Do you often think of life as a game of strategy?
Do you find yourself organizing the people and events in your life as if they're pieces on a chessboard?
Read lots of books outlining a specific path to achieve success?
After a first date, do you wait 48 hours to message?
If you say the right things to your boss, will you get promoted?

Coming from the cruise ship world, I often heard people say, "the company doesn't like it when you are honest, so always say how much you love what you do, and you'll get ahead." Really?

One time a musician told me that their music director said to them, "David only wants to see you smile and dance, he doesn't care for the music." Really?

Folks, life is not a chess game. It's not a game with defined rules. If you say the right things, it doesn't mean you will have the outcome you expect. If you smile and dance while you're performing music, it doesn't mean you're going to receive a raise. All it means is that you don't know me; instead, you only know how to "play me." Except, I'm not a chessboard.

If life were a chessboard, every time we'd jaywalk, we'd get hit by a car. I grew up jaywalking on my way to school; as I sit here, I can attest that a vehicle has never hit me. I believe that carefully watching oncoming traffic, and timing my cross with that traffic, I have a high probability of making it safely across the street and saving time. If anything, life is more like poker.

I'm starting a series on indecision. The series derives its inspiration from the work of Annie Duke and her book, "Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts." I think we can all benefit from making smarter decisions.