Finally, A Simple Way to Tell Smart Risks From Dumb Ones

Fellow Riskologist,

Not long ago, I was riding in the car with my friend, J.D. Roth here in Portland. I don’t remember where we were going or what we were talking about, but I do remember we were stopped at a set of train tracks while a long, slow train rumbled through town.

I also remember seeing a pedestrian—a man in dingy, baggy clothes—grow tired of waiting for the train to pass and decide to climb  onto the train between railroad cars to pass to the other side and carry on with his day. At one point, his foot slipped and he lost his balance for just a moment. Thankfully, he recovered and passed through the moving train unharmed.

I was dumbfounded. I looked at J.D. and asked, “Did you just see what I saw?” He was just as shocked. “I can’t believe he did that,” he said.

“That was a really dumb risk to take,” I said before moving the conversation on to another topic.

And it was a dumb risk. Why? Because he gained almost nothing from his success, but even the most minor of failures would have been catastrophic. The scales were not tipped in his favor!

Every single day, you and I take risks. You take a risk when you get in your car and drive through a yellow light on the way to work. Or when you go out for a fast food lunch rather than bringing your own healthy meal. You take a risk when you sneak a YouTube session into your work day in the cubicle.

And sometimes you take even bigger risks by doing nothing when the same time could be spent doing something useful (often our biggest regrets are the things in life we don’t do—not the ones we do).

But not all risks are created equal. Actually, the ones you take every day can be easily categorized into one of two categories: Smart or Dumb.

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