Coaching practices for How to Evaluate Good Opportunities
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Evaluate Good Opportunities, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- A shiny opportunity lands and I get so dazzled by the upside that I talk myself right past the one thing about it I know I’ll hate
- There’s a chance in front of me where the worst case is small and survivable
- I finally know what I should be focused on, but good opportunities keep landing in my lap and I say yes to all of them
- This opportunity feels like such an obvious yes that I’m ready to dive straight in
- My life is full of perfectly fine, perfectly worthwhile things
Practices that may help
- Use anti-goals as a decision filter before evaluating opportunities
Run every major opportunity through your anti-goals list before calculating the upside.
Anti-Goals: Defining Success by What You Refuse to Accept - Look for decisions with asymmetric upside — large potential gain, small defined loss
Seek situations where the worst case is bounded and small while the best case is large and open-ended.
Expected Value Thinking: Deciding Under Uncertainty - Ruthlessly prune commitments outside the intersection
Once the intersection is visible, say no to opportunities — even good ones — that fall outside it.
The Hedgehog Concept - Apply extra scrutiny when a choice feels obviously good
Positive affect is as reliable a bias-trigger as fear — audit opportunities that feel like obvious wins.
The Affect Heuristic — When Feelings Substitute for Facts - Consider the cost of mediocre vs excellent allocation
Ask not just "is this worthwhile?" but "is this the best use of this resource right now?"
Opportunity Cost Thinking: What You Give Up When You Choose - Apply the extreme criteria filter ("If not hell yes, then no")
Raise your acceptance threshold so high that only clearly excellent opportunities pass.
Essentialism: The Art of Eliminating the Non-Essential - Generate Options — explore the full range of possibilities before committing
Invite the person to generate as many options as possible before evaluating any of them.
The GROW Model: Coaching Conversations That Actually Move People - Yellow hat: find genuine value and best-case scenarios
Actively search for why the idea could succeed and what value it would create — the yellow hat requires optimism to be evidence-based, not cheerleading.
Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical - Keep a decision journal to score your EV estimates
Log your probability estimates and payoff predictions, then compare them to what happened.
Expected Value Thinking: Deciding Under Uncertainty - Map your three circles honestly
Separately answer each circle — passion, best-at, economic engine — before looking for the intersection.
The Hedgehog Concept
Related concerns
- How To Evaluate Opportunities
Run every major opportunity through your anti-goals list before calculating the upside.
Use anti-goals as a decision filter before evaluating opportunities
- Upsides Structured Thinking
Actively search for why the idea could succeed and what value it would create — the yellow hat requires optimism to be evidence-based, not cheerleading.
Yellow hat: find genuine value and best-case scenarios
- When Anti Goals Anti Goal Decision Filter
Run every major opportunity through your anti-goals list before calculating the upside.
- Downside Risk Analysis
Seek situations where the worst case is bounded and small while the best case is large and open-ended.
Look for decisions with asymmetric upside — large potential gain, small defined loss
- Filtering Out The Positive
Focus on one negative detail while ignoring the broader positive picture.
Mental filter (negative attention bias)
- How To Say No To Good Opportunities
When you say yes to something, say explicitly what you are saying no to.
Always name the specific thing you are giving up
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