When Opportunities Become Distractions
Alex Hormozi's Mental Model: the Lady in the Red Dress
One mental model I’ve been obsessed with lately when taking my next steps is Alex Hormozi’s concept of “the lady in the red dress” inspired by the Matrix:
The synopsis of this idea is the seduction offered by great opportunities and the subsequent distraction away from the core actions, goals, and plans which actually substantially move the needle of meaningful metrics and pursuits. Especially attractive for those who live in uncertainty where the details are unequivocally ambiguous (ie: me who only has a general sense of desired direction), these opportunities hinder progress and serve as infinitely deep sinkholes consuming significant time, stress, and mind-space in the veil of hollow productivity.
The most sinister aspect of these opportunities is their characteristic of becoming increasingly attractive as personal success and capability increases. Prevailing opportunistic upsides- status, money, and security- compound with rising skills and belief of what is achievable to create lustful opportunities a younger self would have absolutely killed for.
This makes goal setting and execution of plans more complicated. Not only is there a need to determine what is a great opportunity, but there is also a need to resist the temptation of good opportunity. For example, consider recruiting, a landscape where opportunities to apply are plentiful and the success of reaching an invite to interview is a collision of large application numbers and some non-zero resume acceptance percentage. Taken a step further, a job offer is a product of hours spent preparing interview skills and graces of fortune expressed through the difficulty of questions given, the fickle mood of interviewers, and the quality of internet connection. The process of applying and interviewing is fairly straightforward (some product of volume, preparation, luck), but the selection of the right opportunity is much convoluted.
In recruiting, I see red dresses very often, most recently interviewing for Citadel, a direct competitor to my current firm. Despite already being disgruntled with my life in this space and reading a job description that is an almost mere reflection of my responsibilities now, I deluded myself into thinking that the prospect of working at Citadel would be different from what I currently do. And for what? For the larger number that would hit my bank account every month and the status of contributing to one of the most aggressive and profitable pure money printing machines the world has ever seen? Does that, in any regard, result in more meaning, insight towards my interests, expansion of new skillset, accumulation of wisdom, or any truly novel memories to reminisce when I’m older?
Though there are more factors to consider, I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Nevertheless, the discipline required to not pursue red dresses is substantial. It’s difficult to say no when I would have said yes only a year prior. And if I project forward, it’s even more difficult to say no when the red dress offers a certain improvement- though marginal- over my present state of life. If the hypothetical of working at this other trading firm is almost a strict improvement, why say no?
Perhaps the answer to this is best said by Christopher Hitchens:
In life, we must choose our regrets.
Given no decision can be remade in the same conditions and overall life cannot be lived twice, there is regret natively intertwined with any decision. By pursuing one thing for a given amount of time, there is opportunity cost in not being able to pursue something else- whether that something else be to enrich the wallet, surrounding friendships, or soul.
And to be clear- the decision to pursue the red dresses is not monotonically poor. There can be upside pursuing these red dresses; it all depends on what is being optimized over a long period of time. A red dress for one person may be a completely great opportunity for someone else. There’s no definitive solution or guide to decision making around these red dress opportunities.
At this point, the best antidote seems to be the acknowledgement of their existence and the quick deliberate decision to pursue or to move on. This increases the velocity of decision making and hopefully the occurrence of something more worthwhile down the road.