The Rule of 3 to 5

Make decisions faster. I believe strongly that the world has patterns, and it's up to us to uncover them. The complexity is in figuring out how to boil down situations into small enough complexity s.t. we as humans can recognize them and follow them. But more on that in another post.

The rule of 3 to 5 is a decision making principle I made up at some point. Perhaps, and most likely, there was a progenitor that preceded me, but in my research, couldn't find any. Maybe suck I am not very good at search, but my feeling is that I am actually quite good at research due to my obsessively curious nature - often to a fault.

Wow as I'm writing this realizing how much I dive into the details as I'm trying to write something super simple - ha. Need to work on BFS in communication (also more on that in another post).

The rule of 3 to 5.

It's simple.

When to use it?

When you have a decision.

E.g. you need to renovate your place. Which contractor to pick? You want to go out to eat? Which restaurant to pick? You're at a restaurant and want to eat and there's a big menu. Which option to pick?

Sometimes, you JUST know. You have a feeling you want that burger. And that's beautiful. Follow your gut. But in the times you don't know instinctively.

The rule of 3 to 5 is simple. Pick 3 to 5 things you care about. Then pick 3 to 5 options. Finally, compare them - in 3 to 5 minutes/hours/days/weeks/....

People face these all the time. And if you have, you'll find that doing this is hard. But because we struggle with understanding how much time really exists, we might think this is easy.

Let's break it down and show why it's not:

You have 3 minutes to pick 3 things you care about and 3 options.

Picking a meal from a restaurant menu? Maybe - you introspect and think about what you're feeling - 1 minute. You look at the menu to pick options - how fast can you read? What if it's a 4 page menu? that's 15 s per page - your reading speed would have to be godly - and your reading comprehension even faster. Assume there's 60 items on the menu. It means you have 1 second to read and consider each option. What's even more complex - you have to consider all 60 options against each other - rank them in your mind or qualify and disqualify options as you go. At our quickest - when we have strong feelings or lukewarm feelings about options we can actually decide probably around that fast. But what if the menu isn't that clear and names things weirdly? Maybe you scan through the different names of dishes as a 1st pass, and then you dig into each individual that's interesting based on a feeling - and then consider the detailed description of ingredients of each. Now you might realize you might miss the description of something that might've been great if you made a false judgment in scanning the names of the dishes - e.g. the restaurante named something "basic pickle" but really it was the best steak you might have. You'd have to make the assumption if it was good it would be more pronounced (and it would percolate up). But you would never KNOW unless you did read everything.

But that's the thing - there's a ton of information. Often you can be presented with it and face information overload or analysis paralysis. And it's because we're not aware of the fallacy of more information than we can understand. Weirdly, we don't know our limmitations.

If you're someone who's eyes are bigger than their stomach - proverbially - then you're prob facing this too.

And this framework is to a head nod to this fact. The fallacy of simplicity. It hardly exists. Things are more complicated than they appear we just reduce it down bc we literally can't handle that much information to make decisions.

And there lies the point. Get to the decision you can with the amount of information handle retrieving and understanding. And that's not that many.

The rule of 3 to 5 is a great tool for this.

1. Reduce to 3 to 5 highest things you care about (dimensions/aspects/features).

2. Reduce to 3 to 5 contenders (options).

3. Make the final decision.

Each of these 3 steps (3 steps - see?) timebox.

And use the 3 to 5 framework.

How much time do you want to spend?

3 to 5 seconds for all steps for each step? 3 to 5 minutes for all steps for each step?

How much time and energy do you want to invest?

How important is this decision? aka what's at stake? $25 meal and 1 hr on a subpar meal - lower stakes $5000 floor renovation and days / weeks of your life - higher stakes a marriage - highest stakes

Think about it.

And yes the rule is a bit arbitrary but so is life. So is anything.

What makes it less arbitrary beyond what was explained already?

3 -> goldilocks decision (force you to make a balanced/just-right option, low-end/not enough option, and high-end/too much option) 5 -> when you need more detail (strong no, no, neutral, yes, strong yes)

of course there are 7 point scales (usually in big tech performance reviews) - it's rare, but sometimes you can't reduce it more than that. and 10 point and 100 point scales. But how often are those that useful? It's a barometer of how we feel, more than a decision making framework.

I also say you have 3 to 5 wide and 3 to 5 deep.

At most that means you're thinking through at least 333 = 81 up to 55555 = 3125 different possibilities. Of course this gets into combinatorics which I never remember off the top of my head (does order matter = permutation, or it doesn't combinations, and do you have to consider all slots or not).

Anyways that's all for today. This isn't really presented in a format that's optimized for reading, it's optimized for (my) writing.

One day I may go back and make it more sensible.