Its 5am raining and the neighbourhood is just starting to come to life. Birds are chirping, the odd car drives by and the coffee pot has just finished brewing. It is the perfect time for writing with little or no distractions and a fresh mind.

I am feeling very reflective today and pondering to myself that big question should we live our life by numbers. So often in western society we try and boil everything down to a very specific solution. Nice compartmentalized solutions that speak for themselves. In school particularly in engineering and science there is usually some formula or method for determining the “right” answer and correct methodology. Life isn’t a formula or a methodology and I don’t think you can boil everything down to a causal analysis or finite solution. Perhaps the key point is numbers are important but they are not the only dimension to a potential outcome.
The challenge of course is that how you feel about a possible outcome can be equally or more important than what you think about a potential outcome. In fact Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink delves deeply into the science of “thinking without thinking”, which really is very likely feeling. You often hear stories about CEO’s that make decisions based on that gut check. Getting in tune with how you feel about a potential decision and visualizing the outcomes IMHO is probably as or more important than the math.

Perhaps one of my most important lessons learned in the last two years is don’t live your life as a slave to numbers. Numbers don’t always tell the whole story and sometimes you just have to go on that gut check.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Featured by Ian
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