The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking

"Oh, it’s so good. I guess it goes back to what I was saying before—about how there’s so much choice now, and this is, I guess, a criticism of a portfolio life, that we can do too many wrong things at once. Why does anyone want to add something else on? We’re busy enough. Why do you want us to work more? I get it—multi-hyphen life can sound like more. It sounds complicated. It sounds stressful. It sounds like you’re piling stuff onto me. But that is 100% not what the book is: it’s saying if you want to do multiple things and have multiple strands in your life and not have one career, here’s how, and here’s how to streamline that. Here’s how to do less . The multi-hyphen method isn’t about multi-tasking—it’s about picking a few things to do well. The Decision Book is one that I come back to a lot. I’ll just explain one page from it that I always come back to. There’s this graph with two axes: importance and urgency. It splits the page into four areas: urgent and important; important but not urgent; urgent but not important; and not important, not urgent. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Sorry if that sounds complicated, but for so long I didn’t see the difference between urgent and important. I looked at my to-do list in completely the wrong way. It really has encouraged me to understand there are things you can just do immediately—like an email that takes two seconds; things that you can delegate; and things that you can just do later, even a week later. I think that’s the problem with living in this modern world where people think if you haven’t replied to an email in three hours then you’re dead. There’s no room for taking some time. It’s an amazing book. If you are confused by how to get through the day with your multiple projects, it tells you how to prioritise your day. It’s incredible. I don’t really believe in it, no. For me, a lot comes from getting your hands dirty and jumping in the deep end. I don’t think there’s anything you can learn out of business school that you can’t learn from doing it yourself and maybe getting it wrong a few times. I’ve always been that person who really struggled with academia. It never really stuck in my head. I don’t know whether that’s because I’m a visual person or because I remember things when I hear them said out loud, or maybe I am just like better in real-life situations than in hypothetical situations. But I also believe that you don’t need to spend money on courses to be successful. That, to me, says that maybe there can be some sort of fairness in this industry. That you can come up with a brilliant idea and execute it and reach millions of people without having to have money, and spend it on a degree. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, that I just like the idea of everyone having a fair go. But I actually think that a lot of people are better at just rolling up their sleeves and getting on with it."