Joe identifies principled decision-making as the deepest shortcut: identify a small set of principles you live by and let them decide for you. His examples: “I don’t work with assholes” and “connection comes first.” When a decision arises, run it through your principles and the answer becomes immediate. Decisions evaporate into choices.
He illustrates with a board meeting where an acquisition was falling apart and everyone was panicking. One board member calmly stated his five principles — including “you build a company to make the best company, you don’t build a company to sell it” — and the decision was made instantly. They didn’t chase. A year later, the same buyer came back and paid significantly more.
“If a principle doesn’t help me make decisions, it’s not a true principle.”
The power of principles is compounding. Think of decisions as a portfolio: one principled decision might lose, but across hundreds of decisions, living by principles produces a life you actually want. The board member’s principle might not have worked — the buyer might never have come back. But he wouldn’t have cared, because his principles had proven reliable across enough decisions.
Principled living also forces you to feel the emotions you’d rather avoid — the “oh shitness” of walking away from money, the fear of losing a deal. That’s what makes it hard, but it’s also what makes it work: you’re going toward the feared experience rather than avoiding it.
Related Concepts
- Decisions as portfolio not single bet
- Only work with great people
- Connection enables accomplishment
- Principles drive action; values describe morality
- Principles automate decision-making into effortless choices
- Connection is the most effective bottom-line principle for life
- Your life is the sum of the decisions you’ve made