Action and Conviction

Learnt an inspirational quote from Sam Altman today: Inaction is an insiduous form of risk. Only by moving forward can we see and explore the wide universe of opportunities ahead. Have found myself starting to appreciate the complexity of risk management in personal or career decision making; a state of action or inaction both involves accepting a level of risk, and have therefore decided to restructure the problem into 2 concepts: Action and Conviction.

In my framework I postulate that the optimal course of action and state of mind in any scenario (personal, professional or otherwise) often lies in two extremes: either aggressive action taken towards a path of conviction, or inaction where there is a lack of conviction. It was tempting to explore an MBA-style 2x2 axis to professionally illustrate the point:

We see that only in 2 cases whereby the decision becomes non-regrettable: Strong Conviction + Aggressive Action, and Weak Conviction + Gross Inaction. This is not to say that the Inaction + Weak Conviction cases necessarily leads to a worse outcome than the former case. This framework pertains to a certain deterministic course of action that has been identified, and the lack of productive effort invested in an activity without conviction actually means mental and time resources could have been committed elsewhere with greater levels of conviction.

Outcomes are irrelevant to this decision-making framework: while a successful outcome is often not a regrettable one, a failed outcome may or may not be regrettable, depending on intent and conviction. Also because - outcomes simply cannot be predicted at this stage.

The main problem lies in the middle, where there is either a lack of conviction or a lack of action. These two states lead to regrettable outcomes in different ways, but it is easy to imagine the majority of adults in this category. Some examples below:

1. Lack of Execution: Procrastination; inability to act, lack of willingness/courage to act; giving excuses for inaction; fear of external consequences, etc
2. Misdirected Effort: Trapped in a career without identifiable long-term prospects; doing work on another’s direction; disagreement with team decision, etc

One could then argue that State (2) is a redundant case: assuming all humans are capable of acting on intent, surely this just means when there is gross inaction, there has to be a lack of sufficient conviction? Maybe there is some conviction, but due to one or multiple reasons, the level of conviction is insufficient to garner the courage or resources to pursue the desired course of action. Hence, as long as this assumption holds, there should only be 3 states, not 4.

State 3 is interesting because it surfaces the fact that conviction as a concept is multi-layered and multi-faceted. Do many people inspire to be doctors because they possess high conviction towards becoming a doctor? Or could it be due to their desire to save lives? Some may have strong convictions because they want to earn a decent living, or make their parents and community proud? A wide variety of convictions and reasons can lead to the same course of action of (becoming a doctor), but clearly the level of regret differs based on circumstances. What happens when there is suddenly a huge supply of trained doctors in the market leading to a fall in wages for doctors? Why would some doctors then decide to leave to pursue something more lucrative, and what would be the reasons why others would remain in the field? Salaries may have been a huge proportion of the conviction of a specific doctor and not the other, henceforth leading to very different career decisions between different people.

Understanding the make-up of one’s conviction is thus critical, and requires a deep level of emotional and intellectual honesty, and relentless self-reflection. This conviction can then only be realistically tested when times are tough, rather than when times are easy. Hence, true conviction tends to be innate and borne out of deeply personal reasons, and it would never have been affected by extenuating factors simply brought about by the passage of time. My strong opinion would be to go slow initially and identify a cause, business or social change that is fundamental towards building up conviction, and once that is accomplished any action borne out of this unyielding state of conviction would still lead to myriad successful or unsuccessful outcomes, but none regrettable.

Put simply, this was a note to self to pursue and act on only opportunities with strong, unshakable conviction. Allocate zero time on tasks and objectives that do not align with your long-term vision.