Lifestyle Entrepreneur #18

Type 1 & Type 2 Decisions

Mike Jones
December 16, 2023

THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

Read time - 4 minutes

Type 1 & Type 2 Decisionmaking

In this issue:

Favorite post this week
Favorite Quote I saw
Wellness tip that’s working for me
Article - Type 1 & Type 2 Decisionmaking

Hi all - trying out a slightly different format today which is a shorter article plus a few nuggets.

Please let me know what you think along with any topic you’d like to hear by replying to this email. Also feel free to just say hi.

Favorite Post - Your Ego is holding you back

Favorite Quote:

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle." - Steve Jobs

Wellness tip that’s working for me

My current primary measurable is my sleep quality - as measured by a Whoop strap. Everything I work on is geared towards improving sleep quality.

The tactic this past week that has had the greatest impact - social media shutdown.

I’m on LinkedIn for at least an hour a day - without clear scheduling and rules, I’ll end up jumping on it to engage whenever I have downtime. Allowed to my own devices that’ll end up being everytime I have a free second.

This leaves my brain distracted, unpresent, scattered, and my sleep starts to suffer.

This past week I’ve made hard stops on phone usage past 7pm - I even, gasp, left it at home when we went to dinner last night.

And my sleep scores have hit records this week.

So that’s it - what we all already know - a hard technology stop at 7pm has had the biggest impact on my sleep this past week.

Type 1 & Type 2 Decisionmaking

This is a framework I read about Jeff Bezos using. Love him or hate him, he’s one of the most productive and important entrepreneurs in a generation, and he’s famous for his long-term thinking.

The concept is simple and he breaks it down into two categories:

High stakes & Irreversible - He calls these “one-way doors”, meaning once you make the decision there’s no turning back.
Low stakes & reversible - He calls these “two-way doors”, meaning if you make the decision it’s relatively easy to course correct, make changes, even back out.

Bezos’s philosophy is that most decisions are Type 2 - meaning they should be made faster so they can execute.

For me this is a particularly effective tool - because I want swift decisionmaking, except a few key decisions that come up every once in a while.

Having a framework for tagging those “Type 1” decisions can be the difference between success and failure in business, and in life.

Here’s a visual of how to bring this concept to life:

Bezos would argue that every decision except the top-right quadrant should be made swiftly.

My real-world example

This tool would have come in handy during the hyper-growth days of my fitness company Alchemy 365. Almost all decisions at that time were Type 2, so they should have been made swiftly.

The one that was a hard Type-1? Real estate site selection. That’s the definition of Type 1:

High Stakes - Hundreds of thousands of dollars were required to open a location, along with personal guarantees for founders.
Irreversible - To get what we wanted we signed 10-year leases.

While we put massive amounts of time into site selection, modeling, and discussion around our vision - a more critical eye on a few of our locations would have saved us lots of money, and lots of heartache when the pandemic turned everything upside down.

I use this tool weekly

With clients and with my own life. With clients it helps me tremendously, by prioritizing what issues I’m going to push them to make swift decisions on, and what I’m going to push for more rigor, analysis, or discussion.

What’s my big decision today?

Whether to stay in or go out to a daytime EDM show with all my best friends this afternoon.

That’s the definition of a Type 2 decision, and that’s an easy yes.

I hope you enjoy your weekend.In this issue:

Favorite post this week
Favorite Quote I saw
Wellness tip that’s working for me
Article - Type 1 & Type 2 Decisionmaking

Hi all - trying out a slightly different format today which is a shorter article plus a few nuggets.

Ask - please let me know what you think along with any topic you’d like to hear by replying to this email. Also feel free to just say hi.

Favorite Post - Your Ego is holding you back

Favorite Quote:

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle."

        - Steve Jobs

Wellness tip that’s working for me

My current primary measurable is my sleep quality - as measured by a Whoop strap. Everything I work on is geared towards improving sleep quality.

The tactic this past week that has had the greatest impact - social media shutdown.

This leaves my brain distracted, unpresent, scattered, and my sleep starts to suffer.

This past week I’ve made hard stops on phone usage past 7pm - I even, gasp, left it at home when we went to dinner last night.

And my sleep scores have hit records this week.

So that’s it - what we all already know - a hard technology stop at 7pm has had the biggest impact on my sleep this past week.

Type 1 & Type 2 Decisionmaking

This is a framework I read about Jeff Bezos using. Love him or hate him, he’s one of the most productive and important entrepreneurs in a generation, and he’s famous for his long-term thinking.

The concept is simple and he breaks it down into two categories:

High stakes & Irreversible - He calls these “one-way doors”, meaning once you make the decision there’s no turning back.
Low stakes & reversible - He calls these “two-way doors”, meaning if you make the decision it’s relatively easy to course correct, make changes, even back out.

Bezos’s philosophy is that most decisions are Type 2 - meaning they should be made faster so they can execute.

For me this is a particularly effective tool - because I want swift decisionmaking, except a few key decisions that come up every once in a while.

Having a framework for tagging those “Type 1” decisions can be the difference between success and failure in business, and in life.

Here’s a visual of how to bring this concept to life:

Decision-2.png

Bezos would argue that every decision except the top-right quadrant should be made swiftly.

My real-world example

This tool would have come in handy during the hyper-growth days of my fitness company Alchemy 365. Almost all decisions at that time were Type 2, so they should have been made swiftly.

The one that was a hard Type-1? Real estate site selection. That’s the definition of Type 1:

High Stakes - Hundreds of thousands of dollars were required to open a location, along with personal guarantees for founders.
Irreversible - To get what we wanted we signed 10-year leases.

I use this tool weekly

What’s my big decision today?

Whether to stay in or go out to a daytime EDM show with all my best friends this afternoon.

That’s the definition of a Type 2 decision, and that’s an easy yes.

I hope you enjoy your weekend.

I’ll talk to you next week,

Mike

Thanks for reading The Lifestyle Entrepreneur

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