The Two-Way Door

10.2

The irony of our work—and our lives—is that we can spend the most heart and heat polishing the decisions that matter the least.

We treat every choice like a vault. Heavy, permanent, requiring a dozen keys and a committee to turn. We hold our breath, terrified of the click. But Jeff Bezos reminds us that most of life isn’t a vault but a hallway.

In those famous shareholder letters, he gave us a thoughtful gift: the taxonomy of the door. There are Type 1 decisions, the one-way doors. These are the rare, heavy moments—buying a home, merging a company, launching a satellite. If you walk through, the door locks behind you. These deserve your sleep and your deep, quiet deliberation.

But he suggests nearly everything else is a Type 2 door. These are the “let’s see what happens” choices. They are experiments in disguise. If you walk into the room on the other side and find it cold or empty, you don’t have to stay. You simply turn around and walk back out.

The tragedy of the modern soul is a fundamental category error. We treat Type 2 doors with Type 1 reverence. When you treat a reversible decision with extreme caution, you aren’t being “diligent.” You are paying in the only currency that truly matters: your own momentum.

If you can change your mind later, the cost of being wrong is almost always lower than the cost of being slow. In a world that shifts beneath our feet, the advantage doesn’t go to the person with the most perfect map; it goes to the person with the bravest stride.

If you realize the door is two-way, your job isn’t to be “right.” Your job is to be curious. The secret to wisdom isn’t avoiding the wrong door; it’s building the muscle to walk back through it without an ounce of shame, ready for the next hallway.

Thank you for reading!

Think of one thing you’ve been “researching” for too long. If it’s a two-way door, would you like to brainstorm the smallest possible step you could take through it today?