Avoid “7-point thinking”.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Entrepreneurship Yeast” (ID: chuangyejiaomu), author: Enzymatic Research Institute.
Zhang Yiming, the 38-year-old founder of Bytedance, announced his resignation as the CEO of Bytedance.
In the employee letter, he stated that the reason for stepping down as the CEO of ByteDance was his unwillingness to continue to pay for it. Focusing on learning knowledge, systematic thinking, researching new things, hands-on trials and experiences are more valuable choices.
Zhang Yiming said: A ten-year period will create more possibilities for the company.
The choice to break through the comfort zone is undoubtedly difficult.
The most precious thing in this world is to do the hard and right things.
However, it is very difficult for a good person to choose to do the right thing. How do ordinary people measure their life choices?
The following are some thoughts to share with you.
01
Things of real value are often counter-intuitive
We often forget that price ≠ value.
The price of luxury goods is very high, but those who do not agree with the premium brand, and those who do not need this “social symbol”, naturally think that the value of luxury goods is not worthy of this price.
Mianzi is the most common and most expensive luxury. Maintaining face will consume other life capital, such as humility, pragmatism, innovation, and a clear self-awareness.
In turn, our health, time, attention, and emotions are all “initial settings” that do not cost money, but they are the most valuable and scarce resources in our lifetime.
These resources cannot be increased, cannot be regenerated, and cannot be bought.
More often, we even mistakenly think that free is great value.
Unfortunately, there is a saying that free things are often the most expensive.
Because “free” consumes your time and energy, these most valuable life resources.
Value is very diverse. There are as many values as there are as many cognitive methods and needs.
Across one’s own cognitive limitations and looking at the relationship between demand and value from the perspective of others, one can understand many choices that are beyond common sense and even counter-intuitive.
Is there any way that we can get value beyond the price?
It depends on whether the things you spend money on can produce “secondary value”.
The consumables in our lives, such as food, clothes, electronic products, and entertainment consumption, are mostly of only one-time value, and the value will return to zero or depreciate after use.
Things that will generate value many times with use, and even continue to generate value in our lives, have “secondary value”.
For example:
Happy memories about family members,
A friendship that can grow together,
Stable and value-added benign assets,
Scarce and exclusive resources,
Excellent books and works of art,
Healthy body and sound mind,
The thoughts of top industry leaders…
As ordinary people, the thing that maximizes the “secondary value” we can have is the ability to transform knowledge into cognition.
The bottom layer of this ability is structured thinking.
We have access to a lot of useful information every day, but the stones in the quarry do not automatically turn into magnificent buildings.
We need structured thinking to sort out and summarize this information, and finally form our own knowledge system.
Summing up the laws from the system, and finally forming their own thinking.
This is the most difficult and correct thing in learning to improve.
02
Everyone needs economic thinking
There used to be an intelligent system company that wanted to transform from the B-side to the C-side.
This company planned a huge research activity.
Let those who sign up for the event try the product for free for one month and fill out the questionnaire, and then pay based on satisfaction. The minimum is a dollar, and the maximum is unlimited.
According to the company’s vision, this event will not only gain user feedback and increase brand awareness, but also consume inventory of older models and make room for new products, which can be said to kill three birds with one stone.
The cost is nothing more than the product shipping fee and advertising fee.
Unexpectedly, in the early small-scale testing stage, many people who participated were asking a question: If the product is not satisfied with the product, can it be returned for free?
The shipping cost of a single return can be much higher than that of batch shipments. Of course, the company is not willing to spend this money.
But the user’s reason for requesting a return is also very good: this product is about the same size as a microwave oven, and it is very heavy. Why should I keep things that take up space and don’t need to be used at home?
In the end, this event fell apart.
In this case, the company is very clear about its own value needs, but it has not considered the value needs of users at all.
The value needs of the company and users do not match, and the profits and losses are unbalanced, so the transaction or cooperationCan not be produced.
Why do we all have a little economic thinking?
Because in today’s society, the most extensive basis of interpersonal relationships is the economic “transactional relationship”-each person has different comparative advantages and exchanges with each other to maximize returns.
But while maximizing benefits, the distribution of benefits must also be fair, otherwise there will be no prerequisite for cooperation.
If we don’t think about the value needs of the other party, we think it is a benefit, which may be a burden in the eyes of the other party.
If one party does not want to give up the benefits it has acquired, although short-term benefits have increased, it will be a loss in the long run.
Although human nature is ever-changing, most workplace and social behaviors can be explained by economics.
For example, a person in a company will not get the support of colleagues in the future, and the enthusiasm of subordinates will also be reduced, and there may be many negative effects. Even if you change companies, you will be affected by poor reputation in the workplace.
From a long-term perspective, it is not in line with the economic benefits of working people to win the pot, so most people will not do it even if they have the opportunity.
When we don’t know what should be done or not, we have to adopt economic thinking:
What are my short-term benefits? Are there long-term gains?
What are the value needs of the people I work with?
What can be done to maximize the benefits of both parties?
What is the fair distribution of income?
After thinking about this, your choice can bring you the maximum benefit.
03
Make major decisions and avoid “7-point thinking”
After talking about the issue of benefits, let me ask further:
We have spent money, or the price of time, energy, emotions, etc., but how to measure the value of the gain is not worth it?
This involves the judgment of “value”.
Whether a thing is worth it, the most important thing is to see your actual needs and cognitive style.
If we want to make the most economical choice initially, we need to fully understand our value system and cognitive methods.
For ordinary people, is there a more common and easier way to judge value?
Almost 10 years ago, a very good friend came to findI discuss:
Should she join an internet start-up company with good industry prospects but just getting started, or should she continue to stay at a large company that has no passion but good income?
My suggestion is that you should rate your life possibilities, high-risk and high-return scores, and low-risk and low-return scores.
After that, you will either be passionate to challenge the option with 8 points or more, or lie down completely on the foolproof 6-point option, but never choose the 7-point option.
Why?
Because the 7-point option is both mediocre and risky, it makes you feel uncomfortable in your throat without guaranteeing your stability.
I didn’t dare to take the risk of 8 points, and were not reconciled to the plainness of 6 points, and finally hesitated to choose the 7 points option. Most of us have.
This is the typical “7-point thinking”.
If you think you still have the capital to give it a go and the mentality of challenging the unknown, then you must avoid the “7-point thinking”.
Avoid making yourself regret, and avoid wasting precious time.
Conclusion:
The most valuable thing in life is not because of how much money we spend on it, but because of how much time and thinking we invest in it and continue to improve from it.
It is not difficult to make a choice. The difficult thing is to clearly think about the meaning of the choice and bear the consequences of the choice.
It’s not difficult to do the right thing. The difficult thing is to resist the incomprehension of others and persevere day after day.
It is not difficult to maximize benefits, but the difficulty is to give up part of the short-term benefits in exchange for long-term value.
It is not difficult to give up the “7-point thinking”. The difficult thing is to make a trade-off between equal weight values.
In the final analysis, in the adult world, there is no such thing as “I want it.”
Thinking about “what do I want” every time a decision is made is also measuring “what do I want to give up”.