We have all been semi-committed to something in our lives, the feeling of sort of doing something but already having our foot halfway out the door. The Navigation Codex teaches that half decisions create resistance to navigation, never allowing you to meaningfully move forward and ultimately draining you of energy.
The Natural Law – Commit Fully
Once you have made a decision through natural intuition, you should commit fully to it. In the same way you can’t be partly pregnant, your goals cannot be realised with half committal.
Every meaningful decision you make has a minimum threshold of commitment – anything below that minimum and your choice loses all experiential purpose and might as well not have been made in the first place.
Half Decisions in Life that Create Resistance and Block Flow
There are plenty of real world applications where you might be making half decisions, sometimes you may not even realise you’re doing it.
In Your Career
Common half decisions in your career are:
- “I’ll stay in this job while I figure out what I really want to do.”
- “I’m sort of looking for another job, but not actively.”
- “I will start my side business in the future…”
As you can see, all of these decisions have noble intentions but have no commitment to seeing the navigation through – and when that happens, very often, nothing gets done at all because you have built resistance into your navigation.
In Your Relationships
Modern relationships are frequently defined by non-committal.
- “We’re seeing each other but not officially.”
- “We’re taking it slow to see how it goes.”
- “I really care about them, but I am keeping my options open.”
Undoubtedly, if you have experienced the modern dating scene, you will have heard these expressions.
With Your Health
As you can probably imagine by now, the pattern extends to every aspect of our lives. Seemingly positive statements and intentions that have no backbone.
- “I will start my diet next week.”
- “I will start my exercise routine in the future when I can book a gym subscription.”
- “I’ve cut back on drinking, but I haven’t actually tracked it.”
Opportunity delayed becomes opportunity denied, especially in health scenarios where people often put off positive health choices and before long it is too late.
With Your Projects
In our everyday life, these half-decisions wreak havoc too, keeping us in a constant place of stagnancy.
- “I’m thinking about writing a book.”
- “I’ll work on this when I have time.”
- “I will get round to renovating the kitchen when I am sure I can afford it.”
Commonly, all of the expressions are called procrastination. Procrastination is what happens when you decide to do something to navigate forward but cannot put in the minimum effort to do it. This builds resistance patterns that accumulate across all areas of your life.
Why Half Decisions Destroy Your Life Opportunities
First and foremost, every half decision creates an open loop in your decision making. Instead of deciding, committing and navigating forward, you are resounding the same choice perpetually in your head.
Half Decisions Cause Navigation Confusion
Under The Navigation Codex, this creates confusion for natural flow. It can’t flow meaningfully in your life and create space for opportunities if you haven’t fully chosen on a navigation.
Half Decisions Cause Perpetual Stress
Most people procrastinate due to a fear of some sort, commonly a fear of failure but also in some cases more practical reasons like a fear of moving away from financial security into the unknown.
This seems logical on the surface, but what is happening is you’re constantly agonising over the ‘should I’ or ‘shouldn’t I’ part of any choice, putting you under perpetual stress. If you had committed either way, your navigation becomes set and there is no stress build up.
Lost Opportunities and Regret
All half decisions ever lead to is lost opportunities and the build up of regret. If you halfway commit to something you have fully committed to nothing. Real results in life require complete engagement.
The Minimum Meaningful Choice Principle – No Half Decisions
The minimum meaningful choice principle under The Navigation Codex is straightforward, either go all in or get completely out.
You shouldn’t mistake this with permanency. No choice is permanent; it just means for that choice in that moment you have committed to it fully.
Examples of Clean Choices
You might be considering eating healthier, so instead of saying “I’ll try to eat healthier” your choice outcomes become either “I’m eating healthier according to a specific plan I have set for myself,” or “I’m not changing my diet right now.”
This can be any number of choices where we might procrastinate.
You might want to develop a business idea, so instead of “I might start this business,” it becomes a choice of “I’m dedicating x amount of time every day to developing this business,” or “I’m not pursuing this business idea now.”
The Two Outcomes Rule – No More Half Decisions
Basically, every choice comes down to either a full engagement or a clear decision not to proceed on that navigational path.
When we start introducing third, fourth or fifth options into the equation we are creating middle grounds that don’t actually exist, drain us and leave us unfulfilled.
Applying This in Our Lives
As you have read this, you might have thought of your own personal examples of procrastination.
To apply the minimum meaningful choice principle all you need to do is ask yourself a single question.
“What am I currently half committed to?”
You may only be carrying around a few half choices, you may have a list as long as your arm. The idea is then to systematically work through those half-choices and decide either way.
You may find some decisions can be made and the idea dropped entirely. This isn’t failure, this is actually brilliant because by committing not to do one thing, you open up natural space to fully engage with another choice you may have only been halfway in.
It can also be useful to track on a weekly basis whether new half-choices have crept in – don’t worry this is common and they have a pesky way of worming their way into our lives especially as we start out on applying The Navigation Codex principles.
What You Get from Resolving Half Decisions
Clear Navigational Guidance
When you commit one way or the other, your internal navigational compass knows exactly which way to point. Where you need to direct your attention to and what decisions require your energy.
There is no energy spread over several half choices that are going nowhere.
Natural Flow
This in turn creates a natural flow state in your decision making, with energy flowing in the direction you want to travel and not in areas you don’t or haven’t fully committed to.
It sets you on your experiential life journey with clarity and allows you to flow downstream towards your goals.
Authentic Life Experience
When all is said and done, there will be decisions made where you chose not to pursue an outcome, and others made that you followed, learned from, achieved and then built on.
Ultimately, this means when you look back over your life, you will see your authentic journey, where you pursued what mattered to you naturally and where you let things go that didn’t serve you. Better still, you won’t notice times of stagnation where you couldn’t decide either way.
The Ultimate Recognition about Half Decisions
Half decisions aren’t decisions at all. They all boil down to being a way of avoiding the decision altogether.
True choice requires crossing the minimum meaningful threshold – either way.
Any ‘decision’ below that on/off is really you thinking about deciding and delaying the decision perpetually, which depletes your energy and capacity to make other decisions and navigate in the direction that best suits you.
Mastering the minimum meaningful choice principle means you gain focus, clarity, energy and natural momentum in the direction where you have selected to commit to engaging decisions.
It isn’t restriction to choose fully. Letting go of some outcomes doesn’t limit you, it liberates you. Freeing you from the illusion that you can navigate life effectively while remaining permanently uncommitted.
As with all Navigation Codex principles, this becomes now, your choice to engage with the principles or not. My job is to share the knowledge and let you decide what is best for you.