Wild Problems summary

Decisions, decisions. They’re the bane of our existence.

Pizza or sushi for dinner? Road trip or beach vacation for spring break? Regular braces or Invisalign? Surgery first and chemo later, or vice versa?

The ancient Greeks gave us democracy, the Western alphabet and the Olympics, to name just a few contributions.

They also introduced us to many interesting ways to think about things. Let’s take the word eudaemonia. Loosely translated, it means “flourishing,” and refers to a richer, more fulfilling way of living, one that cannot be directed by a pro-con list.

We have learned that the end goal of many of life’s major decisions or wild problems is to flourish. But how do we make the decisions that take us here?

It’s not that we are all hedonistic or nihilistic, craving 24-hour abandon or despairing of true meaning. Many of us are perfectly sensible, using tried and tested systems for decision making such as the one defined by economist Ariel Rubinstein. First you ask, ‘what is desirable?’ Then you ask, ‘what is feasible?’ And then you choose the most desirable options among your feasible options.

The guru for this next set of rules is not a writer, philosopher or economist. Rather, it’s a football coach. Not just any old coach, but perhaps the most storied one alive: Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots.

The NFL Draft is how teams choose from the incoming crop of college players. They do this by reviewing hours of tapes, poring over statistics and interviewing players. Although Belichick has the option to pick some of the top early-round picks – and he does – people have noticed that he’s always willing to trade his early picks for multiple picks later. In other words, he’s okay with losing a top prospect for a bunch of potential ones.