The Problem With Compromise: You Get What You Never Wanted

Most people compromise on what they want. They’re not doing what they once dreamed of doing because they made a compromise somewhere along the way. And as Nassim Nicholas Taleb says:

“Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood. The rest comes from loss of control.”

The problem is that society as a whole encourages you to compromise. The ability to work well with others - to compromise to get things done or built or voted through - is seen as a positive quality.

But when you compromise with someone else, something strange happens: you both get what you never wanted.

Compromise Means You Get What You Never Wanted.

Naval Ravikant explores this idea on his podcast in a conversation with Brett Hall. They discuss the scientific process, and how it’s really rooted in getting rid of bad ideas.

But when you compromise on an experiment or premise, you end up testing what neither party thought would work to begin with.

Here’s Hall explaining this:

“There’s this idea that compromise is supposed to be a virtue of some kind, and it’s not… If you’re in a situation where person A has idea X and person B has idea Y, the common understanding of a compromise is that it’s somewhere between X and Y: Person A won’t get everything they want, and person B won’t get everything they want. They come up with a compromise, which is theory Z.

We shouldn’t be surprised when theory Z proves not to work, because neither person ever thought it was the best idea in the first place… They haven’t made any progress whatsoever. They’ve shown that Z is wrong, but no one ever thought that Z was correct in the first place.”

It’s the same for creative projects. Many creative executions get mangled by compromises. If someone put up money - investors - they’ve bought a seat at the table and you have to listen to them. And the compromises you make with them could ruin your project.

This happens in film and television all the time. The creator of the content has a very specific execution in mind - a vision - but those who fund the project can force them to compromise away from what they thought could work. What you end up with is something no one thought could work.

At the same time, a great mentor / investor / creative exec can also make your project much better. It’s knowing what feedback you should incorporate and what feedback to fight back on that makes all the difference.

Compromise On The Small Stuff, But Never The Big Stuff.

To function in modern society, you must compromise. You can’t go into a grocery store and barter with the clerk over the price of a carton of milk. That’s not going to fly.

But when it comes to the big stuff - things like your core set of values, what you want out of life, the experiences you want to have, the stuff you want to create - don’t compromise. If you do, your life will become someone else’s.

The trick is to surround yourself with people who want the same things you do. Go and find those who share your core values. Then, team up with them and get after it.

Naval talks about this in an excerpt from The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. He discusses a few of his guiding principles like honesty, long-term thinking, letting go of anger, and peer relationships, and then says:

“I don’t know if these necessarily fall into the classical definition of values, but it’s a set of things I won’t compromise on and I live my entire life by. I think everybody has values. Much of finding great relationships, great coworkers, great lovers, wives, husbands, is finding other people where your values line up. If your values line up, the little things don’t matter.”

And the longer those relationships last, the stronger the bond. Because just like money, relationships with people compound over time. Once you find those who share your core values, stick with them and you’ll be able to do bigger and bigger things.

My wife and I are a good example of this. We live together, work together, and write together. This wouldn’t have been possible at the beginning of our marriage. But we’ve compounded our relationship in such a way that we can now strive together in the same direction. That’s what you want to find.

You Get Only What You’ll Settle For.

Life will give you only what you compromise for - nothing more. If you are willing to accept a circumstance, job, etc. you don’t like, do not expect things to get better on their own. They won’t. You have to cut them out to get somewhere else.

Here’s writer James Clear explaining this:

“A surprisingly effective way to get what you want is to not settle for less than what you want. It doesn't always work—you can't force the world to be a certain way—and you may need healthy doses of patience and doggedness, but your life bends toward what you accept.”

I compromised for a long time. My career started in reality TV - a genre I had no interest in, but it was how I got my first job. I did that for a couple of years, before compromising again to do branded content - making commercials for major car brands. I did that for five years.

Finally, I hit a crossroads. It was either time to try what I really wanted to do or accept I was going to compromise for the rest of my life. So, I quit my day job to write a movie with my wife. I was done compromising. And it was the best decision I’ve ever made.

Don’t compromise on what you want out of life. You only have one.

Thanks for reading.

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ARTICLE SOURCES

James Clear’s 3-2-1 Newsletter

Jorgenson, Eric. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. Magrathea Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Naval Ravikant - The Poverty of Compromise

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Incerto 4-Book Bundle. Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.