Once a decision is broken into components, you must rank them — and ranking means giving things up. Marshall: "It's easy to want everything, but not possible to have everything. At some point, there's just tradeoffs." A major reason higher-order thinking is hard is the reflex to say "I want it all." His illustration is the AK-47. The Kalashnikov is famously fault-tolerant — it handles jams, sand, muck, and grime better than almost any rifle — but it is not the most precise or accurate. A military procuring rifles cannot have both at once: high-precision rifles are more liable to fail in harsh conditions; rugged rifles trade away accuracy. You must decide which trait matters for which unit. The method matters less than doing it at all. A simple "must / want / nice-to-have" sort (musts are absolute constraints, wants are what you try to make happen, nice-to-haves matter less), a 1–10 score per component, or even just ranking the list is "far, far superior to not thinking about it." For richer frameworks Marshall points to Goldratt's Theory of Constraints and the military's CARVER Matrix. (See [[Theory of Constraints - Singular Sequential Focus]].) --- *Source: [[Book Inventory/Progression|Progression]] (Sebastian Marshall, 2016) — Uncommon Virtues #3 — Higher-Order Thinking*