The 2 a.m. tell

I was weighing a significant career opportunity and needed a way to separate real conviction from talking myself into something that looked good on paper. I used a specific, named tell instead of a pros and cons list, what wakes me up at night. Alarm bells ringing, or waking up envisioning how I could add value to the cause. A spreadsheet can be argued into any answer you want. A body that keeps you up at night with dread versus a mind that keeps waking you up excited to build something is a signal you can't talk yourself out of, because it isn't coming from the part of the brain trying to justify the decision. Two consecutive nights of waking up envisioning how to add value, instead of alarm bells, became my full conviction signal, and I named it exactly that, the tell I was going to follow. When a decision is genuinely hard, don't ask yourself for the pros and cons. Ask which mode your nights are in. I trusted my own gut over a rational sounding argument, because the gut signal was the one that couldn't be rationalized in either direction.