My Two Devils

This morning, I thought deeply about my decision-making patterns, and how to refine them.

I’d like to think that I’m diligent, responsible and effective. However, I realize that my decisions don’t always produce the most optimal outcomes for all the parties impacted by my decisions.

And it’s hard to understand why so — especially when I seek to act on good intentions.

But today I realized why…

There’s a saying in the Bible, that sometimes — “the devil disguises himself as an angel of light”.

And I’ve found two personal ‘devils’ that sometimes lead me down a path I don’t want to take:

1. Empathy (Misdirected)
2. Outcome Optimization / Stewardship (At a Greater Cost)

First — The Peril of Misdirected Empathy

To empathize, is to understand and share the feelings of another.

And presumably — to be a good (and kind) human, is to place another party’s needs above one’s own. (I consider servant-leadership, and personal sacrifices, as virtues worth living.)

But there are times when the above actions (empathy and sacrifice) lead to destructive (or simply non-constructive / or positive-but-delayed) outcomes.

Here are some:

1. When the other party is overwhelmingly self-centered, and is not reciprocal. This does not mean that self-centeredness is damned. And truly — very few can claim to act with absolute disregard for self-interest (although we should continually try).
2. When we, ourselves, compromise workability as a result — and it impacts our ability to give more of ourselves to others, or to carry out duties to important parties — our spouses, kids, families, teams, organizations that we are accountable to.
3. (there are surely more, and I’d like to add to this list in the future)

Second — When one outcome is optimized at a far greater cost (to you, and to other others that you care about)

Outcome optimization is possibly one of my life’s pursuit. I love to analyze systems and decisions to achieve maximum output with minimal resources.

Call it productivity, or effectiveness, or efficiency. But sometimes, this ‘Angel’ of a pursuit, is a devil in disguise. And we call it “Penny-wise, Pound-foolish” or some variation of that. It could mean the difference between ‘Strategic’ and ‘Tactical’.

There… my two ‘devils’. And now that I’ve identified them — I can work towards making decisions that don’t simply seem good on the surface. But truly good for the ‘whole’ (everyone, and in the long term).

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