Your fear of permanence is ruining your life
Decision system I wish learned at 17
You’ve been living in rehearsal mode. Maybe for years. You’re building the perfect plan, the 10-step strategy, the contingency for the contingency. The spreadsheet comparing 47 cities. The probability distribution for whether this relationship will work. You think you’re being smart, strategic, rational. But here’s the truth: the show already started. The curtain is up. You’re already on stage. And while you’re backstage perfecting your lines, people with half your intelligence are out there performing. They’re making irreversible moves. Marrying the “wrong” person who becomes right. Moving to the “wrong” city that transforms them. Starting the “wrong” business that sets them free. And you? You’re watching from the wings with your perfect script that never gets performed.
I know this because I was you. I spent two years analyzing cities (and more years for more serious things). I had a Notion database with weighted scoring systems: cost of living, quality of healthcare, walkability index. I was going to find the objectively perfect place to live. Then I randomly went to Bangkok for two weeks. No plan, no analysis, just curiosity. It became my favorite city on earth. Better than Barcelona, better than every European city I’d “scientifically” evaluated. Not because Bangkok scored higher on my rubric, but because I stopped judging and started living. I walked through what I thought was a “test run” a two-way door I could easily exit. It became a one-way door. It changed me forever.
And here’s what I realized when I looked back: I don’t regret a single irreversible decision I actually made. Not one. You know what I regret? The years I spent preparing for the “perfect moment” that never came. The relationships I didn’t pursue because I was calculating divorce probability. The cities I didn’t move to because they didn’t score 100% on my matrix. The businesses I didn’t start because I was “still researching.” Every day I spent optimizing was a day that died forever. That’s the real irreversibility I couldn’t see.
Your brain is running a simulation that will never end
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.11
Let me guess your process. You treat life like a software release. You think every major decision can be “rolled back” if it fails, so you spend months trying to code the perfect algorithm for your life. You calculate probability distributions for marriage success. You build comparison matrices for cities with 30+ variables. You analyze market conditions for business ideas until the market has already moved on. You think this makes you smart. But here’s the bug in your operating system: you think the risk is making the wrong irreversible choice. The real risk is the irreversible passage of time while you’re deciding.
I see this constantly. Someone spends six months “researching” where to live. They build a 47-tab spreadsheet, join social groups, and watch YouTube videos. Six months later, they’re still in the same apartment. Meanwhile, their less-analytical friend moved to Bali on a whim, and now their life looks like they discovered the meaning of existence itself. What’s the difference? One person thought they were avoiding risk by gathering more data. The other person understood that the decisions that transform your life never feel like transformations when you make them. They feel like small experiments, reversible tests, two-week trips. But you can’t run the experiment if you’re still reading the manual.
Here’s what actually happens with “irreversible” decisions: you don’t get to know if a door is one-way until you walk through it. That relationship you’re afraid to commit to might be the one that teaches you how to love, even if it ends. That city you’re afraid to move to might reveal parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. That business you’re afraid to start might fail, but the person you become in the process might be exactly who you needed to be. The transformation isn’t the outcome. The transformation is you, becoming someone who can make irreversible choices.
I spent about five years trying to make it as an indie hacker. From 2019 to 2025, with breaks and pauses. Building a restaurant SaaS that caused me more stress than revenue. Watching my MRR hit $3,000 while I spent $5,000 a month keeping the machine running. I was afraid of “wasting time” on the wrong path. But you know what I learned? The only time I actually wasted was the time I spent being afraid. When I finally quit, I wasn’t mourning a failed business. I was mourning the fact that I’d spent years in a casino, believing the algorithm that showed me only the lottery winners. But even that “failure” wasn’t a waste. It taught me to distinguish between two types of decisions. And once I understood this, everything changed.
How to stop running simulations and start building your life
Every decision in your life falls into one of two categories: two-way doors and one-way doors. Two-way doors are decisions you can reverse with minimal cost. One-way doors are decisions that fundamentally change who you are. Most people treat all decisions like they’re one-way doors. That’s why they’re paralyzed.
Two-way doors are everywhere. A two-week trip, a coffee meeting with a potential cofounder, a side project, a first date, testing a new framework, posting a controversial tweet. These are experiments, not commitments. But your brain treats them like marriage vows. You spend three weeks debating whether to message that potential cofounder on Twitter. It’s a two-way door. Worst case: they don’t respond and you lost five minutes. Best case: you find your business partner. The rule is simple: if you can reverse it in less than a week with minimal cost, decide in 48 hours and execute. Think of two-way doors like A/B tests in product development - you don’t spend six months debating which button color to use, you test both and let the data decide. Your life works the same way.
That trip you’re “considering” for six months? Book it this week. It’s two weeks of your life. If you hate it, you leave. If you love it, you just discovered something about yourself you couldn’t have known from research. When you start treating reversible decisions as experiments instead of commitments, you 10x your learning speed. You get real data instead of hypothetical projections. You become the person who moves fast, not the person who thinks fast and moves never.
Now let’s talk about real one-way doors. These are rare, way rarer than your anxiety tells you. Real one-way doors fundamentally change your identity: marriage, children, a decade-long commitment to build a specific company, moving to another country for citizenship. These decisions create a new version of you that can’t be undone. Here’s the distinction two-way doors are like rearranging Lego blocks that you can take apart and rebuild. One-way doors are like baking a cake - you can’t un-bake it.
And here’s where most people get it wrong. They think the risk of a one-way door is “what if this relationship fails?” The real question is: “Am I willing to become the person who loved deeply, even if it ends?” That’s the irreversible part - not the outcome, but who you become. When I started my restaurant SaaS, I thought I was making a reversible bet. “I’ll try this for a year, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll get a job.” It became a one-way door, not because I couldn’t quit (I eventually did), but because building that business changed me. It taught me how to sell, how to handle pressure, how to keep a system running when real businesses depended on my code. I can’t un-learn those things. I can’t go back to the person I was before. And you know what? I don’t regret it. Even though it “failed” by Silicon Valley standards, I won, because I became someone different. That’s what one-way doors do - they don’t determine your outcomes, they determine who you become.
Here’s the paradox that will change your life: everything worth having requires you to close doors behind you. Deep love, mastery of a craft, a business that changes lives, children who carry your legacy - all of these require irreversible commitment. You can’t become world-class at anything while keeping all your options open. You can’t build a meaningful relationship while calculating your exit strategy. You can’t create something that matters while treating it like a “side project you might quit.” Sovereignty isn’t about keeping options open, it’s about choosing one path and going all-in. Think of it like this: a river that splits into a thousand streams has no power, but a river that commits to one channel carves canyons. Your life is the same.
When you’re 45, you won’t regret the relationship that didn’t work out. You’ll regret the years you spent afraid to commit to anyone. You won’t regret the business that failed. You’ll regret the ideas you never launched because you were “still researching.” I look back at my five years of indie hacking now, and I don’t wish I’d never started. I wish I’d started sooner. Because the person I am now, the person writing this to you, only exists because I walked through that one-way door.
Here’s the tool that will save you years of wasted time. Ask yourself: “Am I preparing for the show, or am I using preparation as an excuse to avoid the show?” If you’ve been “preparing” for more than three months, you’re avoiding. Professional actors rehearse for weeks, not years. At some point, rehearsal becomes procrastination disguised as professionalism. You’ve been “learning to code” for 18 months, but haven’t shipped a single product? That’s not preparation, that’s rehearsal. You’ve been “working on yourself” for two years, but won’t let anyone close? That’s not healing, that’s hiding. You’ve been “researching business ideas” for a year but haven’t made a single sale? That’s not strategy, that’s fear. The show is already happening. The curtain is up. You’re the only one who doesn’t realize you’re already on stage.
So here’s your assignment. Pick one one-way door you’ve been standing in front of for months. Walk through it this week. Not when you’re ready, not when you have the perfect plan. Now. Because the only way to know if a door leads to your best life is to walk through it. What’s your Bangkok? What’s the thing you’ve been over-analyzing that you need to just try? Book the ticket. Send the message. Start the company. Commit to the person. Do it before your brain builds another 10-step contingency plan.
Because here’s what I know for certain: you don’t regret the things you did that didn’t work out. You regret the things you never tried because you were afraid they might not work out. The irreversible decisions you’re avoiding are the ones that will define your life. The only question is: will you make them while you still have time, or will you keep rehearsing until the theater closes?
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”
Hunter S. Thompson, The proud highway: saga of a desperate southern gentleman.