The further I get through life, the more I realize that most things in live can be seen as trade-offs.

Some things are obviously trade-offs. Should you take that new job? On one hand, you’ll get better pay. On the other hand, you may not get on as well the the team as your current job.

Beyond the obvious cases, I’ve come to believe that everything is a trade-off. On top of that, we usually don’t have a great sense of what we’re trading off.

Obviously-bad choices are just trade offs that are weighted against our preferred outcome. Obviously-good choices are trade offs that are weighted to our preferred outcome.

I find thinking of things as a trade-off helps with post-decision regret. If you made a big decision and it’s not perfect, just remember that this decision had trade-offs, and any other choice would have just had a different set of trade-offs (maybe much worse).