Play the Long Game with Scott Wozniak

This is the final episode in the decision-making series, and it tackles a problem I hope you get to have more and more often: what do you do when all your options are good? We've spent this whole series trying to make fewer bad decisions, but at some point, if you keep at it, you end up looking at three or four genuinely great options and still feeling stuck. I'll walk through the hierarchy I use to tip the scales when nothing is obviously wrong — and why, if you take care of the big stuff first, you actually get permission to just pick what you want. That's a really beautiful place to live, and good decision-making is what gets you there.

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P.S.: If you like this podcast, you'll probably enjoy seeing Scott present live. If you are interested in having him speak to your organization, you can see the options and schedule time to talk with Scott about your event here: https://scottwozniak.com/speaking/

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Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

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Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)        

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

There's an acronym that has been life-changing for me, and it's cheesy, but it works: HAALT. It stands for Hungry, Angry, Anxious, Lonely, Tired. If you're in any of those states, don't make decisions of any significance. We can split hairs about why why make certain poor decisions, when sometimes the problem is just that you haven't eaten, or you're exhausted, or you're in the middle of your 7th day of a non-stop work trip. This acronym has impacted my marriage, my health, and my finances, and I'll share exactly how. Also, stick around till the end to hear about why I think insecurity is actually at the root of most of our worst choices.

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P.S.: If you like this podcast, you'll probably enjoy seeing Scott present live. If you are interested in having him speak to your organization, you can see the options and schedule time to talk with Scott about your event here: https://scottwozniak.com/speaking/

---

Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

------  

Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)        

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

This episode digs into the part that might actually be the hardest: seeing clearly. What exactly does that mean? Whether we realize it or not, we are all biased, bent, and limited — sometimes even in areas we think we excel in. I'll walk through a few of the cognitive blind spots that quietly wreck our decisions, plus a set of lies we tell ourselves when things go wrong that stack on top of each other in ways that can be really destructive. It all begins with seeing clearly. And if you keep making bad decisions in a particular area of your life, it might not be your logic — it might be a bias you haven't compensated for yet. After this episode, you'll have a set of frameworks, some books and video recommendations, and action items you can use today.

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P.S.: If you like this podcast, you'll probably enjoy seeing Scott present live. If you are interested in having him speak to your organization, you can see the options and schedule time to talk with Scott about your event here: https://scottwozniak.com/speaking/

---

Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

------  

Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)        

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

I bought my kids some of the greatest Superman omnibuses because I found out they didn't even know who Lois Lane was. But reading through these again reminded me why these stories hit different. Two recommendations here: Absolute All-Star Superman, which asks "what if Superman knows he's about to die and has 12 things left to do?" It's moving in ways I didn't expect from a comic. And Superman: Red Son, which asks "what if the rocket landed in the USSR instead of Kansas?" As someone raised in the '80s where every bad guy was a communist, Superman as the champion of the Soviet Union felt almost violating. But the ending caught me completely off guard.

If you want be more creative and think outside your box, fiction might be your missing superpower.

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Superman: Red Son:        https://amzn.to/3TJCeJj

All Star Superman:        https://amzn.to/3lvUkSb

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Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

------  

Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

If you've expanded your options, checked your mindset, and reality tested your assumptions — but you're still not sure — it might be a timing problem.

In this episode, I dig into when to go fast and when to go slow. There's a concept I picked up called "thinking gray" (deliberately refusing to form an opinion until you have to) that plays a big role in this process. Also, I'll talk about a simple question that has shaped some of the biggest moments of my life: "How will I feel about this in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years?" That question literally changed everything from family life to business for me, and I think it will for you, too.

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P.S.: If you like this podcast, you'll probably enjoy seeing Scott present live. If you are interested in having him speak to your organization, you can see the options and schedule time to talk with Scott about your event here: https://scottwozniak.com/speaking/

---

Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

------  

Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)        

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

We can walk around with a massive set of unquestioned assumptions running our lives, yet not even know it.

We might think we're being rational, but we've got confirmation bias working overtime. There's research showing that people on opposite sides of a debate can read the exact same article, and both walk away more convinced they were right. On top of that, the people with the least skill in an area tend to be the most confident about how good they are (look up the Dunning-Kruger effect — it's humbling).

In this episode I get into how to actually break through that by running real experiments with real hypotheses. I'll also share the story of when I set up a clear test for a new business, watched it fail, and then talked myself into ignoring my own results for two and a half years.

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P.S.: If you like this podcast, you'll probably enjoy seeing Scott present live. If you are interested in having him speak to your organization, you can see the options and schedule time to talk with Scott about your event here: https://scottwozniak.com/speaking/

---

Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

------  

Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)        

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Most of us get stuck in either/or thinking way more than we realize. Should I take the job or not? Buy the house or not? Marry the girl or not? And when you reduce a big decision down to yes or no, it gets heavy fast — because now there's only two outcomes and one of them feels like loss. In this episode I walk through a handful of ways to break out of that trap. One of these is what I call a "root cause rethink," where you go back and ask why you actually want the thing in the first place (the answer might surprise you). There are almost always more than two choices. And if someone is pressuring you to decide right now between two options, that should be a red flag, not a motivator.

---

P.S.: If you like this podcast, you'll probably enjoy seeing Scott present live. If you are interested in having him speak to your organization, you can see the options and schedule time to talk with Scott about your event here: https://scottwozniak.com/speaking/

---

Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

------  

Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)        

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Behind every decision you make, there's a background assumption running: "do I believe there is enough, or do I believe there is not enough?" Enough opportunities, enough good options, enough time, enough resources. That assumption changes everything.

In this episode I dig into how abundance and scarcity shape our choices in career, relationships, and life. Also, why every generation has predicted the end of civilization and been wrong, and how I discovered that the guy who "didn't feel fear" had actually built his entire life around avoiding it.

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P.S.: If you like this podcast, you'll probably enjoy seeing Scott present live. If you are interested in having him speak to your organization, you can see the options and schedule time to talk with Scott about your event here: https://scottwozniak.com/speaking/

---

Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

------  

Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)        

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Not all decisions should be handled the same way, and not all people should approach decisions the same way either. That might sound obvious, but most of us have one default mode and we apply it to everything. In this episode I dig into the personal wiring side of decision making -- your certainty quotient (how sure do you need to be before you pull the trigger?), how sensitive you are to social pressure versus your own internal voice, and whether the decision you're facing is even the kind that deserves all that processing. My wife spent 100 hours researching baby monitors. I went to the store and bought the wrong one on purpose. We're both wrong sometimes -- and that's kind of the whole point.

---

P.S.: If you like this podcast, you'll probably enjoy seeing Scott present live. If you are interested in having him speak to your organization, you can see the options and schedule time to talk with Scott about your event here: https://scottwozniak.com/speaking/

---

Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

------  

Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)        

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

This is the start of a new miniseries on decision making — and I'd argue it might be the most important skill behind everything else we talk about on this show. Your career, your health, your relationships...it all flows downstream from the choices you make. At our core, we are decision-making entities. Viktor Frankl said it from inside a concentration camp: the last of the human freedoms is to choose your own attitude in any given set of circumstances.

The good news is that choosing is a skill, and you can get better at it. I'll share the story of King Solomon — who was offered health, wealth, or fame and asked for none of them — and why that one move unlocked everything else. This is where the miniseries begins, and I think it could change how you see every decision you make from here on out.

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P.S.: If you like this podcast, you'll probably enjoy seeing Scott present live. If you are interested in having him speak to your organization, you can see the options and schedule time to talk with Scott about your event here: https://scottwozniak.com/speaking/

---

Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com 

Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com 

You can connect with Scott on social media:  

linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/

https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak 

------  

Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendary

If you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)        

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.