Eric-Jorgenson The-Almanack-of-Naval-Ravikant indd

partner.

---

112 · T H E A L M A N A C K O F N A V A L R A V I K A N T
When you choose something, you get locked in for a long time. 
Starting a business may take ten years. You start a relationship 
that will be five years or maybe more. You move to a city for 
ten to twenty years. These are very, very long-lived decisions. 
It’s very, very important we only say yes when we are pretty 
certain. You’re never going to be absolutely certain, but you’re 
going to be very certain.
If you find yourself creating a spreadsheet for a decision with 
a list of yes’s and no’s, pros and cons, checks and balances, why 
this is good or bad…forget it. If you cannot decide, the answer 
is no. [10]
RUN UPHILL
Simple heuristic: If you’re evenly split on a difficult decision, 
take the path more painful in the short term.
If you have two choices to make, and they’re relatively equal 
choices, take the path more difficult and more painful in the 
short term.
What’s actually going on is one of these paths requires short-
term pain. And the other path leads to pain further out in 
the future. And what your brain is doing through conflict-
avoidance is trying to push off the short-term pain.
By definition, if the two are even and one has short-term pain, 
that path has long-term gain associated. With the law of com-
pound interest, long-term gain is what you want to go toward. 

---

B U I L D I N G J U D G M E N T · 113
Your brain is overvaluing the side with the short-term happi-
ness and trying to avoid the one with short-term pain.
So you have to cancel the tendency out (it’s a powerful subcon-
scious tendency) by leaning into the pain. As you know, most 
of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term so 
you can get paid in the long term.
Working out for me is not fun; I suffer in the short term, I feel 
pain. But then in the long term, I’m better off because I have 
muscles or I’m healthier.
If I am reading a book and I’m getting confused, it is just like 
working out and the muscle getting sore or tired, except now 
my brain is being overwhelmed. In the long run I’m getting 
smarter because I’m absorbing new concepts from working 
at the limit or edge of my capability.
So you generally want to lean into things with short-term pain, 
but long-term gain.