Little Decisions: What Most People Get Wrong

This may come as a surprise, but being good at making little decisions is actually more important than being good at making big decisions.

Being objective about your decisions is a key contributor to success.

In my experience, educated and successful people say the word “objective” three times a day or more. And being objective means recognizing what kinds of decisions you’re making. Some people are good at making big decisions, and some people are good at making little decisions.

If you’re good at both, your life is easy.

If you’re bad at both, your life is difficult.

But it’s never that straightforward. If you have to pick being good at just one, it’s more valuable to be good at little decisions. The big decisions are less important.

Any time a decision is difficult, it means that there are two possibilities that are difficult to choose between.

By definition that means they’re similar in expected value.

Here at Inner Confidence we talk a lot about expected value, and applying it to dating gives us a huge advantage that most guys will never have.

Expected value looks at the worth or “value” of the different choices you can make.

A positive expected value (+EV) means that if you repeat that decision over and over in the long run, the value of the decision will be beneficial for you, while a negative value (-EV) means that decision will ultimately be detrimental in the long run.

In the short term, you’ll experience variance, which is just a fancy mathematical way of saying luck. What this means is that sometimes you will do everything right, and things just won’t work out in your favor. You can do everything right on a date and say all the right things, and some girls just won’t be into you.

On the flipside, variance also works the other way. You could send a lame text but she continues talking to you anyway.

However, in the long run, making the right kinds of moves will help you get better at dating, and variance will just be small blips on the radar. They’re the random rejections here and there that you couldn’t have prevented.

So why you should you focus on optimizing the little decisions over the big ones?

Because you’re already close to optimal on the big ones and you’re probably making tons of mistakes on the little ones because they seem like they don’t matter. But all of those poor little decisions add up and screw up your results.

This long-term focus on optimizaiton and constant practice is what improves your odds in the “numbers game” of dating.

Rather than focusing on the ambiguity and trying to solve it, or trying to “figure out what she is thinking”, spend your mental energy on figuring out the best +EV move.

Early on, you’ll never know with 100% certainty if a girl is sold on you, so rather than trying to figure out whether she is or isn’t, spend your effort on choosing the best action to make that allows for all the possible scenarios: she is sold on you, she’s somewhat sold on you, she isn’t yet but with more flirting she will be, and lastly, she isn’t sold on you and probably won’t be.

Your action should be tailored to the best thing to do for these situations, NOT to try to reduce that uncertainty.

Being good with women involves being objective and making +EV moves.

It takes knowing 10,000 social skills to be successful, so stop worrying about the big decisions and start paying attention to the little moves you make.