Optionality: How To Make Your Own Luck In Life - Richard Meadows - #269

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, you beautiful people. Welcome back. Today's episode is brought to you by Uncommon Coffee, the best selection of coffee in the UK, and you can get 20% off. Uncommon Coffee are an on-demand premium coffee service whose priority is on making their customers as happy as possible, accompanied with the cheapest prices around when it comes to literally the best tasting and most popular coffee from the number one independent coffee houses and roasters in the UK. If you or someone in your household is a coffee lover, then you have to go and check these guys out. I continue to receive packages that are wiring me through the roof on a morning, but Ozone, I've absolutely fallen in love with that. We had something else that was notes of plum in it the other day. So good. Wonderful selection. And if you don't really know where to start, they'll give you their recommendations on how you should pour and grind the coffee, what the notes are, and they'll even help you choose if you're just giving them an email and say, these are the sort of tastes I like. How can you help me? You don't need to wait for the coffee that you love. You get one payment, one cheap delivery cost, one delivery date and time, and one perfectly packaged coffee delivery direct to your door. And on top of that, you can get 20% off with the code MW20 at uncommoncoffee.co.uk. That's 20% off caffeine at uncommoncoffee.co.uk. Go and check it out and upgrade your coffee game today. Onto today's guest. I am joined by Richard Meadows, who is a journalist and an author. Optionality is a term from finance and with his background in the investing world, Richard used the principles of optionality to create an entire life design philosophy that allows him to constantly be making his own look. Life doesn't come with an instruction manual and how to organize our lives to be efficient, but have options and to take advantage of routine, but enjoy variety is one of the hardest balancing acts that we face. So today, expect to learn why you should earn as much money as you can when you're young, how to make life changing choices under uncertain conditions, how to protect against financial disaster, how to develop a system to create your own look and much more. This was such a surprise gem. I was intro to Richard from Julian, who's a listener of the show and he just blew me away with proper kindred spirits and yet another bromance under the wind. But he's super cool and there's so much to take away from today. And if you enjoy it or if there's something that really resonates with you, then let me know at ChrisWillX, wherever you follow me, Instagram, Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, that's it. Let's listen to Richard Meadows talk about how to make our own look.
Richard Meadows, welcome to the show.

**Richard Meadows** (3:00)
Thank you for having me.

**Chris Williamson** (3:01)
Pleasure to have you on, man. So, optionality, what is optionality?

**Richard Meadows** (3:07)
The simplest definition of optionality is the right but not the obligation to take action. So you can do something if you want, but you don't have to. And my argument is that optionality is a pretty good proxy for human flourishing in general, and just being able to maximize your capabilities as a human being and have the maximum range of possibilities open to you.

**Chris Williamson** (3:34)
So would that suggest that naturally as humans our level of well-being and flourishing is directly proportional to how many different options we can take in life?

**Richard Meadows** (3:44)
I think it's less of a quantitative thing and more qualitative, so it's about the caliber of the options that are available to you.
So I'd draw a distinction between having a lot of choices in the consumer capitalism frame where you can go to the supermarket and choose between umpteen different varieties of pasta sauce or laundry detergent, but like having high quality options is more important. So being able to work in a career that you find meaningful or satisfying, or being able to have good relationships with the people around you, that's really the key. And it's not so much about being sort of floating on Cloud 9 and being euphoric all of the time, but also having the right to choose to do things that are really hard or that involve some degree of not necessarily suffering, but perhaps some degree of hardship or sacrifice. It's sort of a broader definition of human flourishing that goes beyond the simple hedonistic pleasures.

**Chris Williamson** (4:50)
How do you see optionality manifesting in the real world, then? That's a nice concept. But what does it actually look like when it enters our lives?