I am an early adopter, in terms of buying new gadgets, trying new things, and life in general. I read a lot from a lot of different sources so I always tend to know when new things are set to arrive and I tend to anticipate things very heavily before most people even know they exist. As an example, I knew that Apple was going to announce iPod nanos with cameras on them probably two months ago. The announcement was yesterday. So while most people heard about it, processed it, and considered it yesterday for the first time - I already had my mind made up in July if this was something I was interested in or not.
Where am I going with this?
Well, in life, in a sense, I'm an early adopter as well. It works slightly differently, though. The way I perceiving this translating to my real life is that I make my mind up very early, sometimes before I have all the facts. To go back to the iPod nano example, what if the prototype that I was aware of was missing some key feature that I absolutely loved but I already made up my mind in July that this sucked and I wasn't interested? Obviously I could change my mind but that's not always something that comes easily to me.
A real life example of this involved something that happened to me in the 6th grade. I was a bad kid in the sense that I had a bad attitude, no one could tell me what to do and I liked to talk back to anyone who tried to tell me anything. I also was getting straight As, so my guidance counselers didn't really know what to do with me. My mom got called in for a parent/teacher/counseler conference and they were trying to tell me that I had potential but if I didn't straighten out I wouldn't go anywhere. Someone asked me what I wanted to do with my life or what my plans were and for whatever reason I said then that I wanted to go to Cornell. I was 12. I didn't even know Cornell was an Ivy League school at that point, how good it was, or what. But I pretty much made my mind up that day that I was going to go to school there and let that guide my decision making process for 6 years before it finally happened.
So why am I writing about this now?
I make this "mistake" all the time now. I have options, I think one is ok and I choose that and let that guide my decision making process for better or worse. And I'm trying to improve on that. Just last year I went mattress shopping - I only went to one store, which is among the more overpriced - found a mattress I wanted and bought it without shopping around - because I liked it. I probably could have gotten the same mattress elsewhere for cheaper (and perhaps significantly so) but I liked that one and I had to have it.
This happens in non material situations as well. I have options presented for me, one option emerges as slightly better and I begin to disregard the other options and push the slightly better option way out to the forefront. This is not ideal, because having options is a good thing.
I'm not sure what got me to thinking about this yesterday and today but it's probably for the best that I am. You never know when the thing that you disregard could turn out to be something you wish you hadn't missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment