Jeff Bezos' secret to a life of no regrets:

[Read this post on Twitter - I’ll reply to every comment]

I agonised for weeks over such a simple decision...

Do I switch up the newsletter format that people know and love to allow me to repurpose my writing more easily?

Turns out it was an obvious decision that I simply didn't have the mental toolkit to make.

These 4 mindset shifts helped me pull the trigger:

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1. Regret Razor

Have you ever seen those articles where someone on their death bed shares their life’s biggest regrets?

These thoughts are valuable to hear – and who better to learn from than those who have been through it all already?

An easy way to implement this into your decision-making process is to ask yourself one simple question.

The Regret Razor:
“If stuck between actions X and Y, which one will you look back on with less regret?”

Every major decision you make should be optimised for minimising regret – but that doesn’t mean you should agonise over every little detail.

To make efficient decisions, we often don’t need to know all of the facts.

“Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had – If you wait for 90 percent, in most cases, you're probably being slow.” - Jeff Bezos

2. Falsification Ratio

To avoid falling into the ‘analysis paralysis’ trap, we need a system to tell us when to spend time on a decision and when to simply choose quickly and move on.

It helps to have mental models and rules of thumb (like Bezos’ Regret Razor) to fall back on, though it’s not always possible to prepare for every possible scenario - and it’s not always practical (nor very pleasant) to spend time thinking about your future dying self.

Thankfully, there are some other tricks we can keep up our sleeves – but first we must dissect what a ‘decision’ actually is.

Every decision has two stages:
- Convincing yourself (upsides)
- Considering consequences (downsides)

The ‘falsification ratio’ is how long you spend thinking of the downsides vs thinking of the upsides.

Chess Grandmasters are some of the world’s best decision-makers.

Chess moves are irreversible decisions.

If you make the wrong choice you can’t simply go back and change it.

The main difference between an average chess player and a Grandmaster is the huge gap in falsification ratio.

The best in the world make the right decisions intuitively through experience (with little to no thought) but spend a huge amount of time thinking about the potential consequences – sometimes 10+ moves ahead.

3. Bezos’ Decision Matrix

So, how can we make this ‘falsification ratio’ a bit more useful and applicable to our own lives?

That’s where Bezos’ Decision Matrix comes in handy…

In short, this is just a 2x2 grid where we can plot our decisions to help determine how long to spend on them.

X-Axis → Impact (Consequences)
Y-Axis → Risk (Reversibility)

- The upper right quadrant (irreversible and consequential) is known as a Type 1 decision.
- The lower left quadrant (reversible and inconsequential) is known as a Type 2 decision.

This distinction will be relevant in the next section.

4. Two-Way Doors

Imagine a set of double doors.

They either only open in one direction (like a turnstile at a football stadium), or they can swing in both directions (like the entrance to an old western cowboy saloon).

These doors represent Type 1 & Type 2 decisions:
- The one-way door is a Type 1 (irreversible) decision - once you’re through you can’t go back.
- The two-way door is a Type 2 (reversible) decision - once you’re through you can go back.

Bringing It All Together...

Now, if we combine:
1. The regret razor model
2. The falsification ratio model
3. The decision matrix model
4. The two-way door model

We have a pretty neat framework for making better decisions:
- One-way (Type 1) doors require far more time thinking of the consequences → high falsification ratio.
- Two-way (Type 2) doors require far less time thinking of the consequences → low falsification ratio.

And if all else fails, simply ask yourself:
“What would ‘future-me’ regret not having done today?”

So, to cut a long story short, I’m mixing things up a bit here.

Longer form writing and connected ideas instead of simple atomic tweets copy-pasted into an email.

It might work, it might not work → but it’s a reversible decision with a lot of upside and very little downside - so why not give it a try?

If you made it this far, I’d love your support!

I recently launched Mental Model Mail on MicroLaunch and could really use your votes… ratings are appreciated, but constructive roasts are even better!

It only takes ~30 seconds as it connects to your Twitter account - so there’s no excuses not to get your feedback in 👀

Feel free to respond to this email or reply to the post on Twitter if you have any questions.

Speak to y’all next week!

Lewis 👋🏼