we think have it all together. We’re all just making stuff up as we go along, trying our best to orient ourselves towards that which we desire most.

No one really knows how they want to spend their life. Everyone’s just figuring out stuff along the way.

So if you take one thing away from this newsletter, let it be this…

While you wait for the right time, life is passing you by.

Commit to something. Make decisions. Go all in.

Life’s too short to sit on the fence.