When deciding between more of X or more of Y, you can often get more of X and more of Y, and your framing them as mutually exclusive was false.
Specific example: Should I be devoting more time to my personal project or to politics at work? Framing the choice this way implies a zero-sum relationship between them (+2 to work is −2 to personal project), but what is optimal might really be +1 to work, +1 to project, or even −1 to work +3 to project. So even if there is a tradeoff, it can be good to remind yourself that the tradeoff is not necessarily 1-to-1.
This is also related to figuring out what you really want. Say you were deciding between two colleges or jobs. You should make sure that any potential tradeoffs when comparing their pros and cons are real, e.g. job A has benefits that sound good in far mode but you don’t actually care about in near mode.
Mental cue in quotes.
“Have I googled this?” I still forget this one way too much.
Related: For any major life decision: “Have you put even 30 minutes of serious analysis and research into this?”
Econ:
”Am I at the frontier?” as a reminder of the production possibility frontier whenever presented with ostensibly mutually exclusive choices.
“What does the marginal case look like?”
“SXD” a reminder of supply and demand in cases involving fungibility, what affects each in this case?
Lesswrong:
”behaviors, not goals” this helps fix a variety of errors in updating models of others and self.
“Am I/Are we/they being strategic?”
“TDT” a reminder that I will act similarly in all similar situations.
A literal rule of thumb.
Can you elaborate?
When deciding between more of X or more of Y, you can often get more of X and more of Y, and your framing them as mutually exclusive was false.
Specific example: Should I be devoting more time to my personal project or to politics at work? Framing the choice this way implies a zero-sum relationship between them (+2 to work is −2 to personal project), but what is optimal might really be +1 to work, +1 to project, or even −1 to work +3 to project. So even if there is a tradeoff, it can be good to remind yourself that the tradeoff is not necessarily 1-to-1.
This is also related to figuring out what you really want. Say you were deciding between two colleges or jobs. You should make sure that any potential tradeoffs when comparing their pros and cons are real, e.g. job A has benefits that sound good in far mode but you don’t actually care about in near mode.