I’ve recently been thinking about making an investment. I’ve chatted with people I respect who are credible in the space to get their perspectives. That was helpful and exposed some gaps in my thinking, but it didn’t sway me one way or the other. Today I had some downtime, so I built a quick spreadsheet.

I’ve built tons of spreadsheets for decision-making before, but I included something new in this one. For this investment to be successful, several things would have to happen. I thought through the probability of all of them happening and included it in the spreadsheet. This exercise was helpful because it forced me to carefully consider a variety of things, including what that percentage is and why it’s the right percentage. It helped clarify some things and got me closer to a decision.

Like many other things in life, this investment has a chance of being successful that can be estimated. Thinking about that probability was helpful.

‍